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On Wednesday, the National Football League officially set their salary cap for the 2017 NFL season. The cap across the league is $167 million per team, but that fluctuates from team to team because of rollovers, the particulars of which I have absolutely no idea about.
Here are the official cap figures for each NFL team:
The salary cap is set at $167M per team. This is the 4th consecutive year it's ⬆️ $10M+, which means more for players. #securethebag pic.twitter.com/SbPXhJRhwW
— NFLPA (@NFLPA) March 1, 2017
For the Minnesota Vikings, their salary cap this year is exactly $167,400,184. It doesn’t appear that they have a great deal of rollover from last season. You can see that three teams have adjusted salary caps above $200 million: the Cleveland Browns, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the San Francisco 49ers. Those three teams also combined to win six games in 2016. I’m not saying there’s a correlation, but. . .never mind, that’s pretty much exactly what I’m saying.
The two leading sources for this sort of thing, Over the Cap and Spotrac, have slightly differing figures for how much exact space the Vikings have. With both sites already having cleared Adrian Peterson’s $18 million off of the Vikings cap, Over the Cap shows the Vikings with $37.949 million in available cap space, while Spotrac has the the purple sitting on $39.688 million of cap room.
The Vikings have plenty of time to clear off some more room in the week before NFL free agency kicks off. They could potentially approach quarterback Sam Bradford about a contract extension that could reduce his team-high $18 million salary cap hit. Defensive end Brian Robison ($6.6 million) could be a candidate for a restructure or release with the emergence of Danielle Hunter. The team could also make a move involving wide receiver Jarius Wright.
Of course, the Vikings have some in-house free agents they might be re-signing as well, notably receiver Cordarrelle Patterson and cornerback Captain Munnerlyn. They also have to weigh their restricted free agent tender to receiver Adam Thielen, as well as the inevitable extension for cornerback Xavier Rhodes.
The “legal tampering” period of NFL free agency gets underway this coming Monday, so hopefully by then we’ll have a more solid idea of exactly what Rick Spielman and company are going to be doing in free agency this offseason.