NFL Announces 2024 Salary Cap Number: What It Means For Vikings

The Vikings, like every other team, have a bit more space than they expected.

The 2024 NFL salary cap will be a record-breaking $255.4 million, according to numerous reports on Friday. That's an increase of more than $30 million from last year and a fair bit higher than most of the recent projections for this year's cap number. 

"The unprecedented $30M increase per club in this year’s Salary Cap is the result of the full repayment of all amounts advanced by the clubs and deferred by the players during the Covid pandemic as well as an extraordinary increase in media revenue for the 2024 season," the league announced in a statement.

So what does that mean? It means the Vikings and all 31 other teams now have slightly more cap space than they were anticipating. But it also means players and their agents are going to expect even bigger deals relative to the new salary cap.

According to OverTheCap, the Vikings have roughly $37.9 million in space, which is 15th-most in the league. That already factors in the roughly $50 million in dead cap for Kirk Cousins, Danielle Hunter, and Marcus Davenport — which can be reduced if any of that trio are re-signed. The Vikings can also create additional space via cuts, restructures, and extensions.

In other words, they have plenty of money to make big moves this offseason.

As I mentioned earlier, the cap going up also means that players — and particularly stars — are going to look for even more money in contract negotiations. Justin Jefferson, Cousins, Hunter, and others will be looking to get paid this offseason, perhaps to an even greater extent than they already were.

The winners in the salary cap spike?

Everyone.

But an especially big win for quality players at premium positions.

Teams have that much more room to reset the market (hello, Justin Jefferson) or pay very good players near the top of the market.

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) February 23, 2024

Nonetheless, the Vikings could theoretically extend Jefferson, re-sign Cousins and Hunter if they wanted to, and still have space to add some big-name external free agents. They've got one of the NFL's best cap gurus in executive VP of football operations Rob Brzezinski, who works closely with GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.

Matt Krohn-USA TODAY Sports

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