The Minnesota Vikings went on a free-agency frenzy this year, spending nearly $300 million on players as of Sunday afternoon, with $150 million in reported guarantees. They’ve retained key players like Byron Murphy, Harrison Smith, Aaron Jones, and Theo Jackson while adding beef to the lines with Ryan Kelly, Will Fries, Jonathan Allen, and Javon Hargrave. They’ve also added depth like Jordan Mason, Tavierre Thomas, Ryan Wright, Bubba Bolden, Justin Skule, and Eric Wilson. Because of all these moves, they’ve been lauded across the NFL media landscape for their free-agency additions.
If you look at all of those additions and then glance at Minnesota’s OverTheCap page, you may be surprised to see that the team still shows as having nearly $33 million in cap space. If you look at effective cap space, which includes draft picks, the Vikings are at a healthy $30 million. Some of the smaller deals mentioned above aren’t captured yet, but all the big contracts are included.
You may remember that the Vikings had about $60 million of cap space entering free agency, and the deals they’ve made eclipse a total of $95 million per year, so it’s impressive that they have used up so little cap space in 2025. How did they manage to do that? They chose to eat into their 2026 cap space, as I discussed with Luke Braun soon after free agency opened.
The Vikings now have the least cap space of any NFL team in 2026; OTC has them at nearly $26 million over the limit. I have made contract projections for the players currently missing from OTC and have the Vikings projected at $23.5 million in effective cap space for 2025 but over $41 million in the hole for 2026. Even if the Vikings were to roll over all of the $23.5 million in cap space, that would leave them nearly $18 million over the cap in 2026.
In signing the large deals, the Vikings follow an almost identical structure for Hargrave, Kelly, Allen, and Fries. They gave each of the players significant signing bonuses, a number close to their average annual value (AAV) in salary. Then, they gave them near-minimum salaries, with per game roster bonuses and workout bonuses, to bring the total salary in 2025 up to about $2 million. Then, in future years, they paid them base salaries close to their AAV to make up the difference.
That has been the standard for contracts the Vikings have signed with free agents. For example, last year, they did similar things with Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel‘s contracts:
The benefit of this structure for the player is that they get an advance on their first year’s salary and some easy money if they attend off-season workouts. The Vikings benefit from minimizing the player’s first-year cap hit, as the signing bonus gets prorated over the length of the deal. They also get a fringe cap benefit from the per-game roster bonus because the 2025 cap will only count the payments for the number of games the player played in 2024. Since all of the players the Vikings signed missed time due to injury in 2024, they’re saving over $1 million against the cap with the per game roster bonuses.
However, the large signing bonuses have another effect. They backload the cap hits on contracts. That’s particularly noticeable on two-year deals like the ones for Hargrave, Kelly, and Jones. All of the contracts the Vikings signed this offseason have large second-year cap hits, which isn’t a problem because:
HIGH BASE SALARIES ARE EASY TO WORK AROUND
Allen, Kelly, Hargrave, and Fries are slated to earn high base salaries in the 2026 season. They’re not the only ones, as here are the Vikings slated to earn more than $6 million in salary next season:
- Justin Jefferson – $24.99 million
- Brian O’Neill – $18.9 million
- Jonathan Greenard – $18.39 million
- Jonathan Allen – $16 million
- T.J. Hockenson – $15.4 million
- Byron Murphy – $15.36 million
- Javon Hargrave – $14.2 million
- Christian Darrisaw – $13.29 million
- Aaron Jones – $9 million
- Ryan Kelly – $7.89 million
- Blake Cashman – $6.9 million
- Harrison Phillips – $6.89 million
As 2026 approaches, the Vikings can choose to convert any of those salaries into a signing bonus, spreading the cap hit out over five years. They may have to add some void years to do so, but contracts like Jefferson, Darrisaw, Hockenson, and Murphy’s already include those for that purpose. Doing a maximum restructure on Justin Jefferson‘s contract would open up about $19 million in cap space by itself, which would be enough to put the Vikings under the cap.
On its face, already being over the 2026 cap by so much looks bad. Sure, you can push the money into the future, but at some point, it will come due, and you’ll find yourself in a cap crunch, right?
Well, not exactly, because:
THE VIKINGS GAVE THEMSELVES GREAT OPTIONS
Despite how much money the Vikings shelled out, they made incredibly short commitments to each player. They can save money in 2026 by cutting all but two players they signed — Byron Murphy, 28, in 2026, and Will Fries, also 28.
The Vikings signed a group that was generally older and injured but didn’t commit long-term to any of them. Not every free-agent signing works out, meaning they can pick and choose who to keep next offseason. If Hargrave works out and Allen is a flop, they can easily keep Hargrave and cut Allen, or vice-versa.
Here’s a list of Vikings players over 30 in 2026 and their cap savings if cut:
- Brian O’Neill, 31, $14.3 million
- Javon Hargrave, 33, $11 million
- Ryan Kelly, 33, $8.75 million
- Harrison Phillips, 30, $7.5 million
- Blake Cashman, 30, $4.4 million
- Jonathan Allen, 31, $4.3 million
- Aaron Jones, 32, $2.4 million
The contract structures may have made it so the players above have large cap hits in 2026. However, they also made it so they could easily get out of those contracts in that season, which shows great foresight from Minnesota’s front office.
THE KEY TO A HAPPY CAP
In all of this, it should be noted that the Vikings are now pushing a ton of money into future seasons. The team is pushing to put together a great roster for J.J. McCarthy, maximizing their window to compete on a rookie QB contract. But doing so does carry risks, as anyone can see by looking at what the Cleveland Browns and New Orleans Saints have had to do in recent years. Both teams have their hands tied with deadweight QB deals, and they keep restructuring players just to get under the cap.
There’s an easy answer to how to avoid becoming the Browns or Saints, and it lies in the most recent Super Bowl Champion, the Philadelphia Eagles. You can kick the cap can down the road as far as you want, but you can’t do it for bad players.
The Saints have leveraged themselves on older players on the wrong side of 30, like Cameron Jordan, Tyrann Mathieu, Alvin Kamara, and Demario Davis. Jordan, Mathieu, and Davis are slated to be free agents in 2026 and will still cost the Saints a combined $35 million in dead money. Those players are not strong assets at this point in their careers, but the Saints need to pay them a combined $28 million in cash to play for them this year, or else they would be over the cap.
I didn’t even mention Derek Carr, who would leave the Saints with a nearly $60 million dead cap charge if they were to cut him next offseason. Their alternative is to pay him $50 million in cash, which isn’t happening.
The Vikings have already done a good job of navigating pivot points where they could pushed themselves further into debt on declining players. They took big dead cap hits for Kirk Cousins and Danielle Hunter last year, finding an equivalent replacement for Hunter in Greenard and getting excellent play from Sam Darnold at QB. They must continue to do so next offseason, choosing to move on from, rather than restructure, some of the players above that don’t work out.
The takeaway is that the Vikings did a great job adding talent to their roster and are beginning to push their chips in on this current roster. They’ve taken some risks on injured players but, in the end, have left themselves a ton of wiggle room to maneuver next offseason.
 
 
