Jerome Felton Officially Opts Out of Contract, Becomes Free Agent

Late in the 2014 season, fullback Jerome Felton declared that he would be opting out of his contract with the Minnesota Vikings in order to test the waters of free agency, and he made that declaration official on Tuesday.

#Vikings RB Jerome Felton sent in his notice of intent to void the rest of his contract, source said. Peterson’s guy. Top FB on the market.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) February 3, 2015

Felton opting out of his contract will give the Vikings approximately $2.5 million in salary cap space.

Felton didn't necessarily have a bad season in 2014, garnering an overall +3.7 grade from Pro Football Focus. However, in Norv Turner's offense, Felton didn't have a huge role, as he only saw the field on 16.7% of the team's offensive snaps (175 out of 1050), including four games where he failed to reach double figures in snaps played. That's probably not worth spending $2.5 million on anyway.

Now, as Ian Rapoport's tweet implies, Felton does have a pretty solid relationship with Adrian Peterson, whose situation is still really up in the air at this point. I'm not sure if this is the kind of thing that would tip Peterson one direction or the other as far as his desire to come back to the Vikings. I don't have the breakdown in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that Peterson does just fine out of a single-back look, and that he does just fine when he has guys other than Jerome Felton lined up in front of him at fullback. But, as with everything else in this saga, we'll have to see.