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Black Friday is a day that is known for significant savings, and the Minnesota Vikings woke up this morning to discover they had a few extra million dollars in cap space at their disposal, thanks to former Vikings’ defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd.
According to sources with access to NFLPA salary data, the Vikings have settled their grievance with Sharrif Floyd. They're back up to $4.235 million in salary cap space.
— Ben Goessling (@GoesslingStrib) November 23, 2018
The Vikings had agreed to pay Floyd $2 million of his $6.757 million salary while he was on the non-football injury list last year, and 40 percent of Floyd's potential grievance amount ($1,902,800) had counted against the salary cap. The Vikings were credited for both amounts.
— Ben Goessling (@GoesslingStrib) November 23, 2018
Ben Goessling of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting that Floyd has withdrawn his grievance against the Vikings, resulting in the team now having over $4 million in available salary cap space. Prior to this, they had less than $1 million to work with.
Floyd’s grievance, as you can see from Goessling’s tweets above, stems from the way the Vikings handled the final year of his contract. The Vikings had picked up the fifth-year option on Floyd’s rookie contract just after the 2016 NFL Draft, in accordance with NFL rules. The botched surgery that, ultimately, ended Floyd’s career, took place in September of 2016, and as Floyd was unable to pass a physical before the start of the 2017 league year in March of 2017, the Vikings were on the hook for his entire fifth-year salary.
The team put Floyd on the non-football injury list, and paid him around $2 million for 2017. Floyd had filed a grievance to get the balance of the salary, and that money had been counted against the Vikings’ salary cap. Now, with Floyd withdrawing the grievance, the Vikings no longer have to have that money set aside.
This has no effect on the $180 million lawsuit that Floyd has filed against Dr. James Andrews and the Andrews Institute for botching the knee surgery in the first place.
I’m not sure how much, if anything, the Vikings can do with that salary cap space this season, but it’s there if they need it, I suppose.