FanPost

All of the "Contract Hell" Talk is Overblown

I'm going to try to puncture a couple of myths here. One, that the Minnesota Vikings are in "contract hell" as we approach the 2023 season, and two, that the primary reason for this contract hell is our giving out overly generous contracts to aging and declining fan favorites. In the former case, I would define "contract hell" as something that a team cannot easily escape by cutting or trading a group of players, or even by restructuring or extending their deals, because of guaranteed payments owed the players that cannot be cleared from the salary cap for another year or two. As for fan favorites being given absurd contracts once their decline has already set in, I'll review the facts about each player discussed.

Adapted mainly from comments made on a couple of other threads, I'm going to start with the easy cases, and offer some fairly conservative guesses for how much money the team might save on the salary cap this coming season for each player.

Dalvin Tomlinson - He's actually an Unrestricted Free Agent, but because of three void years tacked onto his contract, his 2023 cap hit is $7.5 million for his age 29 season. That ranks 34th for the interior defensive line, and would likely go down if we sign him to an extension. That might be tough, though, because PFF ranks him as the 16th best free agent this off-season, and ESPN the 30th. By the way, the $10.5 million average annual value (AAV) of his "current" contract ranks 14th among interior defensive linemen, at the top of what I'd call the IDL Tier 3 ($9-10.5 mil/yr), behind Tiers 1 ($20 mil/yr and up) and Tier 2 ($13-18 mil/yr), and PFF projects him to get a modest raise up to $11.75 mil/yr. My guess: Extended, saves $1 million.

Za'Darius Smith - Turns 31 just before the start of the 2023 season, the second year of a three-year contract he reached with the new front office last year. His 2023 cap hit of $15,490,195 (just under a third of which becomes guaranteed only for injury three days after the start of the new NFL year next month) ranks 22nd among Edge Rushers, but if we cut or trade him, we save nearly 80% of it, $12,156,861. His 2024 (age 32) cap hit of $21.7 million climbs the rankings all the way to #10, but we'd save more than 90%, a cool $20 million, if we cut or traded him next year. After missing most of the 2021 season, the biggest concern with him is whether he can be effective through an entire season, since he made 9.5 sacks in his first nine games, and only one half-sack in his last seven (eight with the playoff game), this year. My guess: Extended one (age 33) to two years (age 34), saves $5.5 million.

Note regarding Za'Darius Smith: Not counting void years, the contracts of edge rushers like Khalil Mack, Cam Jordan and Chandler Jones take them through their year 33 or 34 season, and Von Miller's through his 38th (!), so such a deal wouldn't be surprising for Smith. The contracts of these four edge rushers over 30 have AAV's ranging from Jones' $17 million a year up to Mack's $23.5 million, compared to Smith's $14 million (tied for 21st among edge rushers). Smith's 10 sacks this year (19th in the league) topped each of those gentlemen by at least 1.5, and over the last three seasons - all but Jordan have lost significant time - his sack rate per game is the best of the five, and his sack rate per defensive snap second only to Miller:

Z. Smith, 2020-22, 22.5 sacks in 33 games (0.682 sack/game) and 1,647 defensive snaps (0.0137 sack/D snap)

Miller, 2020-22, 17.5 sacks in 26 games (0.673 sack/game) and 1,214 D snaps (0.0144 sack/D snap)

Jordan, 2020-22, 28.5 sacks in 48 games (0.594 sack/game) and 2,436 D snaps (0.0117 sack/D snap)

Mack, 2020-22, 23 sacks in 40 games (0.575 sack/game) and 2,070 D snaps (0.0111 sack/D snap)

Jones, 2020-22, 16 sacks in 35 games (0.457 sack/game) and 1,894 D snaps (0.0084 sack/D snap)

If Smith continues to average 3 to 9.5 million dollars less per season than his peers in the "Still Effective Edge Rushers Over 30 Club," that would seem like a pretty good deal to me, especially if he can be kept from disappearing for half a season, although the same could be said for the 2022 seasons of Mack, Jordan and Jones. I suppose their teams could, or should, just cut all of their old, overpaid behinds, but I imagine finding players who can average 7.5 to 11 sacks every 16 games isn't that easy to do.

Danielle Hunter - Played every game and 78% of the team's defensive snaps after missing one-and-a-half of the last two seasons. Made 10.5 sacks in his first season as a 3-4 OLB instead of as a 4-3 DE (in his last seven games as such, he got six sacks). His 2023 cap hit of $13,120,000 ranks 25th among Edge Rushers, and he turns 29 halfway through the season (fyi, he was four months shy of his 24th birthday when he originally signed the extension, and not quite 25 and five months when if was renegotiated). He's got two void years in 2024 and 2025, so if we cut or traded him, his 2023 cap hit would actually increase by $5,740,000, but he is literally the only non-rookie on the defense whose cap hit would rise if we pushed him out the door this year. An extension, on the other hand, would likely cut his cap hit this year, maybe by as much as 50%. My guess: Extended, saves $5 million.

