The Vikings’ Quarterback Ranking that Could Finish Dead Last in the NFL
The Vikings’ quarterback spot has featured no shortage of change in the past year and a bit.
Keep Kirk Cousins? He can go to Atlanta instead. See if Sam Darnold can repeat his 2024 season? Let him try to do so in Seattle. Welcome Aaron Rodgers to the Twin Cities? No, save that money. Therein lies the key, folks: the major money — or, put differently, cap space — that has been saved at the game’s most important position.
The Vikings’ Quarterback Cap Charge in ’25
The observation that rolling with a rookie-contract passer is good for the budget hardly needs to be said. What may by a touch less obvious, though, is just how skimpy things are looking for Minnesota’s quarterback spending.
Jump to Over the Cap and consider the positional spending in the NFL. With a lot of the details still incomplete, Minnesota sits at 30th in the NFL for quarterback spending at just $6,021,999. OTC arrives at that number by combining the cap charges for J.J. McCarthy and Brett Rypien. Missing in the equation are Sam Howell and Max Brosmer.
What happens when the extra passers get tossed into the mix? Have a look at the breakdown:
- QB1: J.J. McCarthy, $4,966,999
- QB2: Sam Howell, $1,100,000
- QB3: Brett Rypien, $1,055,000
- QB4: Max Brosmer, $843,333 (Spotrac)
Even when we include the two new passers — Howell and Brosmer — we’re still talking about adding less than $2 million. In the end, Minnesota’s total quarterback cap hit in the 2025 offseason sits at a very modest $8(ish) million. Over in Dallas, Dak Prescott alone has a cap hit that exceeds $50 million in just 2025.
Consider, as well, recent Vikings history. Things haven’t always been so cheap.
The 2024 season featured a Vikings team sitting in the bottom half of the NFL with just $12,196,399 on the cap allocated to the quarterback spot. Modest, all things considered, but not at the very bottom. The 2023 Vikings were in the top ten in the NFL with $23,628,151 of their cap going toward their passers. The 2022 season (the beginning of the Kwesi Adofo-Mensah/Kevin O’Connell era) was even worse; the Vikings came in at fourth-highest with $32,714,868 going toward quarterback.
Cousins cost a lot, a reality that meant devoting ample cap space to a passer who accounted for a single, lonely playoff win in his time with the Vikings.
The present-day Vikings are sitting in a considerably different spot.
But, of course, there’s the dead last proclamation that the title offers. Any sense in which that is true? Well, no, not yet. One could see a very plausible path forward, however, where it quickly becomes the reality.
Cam Ward went No. 1 overall to the Tennessee Titans, a team currently sitting in 31st for quarterback spending. Per Spotrac, the Titans will be adding a cap charge sitting at $8.865 million for the rookie passer, a number that easily pushes them beyond the Vikings’ quarterbacks.
Finally, there’s the last-place team — the Pittsburgh Steelers. Does Mike Tomlin finally decide that enough is enough, handing over a decent deal to Aaron Rodgers? If so, then Tomlin’s team will catapult themselves ahead of Minnesota. OTC puts the Steelers at $4,817,500 in quarterback cap, which is roughly $3+ million below the Vikings. So, tossing Rodgers into the mix will mean leapfrogging J.J. McCarthy and the Vikings.
If McCarthy can shine early, then the Vikings are going to be a dangerous team. Dangerous enough to end the curse by adding a Lombardi to the trophy case? Unlikely, all things considered, and yet not an outright impossibility.
If Minnesota does somehow win it all, they could do so with the lowest portion of their cap going toward the NFL’s most important position.
Editor’s Note: Information from Over the Cap helped with this piece.
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K. Joudry is the Senior Editor for Vikings Territory and PurplePTSD. He has been covering the Vikings full time since the summer of 2021. He can be found on Twitter and Bluesky (@VikingsGazette). If you feel so inclined, subscribe to his Substack, The Vikings Gazette, for more great Vikings content.
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