If Vikings Trade Jonathan Greenard, These 3 Budget OLBs Make Sense
Thanks to a couple of tweets from credible NFL insiders, Minnesota Vikings fans learned Tuesday that outside linebacker Jonathan Greenard could be traded this offseason if the franchise can’t find room in the budget for an extension.
Epenesa, Floyd, and Payton Turner profile as realistic, lower-cost options if Minnesota has to pivot quickly.
If so, Minnesota will presumably promote 2024 1st-Round draft pick Dallas Turner to a starter’s job, with Andrew Van Ginkel still in the house, and scour free agency for an affordable but effective OLB3. These are a few options for that plan.
Minnesota Could Pivot at OLB and Still Keep the Pass Rush Functional
A Greenard trade is suddenly possible.
1. A.J. Epenesa
The Vikings hired Ryan Nielsen this offseason as their defensive running game coordinator, a man with a lengthy recent resume of various stops. In 2025, he stopped by the Buffalo Bills as a senior defensive assistant, where he crossed paths with Epenesa, a 2nd-Round pick from six years ago.
Epenesa is scheduled to hit free agency next week, and according to Spotrac, his next team can onboard him for about $6 or $7 million bucks. When given a reasonable amount of playing time, he’s banked about six sacks per season, which would do the trick in Minnesota behind Van Ginkel and Turner.
These are Epenesa’s pass-rushing grades per Pro Football Focus:
2025: 63.4
2024: 54.2
2023: 75.0
2022: 70.0
2021: 62.7
2020: 67.4
It’s worth noting that he isn’t much of a run-stopper; Epenesa is a one-trick pony — probably why he’s affordable in free agency and on tap to depart Buffalo in the first place.
BuffaloRumblings.com on Epenesa: “Epenesa had two seasons with 6.5 sacks where he also hovered around 40% of snaps on the defense. Assuming Epenesa could handle a doubled workload, putting him in rarefied air for a defensive end, you could argue the extrapolation to a 13-sack season profiles a drastically different player.”
“That would indeed be considered an elite season for a single player. That bring up the question maybe you want to debate in the comments Do you believe that Epenesa’s rate would hold up with a drastically higher workload?”
2. Leonard Floyd
Once upon a time, Floyd worked alongside Kevin O’Connell in Los Angeles, albeit on defense. He played for the Rams from 2020 to 2022 and even won a Super Bowl with O’Connell, the springboard event propelling the young coach to the top job in Minnesota.
Floyd isn’t young — 33 — but he has a few seasons left in the tank as a situational pass rusher, which might be just what the doctor ordered in Minnesota as the OLB3. He’s played a whopping 153 games in his career, starting 153, tabulating 70 sacks, 149 quarterback hits, and 76 tackles for loss.
Floyd has slowed down as of late, and he’s not the best tackling outside linebacker on the planet, but he has adeptly stopped the run and pass throughout his career, especially in his prime years with the Rams.
Here’s his PFF resume since 2016:
2016: 66.3
2017: 63.8
2018: 69.9
2019: 69.9
2020: 69.5
2021: 73.8
2022: 65.7
2023: 58.7
2024: 53.9
2025: 60.1
He now plays a mercenary-like role, switching teams every season, including the Rams in 2022, the Bills in 2023, the 49ers in 2024, and the Falcons in 2025. Why not the Vikings in 2026?
Floyd played about 50% of all defensive snaps for the 2025 Falcons. That percentage would be perfect in Minnesota, and he should be gettable for about $8 million per season.
The Athletic‘s Daniel Popper noted on Floyd last month, “Floyd still has the juice to press tackles to the corner as a rotational rusher. He produced pressure on 13 percent of his pass-rush snaps, a rate that ranked in the top 50 among all players with at least 200 pass-rushing snaps. It topped his pressure rate from each of the previous three seasons.”
3. Payton Turner
Turner might be the most underwhelming option on the list, but he’ll also be the most affordable, probably grabbing a new contract worth around $2-3 million per season.
Once upon a time, Turner was a 1st-Round pick by the New Orleans Saints, but per that draft stock, he just hasn’t panned out. There’s a world where his career can be rekindled with Brian Flores’s tutelage. That happens. Ask Eric Wilson.
Turner battled a strange litany of injuries in his first three seasons, but finally played 16 games in 2024. He experienced action on 335 snaps that season and has logged 5 sacks in his career. Turner later missed all of 2025 due to a rib injury after signing with the Dallas Cowboys.
The aforementioned Nielsen coached him in New Orleans; hence, placement on this list. His career is on life support and needs something like the Flores Midas touch to salvage it.
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