This has been kinda belabored here previously; a majority of the contracts that seemingly put the Vikings in this situation in 2026 are ones that can and will be easily restructured in the offseason. They were all set up that way with that expectation. There is no major cap concern for 2026
I'm much more concerned about what appears to be a coaching issue on the defense; Flores has been exposed through much of the last several years. High priced Free Agents, who had strong track records, have not performed like Allen and Hargrave.
At what point is the slower-than-desired development of players like Dallas Turner on the coaching staff and the DL coaches? You bring in a young player with elite talent/athleticism, the expectation is that he's going to get SOME coaching to bring out that talent. That is clearly not happening.
If Flores can't turn around the defense between now and January, the Vikings really need to think about some changes on that side of the ball next spring
they can be, but at some point you're also going to have to move the contracts or pay the piper on some of these guys.
Aaron Jones isn't going to change his deal in half or something, but I guess he could restructure to 2 years, 22mil or so but now you're on the books with him for another year with 11mil in
Ditto on Hock and given his now injury history, I don't see him taking a cut nor it making sense to prolong having him on the roster unless he's going to recover
Maybe Kelly medically retires to shed us some cap
Fries deal jumps 12mil next year and there's zero incentive for him to restructure a deal that goes 17, 21, 21, 21 the next 4
They're also going to have to look at whether or not they're extending Oneill and Darrisaw's cap hit jumps 14 mil as does JJs 23mil.
Gink is maybe one you could try spread it out for more years as he is still productive when healthy
Hargrave and Allen have both been meh and you're not going to save much other than prolong suffering with non-productive guys in their 30s by extending their years.
Murphy also jumps 10 mil and they need to decide what to do with Rodgers
Luckily Harry will finally fall off the books (I hope) or be at a massive discount
This team has a bunch of old dudes who aren't performing on multiyear deals. At some point we are going to have to pay for it or prolong having tight cap space. This team doesn't look like a contender right now with the injuries and the contracts get uglier next year or only more prolonged and unfortunately not many of them look like solid trade assets either to gain draft capital (is part of the issue of assembling a lot of guys through FA rather than the draft)
luckily we'll get some comp picks for next year which may make trying to move some contracts easier, but the productivity of some of these guys has been real rough. Allen, Hargreave, Hock, Jones, and Greenard to a lesser extent all have cap hits far higher than their productivity. At some point we need to stop kicking the can. I get we can leverage some of the young guys (Jefferson for example) and spread their cap hit over more years as they're young and will still be in their prime, but we also have a bunch of old dudes on bad deals that we're going to end up having to let finish out a year or eat dead cap for multiple years while also finding a replacement.