Eric Kendricks - In the last year of his five-year deal, signed when he was 26, his cap hit for his age 31 season in 2023 is $11.43 million (#12 among ILB's), but we save $9.5 million (~85%) if we cut or trade him because none of that money is guaranteed. Interestingly, his cap hit in 2023 is lower by a million bucks than his 2021 cap hit, and by $2.1 million than 2022's, while for the best two seasons of his career, 2019 and 2020, his combined cap hits after restructuring totaled just under $10.4 million. In 2021, while his run defense fell from the elite level it was in 2019 and 2020, his pass coverage was still excellent, so we weren't going to cut him before this past season, when his run D grade for the first time (I'm 99.9% sure) beat his pass D grade (simply age, or also the Donatell effect?). My guess: Cut, saves $9.5 million.

Jordan Hicks - In the last year of a two-year deal, the 2023 cap hit for this experienced 3-4 LB's age 31 season is $6.5 million and ranks 19th among linebackers, but if we cut or trade him, we'd save $5 million, or more than 75% of his cap hit. I tend to agree with those posters who have argued that Hicks was signed as a bridge starter that the team hoped would only be needed for one year. With Asamoah taking defensive snaps away from Hicks, and to a lesser extent Kendricks, over the last four games of the 2022 season, I think Hicks will be one and done. My guess: Cut, saves $5 million.

The above guesses also correspond to my preferences, although I am a big fan of IDL Daron Payne and wouldn't mind signing the former Commander in place of Tomlinson, three years his senior. But Payne is probably going to command at least $20 million a year, vs. Tomlinson's 11-12.

OK, let's look at the poster boys for the "Overpaid and Old!" crowd, the white players (see, you don't need to hide behind words and phrases like "demographics" and "they happen to look a certain way," well, unless we're all trying to avoid the Vox algorithms and censors, that is) that tons of fanboys supposedly not only want to keep (a fair enough reading of the room) but want to keep at their current 2023 cap hits (more than a bit of a stretch, I think).

Harrison Smith - @@His $64 million contract, with it's AAV of $16 million a year (#4 among safeties) and 2023 cap hit of over $19 million (#2), signed when he was already 32 (Stupid Rick Spielman!), is an abomination, a crime against nature and Father Time, and purely a sop to the fanboys who buy his jerseys (as if the Wilfs care whether they wear them or not). His cap hit, along with that of fellow fanboy favorite, Adam Thielen, will cripple the team in 2023 (apparently as much or even more than Kirk Cousins', if I'm reading the implication rightly). Shortsightedly signed to lower the 2021 cap hit from $10.23 million to $6.9 million, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah doubled down on the idiotic shortsightedness by restructuring the deal to free up cap space in 2022, reducing a $13.4 million cap hit to $7.4 million, and thereby balooning the 2023-25 cap hits to unsustainable heights for Smith's age 34 to 36 seasons.@@ [it's a lousy font, but where's that Vox sarcasm font when you need it?]

Disclosure: Aside from a Vikings scarf I think I found at a yard sale, I can't remember buying any team apparel in my life, and if I did buy any players' jersey, it would probably be for Bob Tucker and Clark Gaines, the favorite players of my New York City adolescence.

Much as I am not in the "Tear it down! Tear it down!" school of rebuilding, even I am open to the argument that signing a 32-year old to what was then the second richest safety contract in the league was at least somewhat shortsighted, though less due to the fact that Smith had arguably declined from being a top 3 safety in 2019 to a top 10 safety in 2020 (and he might have actually been better in 2021, though still no longer elite), but even more because the Spielman/Zimmer regime (one half or the other, or both) was pretty clearly reaching (or had reached) the sell by date.

Now here comes the but.

But, after only the first season of the four-year, $64 million 2022-25 extension, we have what spotrac (I generally use OTC for contract and cap numbers) and others call a "potential out," because if we cut or trade Smith, we'd save almost $7.4 million (not quite 40%) off of his 2023 cap hit, as there appears to be no guaranteed money over the last three years of his contract aside from an injury-only guarantee of $1.25 million for 2023. So, as with all of the contracts discussed so far save Danielle Hunter's, we can save money by cutting or trading the Hitman this year, or by restructuring his deal to offer him more guaranteed money in 2023 by converting salary to prorated signing bonus, and maybe including a void year or two. Smith has certainly slowed down, but I am not alone in believing that he can be more effective than he was in Ed Donatell's version of the Fangio system, whether as a box safety (if Landon Collins can make a comeback...) or as more of a Zimmer-style free agent and roamer. I could be wrong about this - the PFF grades for Smith's age 28-33 seasons track pretty closely to Eric Weddle's age 29-34 seasons, so maybe Smith should be considering retirement right now. Of course, Weddle did have that hot playoff run - even won himself a ring - at 36. My guess: Restructured, saves $6 million, the cap hits for 2024 and 2025 going up due to the additional prorated signing bonus dollars, but still without any guaranteed money for either year.

