When Minnesota Vikings hired Kirk Cousins as a free agent, common sense was that Vikings were unable to keep their young core in place. With Cousins earning $ 84 million over the next three seasons, stars like Anthony Barr, Danielle Hunter and Trae Waynes could become victims. The Vikings would regress with a less complete team.
Three years later, Minnesota was able to prevent the wage ceiling from falling on them. Rick Spielman and Rob Brzezinski moved money to help the team stay competitive. They must have felt ready to recharge when they entered the off-season of 2021.
But, like many teams, the Vikings were taken by surprise by the pandemic. While the league’s salary cap did not fall by $ 70-80 million as Adam Schefter predicted last August, the $ 182.5 million cap was significantly lower than predicted before the COVID-19 outbreak.
This crisis caused the Vikings to search the sofa cushions while trying to fix a team that was 7 to 9 years ago. In a typical off-season, Vikings would have enough money to hire some free agents and use the draft to complement that talent. Instead, they were put in a situation where the front office may not be around to see the finished product.
It all starts with this week’s cuts. Minnesota signed a $ 36 million contract extension with Kyle Rudolph for four years. How the Vikings used Rudolph is a point of contention. But with the lid collapsing, Rudolph was unable to survive the purge.
With that, one of the greatest players in the franchise’s history is gone.
Dan Bailey also looked for a new team next season. He joined the Vikings as one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history, but only hit 80% of his shots last year. With his track record, there was a chance that the Vikings would have let him work on his struggles during competition on the training ground.
A similar situation happened to Mason Crosby in Green Bay. He scored 80.4% of his field goals with the Packers between 2017 and 2018. The Packers could have moved on, but let him solve his problems. Crosby responded by converting 95.1% of his kicks in the past two seasons.
Bailey had two years left on his contract, but with the tightening of the Vikings cap, he also had to be removed from the books.
Vikings also had a decision to make with Riley Reiff. The last year of contracts in the NFL is rarely disputed, but Reiff enjoyed the best season of his career in 2020, allowing for a reduction of 21 pressures on the left tackle. It was an unexpected development for a player that the Vikings asked to accept a pay cut so that Yannick Ngakoue could stay on the team for six weeks.
With the chance to generate savings of $ 11.75 million, the front line also sent Reiff to the free agent market.
The cuts took place across the NFL this week, but were especially brutal for the Vikings. Last year, they were unable to pay for free impact agents and had to deal with the players they had developed. This method is acceptable when the players do well. When they don’t, the front office is on the hot seat.
Vikings find themselves in this position again. They could cut Anthony Barr or extend Harrison Smith to create more space to be a player in the free agency. The problem is that most of the players that the Vikings were aiming for are in the market for a reason.
Kevin Zeitler, Trai Turner and Andrew Norwell played on three of the worst teams in football last season. Although adding any of these three would be an upgrade over Dakota Dozier and Dru Samia, the Vikings would probably have to pay extra out of desperation.
The situation regarding the recruitment of Vikings is also dire. Although it was good for the Vikings to be in the 14th overall choice, we can see a repeat of what Spielman had to do in last year’s draft. With the Vikings in need of players across the squad, Spielman couldn’t stop negotiating and ended up with a record 16 choices in the draft. Instead of using these choices to negotiate back, Spielman used them all to help fill the list.
Although the Vikings have four beginners in the class, and Troy Dye and Harrison Hand could become impact players, a 25% hit rate is not what the Vikings should expect. So there was a significant learning curve and a lack of impact talent.
The Vikings saw this scenario at the beginning of last season, but that is not a long time for a team that plans things two or three years in advance. The result has been the Vikings pleading with players to accept pay cuts or restructure deals, resulting in many players unwilling to cooperate.
This is a doomsday scenario for Spielman and the rest of the front office. Assuming they don’t make a switch to get the Cousins or Hunter contract out of the books, the Vikings will have to lead the same team in 2021 and hope that a healthier team and the return of fans will lead to a better season.
This is not only the definition of insanity, but also how the general managers of the NFL are fired.
The Vikings managed to prevent the cap from falling on them for years. This may be the year that you will finally do the front office.