Garrett Bradbury says he wants to re-sign with Minnesota

After having significant struggles during his first three NFL seasons, Minnesota Vikings’ center Garrett Bradbury seemed to hit his stride in the team’s new offense this season. He’s set to hit free agency in March, but it doesn’t sound like he wants to go anywhere else.

Chris Tomasson of the St. Paul Pioneer Press spoke to Bradbury as players were leaving the Vikings’ facilities on Monday, and Bradbury says that he would like to re-sign with Minnesota.

Because the Vikings chose not to pick up the fifth-year option on Bradbury’s rookie contract, his contract will expire in a couple of months and he will, potentially, be an unrestricted free agent. Can the Vikings bring him back?

Well, the team is going to have a lot of difficult decisions to make as far as salaries are concerned this year, and there are probably going to be a lot of familiar faces that have likely played their last snap in purple. That’s going to weigh heavily on whether or not Bradbury is going to fit into Minnesota’s future plans.

Using the franchise tag isn’t really an option for Bradbury, either. Because “offensive line” is treated as one position group for franchise tag purposes, you’re going to have salaries for guards and, most importantly, offensive tackles figured into that calculus. The league won’t announce the franchise tag values for this year until about a week before free agency, but the non-exclusive franchise tag number for offensive linemen last season was about $16.6 million and it almost certainly isn’t going to go down this season.

The offseason process is just getting started for the Vikings, so we’ve got a wait ahead of us to see if Garrett Bradbury is going to be a part of the team’s future plans. But at least it sounds like he wants to be back with the team in 2023 and possibly beyond.

(Hat tip to Dustin Baker at Vikings Territory, who wrote about this a little bit before we did.)