Vikings

Is This Year's Salary Cap the Beginning of the End for Spielman and Zimmer?

Photo Credit: Chuck Cook (USA TODAY Sports)

When the Minnesota Vikings signed Kirk Cousins in free agency, the conventional wisdom was that the Vikings couldn’t keep their young nucleus in place. With Cousins making $84 million over the next three seasons, stars such as Anthony Barr, Danielle Hunter, and Trae Waynes could become casualties. The Vikings would regress with a less complete team.

Three years later, Minnesota has been able to keep the salary cap from falling in on them. Rick Spielman and Rob Brzezinski moved money around to help the team stay competitive. They had to have felt ready to reload as they entered the 2021 offseason.

But like many teams, the Vikings were caught off guard by the pandemic. Although the league’s salary cap didn’t drop by $70-80 million as Adam Schefter had predicted last August, the $182.5 million cap was significantly lower than anticipated prior to the outbreak of COVID-19.

This crunch has left the Vikings searching through the couch cushions as they try to fix a team that went 7-9 a year ago. In a typical offseason, the Vikings would have enough money to sign a couple of free agents and use the draft to supplement this talent. Instead, they’ve been put in a situation where the front office may not be around to see the final product.

It starts with the cuts this week. Minnesota had signed Kyle Rudolph to a four-year, $36 million contract extension. How the Vikings used Rudolph is a point of contention. But with the cap caving in, Rudolph could not survive the purge.

With that, one of the greatest players in franchise history was gone.

Dan Bailey also found himself looking for a new team next season. He joined the Vikings as one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history but made just 80% of his kicks in last year. With his track record, there was a chance that the Vikings would have let him work out his struggles through competition in training camp.

A similar situation played out with Mason Crosby in Green Bay. He made 80.4% of his field goals with the Packers between 2017 and 2018. The Packers could have moved on, but they let him work through his issues. Crosby responded by converting 95.1% of his kicks the past two seasons.

Bailey had two years remaining on his contract, but with the Vikings’ cap squeeze, he also had to be taken off the books.

The Vikings also had a decision to make with Riley Reiff. The final year of contracts in the NFL are rarely played out, but Reiff enjoyed the best season of his career in 2020, allowing a career-low 21 pressures at left tackle. It was an unexpected development for a player the Vikings asked to take a pay cut so Yannick Ngakoue could be on the team for six weeks.

With the chance to create $11.75 million in savings, the front office also sent Reiff into the free-agent market.

The cuts have happened across the NFL this week, but they were especially brutal for the Vikings. Last year they couldn’t afford impactful free agents and had to roll with the players they had developed. That method is acceptable when the players pan out. When they don’t, the front office gets put on the hot seat.

The Vikings find themselves in this position again. They could cut Anthony Barr or extend Harrison Smith to create more cap room to be a player in free agency. The problem is most of the players the Vikings would be targeting are on the market for a reason.

Kevin Zeitler, Trai Turner, and Andrew Norwell played on three of the worst teams in football last season. While adding any of those three would be an upgrade over Dakota Dozier and Dru Samia, the Vikings would likely have to overpay out of desperation.

The Vikings’ draft situation is also dire. While it would be nice for the Vikings to stay at the 14th overall pick, we may see a repeat of what Spielman had to do in last year’s draft. With the Vikings in need of players across the roster, Spielman couldn’t stop trading down and wound up with a record 16 draft picks. Instead of using those picks to trade back up, Spielman used all of them to help fill out the roster.

While the Vikings got four starters in the class, and Troy Dye and Harrison Hand could develop into impact players, a 25% hit rate isn’t what the Vikings should be expecting. Hence, there was a significant learning curve and a lack of impact talent.

The Vikings saw this scenario coming at the beginning of last season, but that’s not a lot of time for a team that plans things two or three years in advance. The result has been the Vikings pleading with players to take 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 trade to get Cousins or Hunter’s contract off the books, the Vikings will have to run the same team back in 2021 and hope that a healthier squad and the return of fans will lead to a better season.

Not only is this the definition of insanity, it’s how NFL general managers get fired.

The Vikings have been able to avoid the cap caving in on them for years. This could be the year when it finally does their front office in.

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