Vikings Offensive Starters Facing Contract Years
Minnesota Vikings’ football isn’t far away, with the first regular season game nine weeks from Monday.
A few offensive starters for the Vikings are entering contract years in 2025. Here’s who’s playing for a new deal and their roles in 2025.
The club will travel to Chicago for a meeting with Caleb Williams and the Bears at Soldier Field.
And throughout the 2025 campaign, a few Vikings offensive starters will encounter contract years — their final seasons before hitting free agency. These are those players listed alphabetically.
Starters in the Vikings Offense on Final Years of Contracts
This could be the swan song for the following players.
1. C.J. Ham
No one has mentioned it much — perhaps because the importance of fullbacks has dwindled to its lowest point ever — but Ham, a beloved Viking, is scheduled to depart the team after the 2025 campaign.
The Vikings found Ham in undrafted free agency nine years ago, and he became a bit of a staple in 2017 and beyond. Behind Harrison Smith, another cherished Viking, he’s the longest-tenured player on the purple roster.
Ham will likely retire before trying on a new team for size in 2026 — or general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah could extend his deal. Fullbacks aren’t very expensive.
Overall, this is your warning: the upcoming season is scheduled as Ham’s last, at least as of July 5th.
Zone Coverage‘s Matt Fries noted on Ham this week, “In a league that’s mostly moved away from them, fullbacks need to be versatile to survive. In NFL playbooks, there are five primary positions for skill players. You’re probably familiar with ‘X’ and ‘Z’ WRs. ‘Y’ is for TEs, and ‘H’ is for RBs. Then there’s the ‘F’ position, which means ‘formation adjuster.’ The F fills in the gaps depending on what personnel the offense is playing. If they have three WRs, the F is a slot receiver. With two TEs, the F is a second TE. With two RBs, the F is the FB.”
“Coming into C.J. Ham’s first camp as a UDFA, no one would have believed you if you had told them Ham and Harrison Smith would be the only two players remaining on the roster after nine seasons. Now, it’s impossible to imagine a Vikings roster without Ham filling in the gaps. He’s the team’s glue guy, willing to do all of the dirty work the team asks of him.”
2. Jalen Nailor
Make no mistake — the Vikings coaching staff has big plans for Nailor. They basically pound the table for his emergence every summer. And in 2024, the speedy wideout remained healthy for a full season, his first time doing so since turning pro in 2022.
But with Minnesota drafting Maryland’s Tai Felton in Round 3 at the end of April, Nailor’s days in Minnesota feel numbered. It would be a little strange to draft Felton with noteworthy draft stock — and turn around to extend Nailor, which could demote Felton to a full-time WR4 for the duration of his rookie contract.
There could be a path where Nailor and Felton switch jobs — Felton swipes the WR3 gig while Nailor re-signs as an affordable WR4 — but Nailor testing free agency next March feels like the most probable outcome.
3. Justin Skule*
*Possibly a starter at the beginning of the season.
No, Skule is not the Vikings’ full-time solution at left tackle. That’s Christian Darrisaw’s bread and butter.
However, there’s a more than decent chance that Skule starts in September for a handful of games, and if he performs well — holds down the fort until Darrisaw’s return — he could be auditioning for a starter’s job elsewhere in 2026.
Life for Vikings fans will be exponentially easier if Darrisaw is fully healed by Week 1, but Skule cannot be ruled out as the September starter at LT. He fired up a 69.2 grade from Pro Football Focus last season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, playing 361 offensive snaps. Not bad.
Buccaneers offensive tackle heaped praise on Skule earlier in the offseason: “You’ve got to learn from stuff too as the game goes on. Like what have you got and what is he giving you? And that’s what’s great with Justin Skule. Like we would come off the field and talk about that.”
“He’d be like, ‘This is what I saw. What did you see? What did you get?’ It’s good to talk about it and be like, ‘He’s giving me these moves. Here’s what I’ve gotten so far. What’s he going to go back to? What worked for him? How can I be better, you know? It’s all in game adjustments.”
Skule is in the prime of his career at age 28.
“What you are seeing from a rusher. And what you are getting. Skule did that for both me and Luke Goedeke. If we are on the close side of the field, whoever is closest to him, that’s who he would be watching. He would get his eyes to somebody late,” Wirfs added.
“But he’s trying to watch both of us and help us both out. Skule’s the best because he could, for some reason, he could replicate damn near all of the moves. They wouldn’t be as fast as like some guys, but he could do them. So, I’m like getting a good look all week from him.”
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