Mike Harris Takes Pay Cut

When the Minnesota Vikings made the move to sign offensive tackle Jake Long on the Monday of their bye week, they reportedly had less than $50,000 of salary cap space remaining. . .or, in non-football money terms, they had about tree fiddy. So, they needed to make a little bit of room, and it appears that they’ve done that.

According to Ben Goessling of ESPN, the Vikings have cleared out some room by re-structuring the contract of offensive lineman Mike Harris, who remains on the Non-Football Illness list with a still-undisclosed ailment.

From what Goessling says:

Harris was guaranteed $500,000 for this season, and now only carries a cap figure of $1.5 million, according to NFLPA records. That includes $1 million in likely-to-be-earned incentives based on playing time, meaning Harris' cap number will drop further at the end of the season. Teams are not required to pay players on the non-football injury or illness lists, and writing down Harris' contract cleared $970,586 of cap space, which allowed the Vikings to absorb Long's $423,529 cap hit. They currently have $591,491 in available cap space.

Well, almost $600,000 of cap space beats the heck out of $50,000 of cap space, that’s for sure. The Vikings have a ridiculous amount of money currently sitting on injured reserve, thanks to the likes of Adrian Peterson and Matt Kalil (combined value: around $23 million) on the injured list, and it’s put their ability to call up reinforcements in a bit of jeopardy. But, Rick Spielman and company continue to make things work. Hopefully, they won’t have to make too many other things work during the 2016 season, because there isn’t a whole lot of money to work with at this point.