Vikings' Heap of Dead Money Will Lead to Major Cap Space in 2025

The Vikings are taking their medicine in 2024 to create flexibility next year.

Author:
Will Ragatz
Publish date:
Mar 13, 2024 5:12 PM EDT

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As of right now, no team in the NFL has more "dead money" — AKA salary cap charges for contracts of players who are no longer on the team — on its books than the Minnesota Vikings. They're currently eating $57.4 million in dead money, $43.4 million of which comes from accelerating void year and signing bonus charges for now-former Vikings stars Kirk Cousins and Danielle Hunter. (The rest comes from Marcus Davenport, Dalvin Cook, Dean Lowry, and Alexander Mattison).

That's roughly a fifth of the 2024 salary cap that the Vikings will be using on players who don't play for them anymore. And that's OK.

Why? Because this had to happen at some point. The Vikings wanted to contend as part of their "competitive rebuild" over the past couple years, and that involved doing things like extending Cousins and restructuring Hunter's deal to keep him around last year. By letting those two four-time Pro Bowlers walk in free agency this week, the Vikings are hitting the reset button a little bit, getting younger, and planning for 2025 and beyond.

Grading the Minnesota Vikings' Key Free Agent Additions So Far

Minnesota has to take its proverbial medicine this year with a significant chunk of dead money, but it also doesn't have anything committed to Cousins or Hunter next year. As of this moment, the Vikings are fifth in the NFL with $159 million in projected cap space for 2025.

$159 million! And that number doesn't include a $22 million cap hit for Harrison Smith, who will likely be released, take a big pay cut with Minnesota, or choose to retire this year. The Vikings do need to give Justin Jefferson a record-breaking contract extension and continue adding players this offseason, but they're going to have a ton of flexibility next year regardless. Jefferson, Brian O'Neill, Christian Darrisaw, and T.J. Hockenson are probably the only players currently on the roster who will have cap hits of at least $15 million in 2025.

This is a new era of Vikings football. GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah stood his ground with Cousins this offseason, and now he's got all kinds of future cap space with which to build this roster the way he sees fit.