My preference regarding Harrison Smith is that he stays if the new defensive coordinator thinks he can use him, and has a good plan to use him more effectively than Ed Donatell did.

Adam Thielen - His $19,967,647 million cap hit for 2023 ranks 13th among wide receivers, and I'm certainly not going to argue that Thielen is still one of the 15 best wideouts in the game. If we cut or trade him, his cap hit would be reduced by $6,417,647, or about one-third. He didn't have bad numbers for a WR2 this past year, but by the last four games of the regular seasons, he had fallen to fourth on the target list (I'm skeptical of the argument that Thielen's production was severely impacted by the bruised knee he suffered in the Week 8 win after the bye over Arizona). His 2022 cap hit was $11,903,529, and as I've said before, this was the first year of Thielen's career that he under-performed his contract (his $12.8 million cap hit in 2020, his only other one above $8.1 million, was #12 for wideouts, and while his receptions and yards were only top 30 of all players, his 14 receiving TD's were #3).

Some are critical mainly of Adofo-Mensah''s March 2022 restructuring of Thielen's deal because of the increase in the already large cap hits for 2023 and 2024, and the addition of a 2025 void year. Others are even more critical of Spielman's decision in 2019 to tear up Thielen's 2017 extension and replace it with a much more expensive one. They tend to forget that Thielen had been completely under the control of the club when his rookie UDFA deal expired and he was first an Exclusive Rights Free Agent in 2016 and then a Restricted Free Agent in 2017. Thielen signed his three-year, $17 million extension in 2017 after his break-out 2016 season in order to ensure his family's financial security, but I kind of wish that he had bet on himself and played on the Vikings' $2.7 million second-round RFA tender. After the kind of season he had as our WR1 in 2017, he would have had the team over a barrel and could have reamed them very, very hard, especially as they would have been trying to extend both Theilen, a 2018 UFA, and Stefon Diggs, a 2019 UFA, at the same time. Of course, the team could have chosen to retain just one of them, especially with an available replacement on a rookie contract right there in front of them. I'm sure Laquon Treadwell was ready to replace Thielen in Jon De Filippo's pass-happy offense in 2018.

Diggs' 2018 extension had an AAV of $14.4 million, $8.7 million more than the $5.7 million AAV in Thielen's 2017 extension. This wide discrepancy was much remarked upon not only in the press and among the fans, but on the team itself. Thielen's 2019 extension, signed when he was four months shy of 29, headed off trouble in the workplace (one of the best things about free agency is that the workers now know what everyone is getting paid, so the bosses don't have total control over the wage scale anymore), made things square between Thielen and Diggs (their stats tracked remarkably closely between 2016 and 2019, as did their PFF grades through 2020, and said grades were only 7.5 points apart in 2021) and was fair given both Thielen's past performance AND his future performance through 2021. Being younger than Adam, Stefon blossomed into a legitimate star WR1 after Thielen's 2019 injury, while Adam reinvented himself as a deadly red zone assassin who averaged an elite one TD every 5.7 receptions in 2019-21.

Brief responses to a few other complaints: Absent some serious film research, I am not convinced by anyone's arguments that the attention that Diggs was getting from our opponents was responsible for Thielen's success in 2016-19 (or vice versa). Diggs was the WR1 in 2016, Thielen in 2017, and the two of them shared the job in 2018 and 2019 up until the latter's TD in Detroit. The 2019 extension couldn't be front-loaded as some suggest - you can blame Rob Bzezinski for that, anyway, not Rick Spielman - because we had the highest paid defense that year, which was a major reason for the 2020 purge of defensive starters. I am also utterly unsympathetic to the argument that contracts are sacrosanct for the workers who sign them, since corporations in general, and NFL teams in particular, tear up (or simply violate) contracts at will. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and that includes re-negotiations.

So, Thielen in 2023, eh? Sounds like he's going to try to force a trade (late Day 3 draft pick, maybe conditional, or with an exchange of draft picks) or a cut, and that he believes he can still be at least a top WR2. I wouldn't mind bringing him back at no more than half the cap hit as our WR3, given the undistinguished and small (so likely over-priced) free agent class, and our lack of draft picks (which might be rectified if we trade Kirk Cousins to a San Francisco 49ers team suddenly flush with 2023 third round draft choices, and in possession of a 2024 #1), but I'm growing fairly comfortable with the idea of him moving on this year. My guess: Traded or Cut, saves $6.4 million.

Closing in on the end of this exercise, we have:

Dalvin Cook - Man, was he a fricking bargain for the first five years of his career, even missing three-quarters of his rookie season and averaging 3.25 missed games a year 2018-21: ~$14 million in combined cap hits, less than $3 mil/year. 2022 was his first year with a cap hit greater than $5.12 million, and for whatever combination of reasons - age (27), wear and tear, a lack of will or ability to power through arm tackles, a loss of short-range burst and/or, to my great chagrin, the loss of the quality professional run blocking design and coordination by former OL Coach and Run Game Coordinator Rick Dennison (no one called more loudly for his head over the pathetic pass blocking of his 2019 and 2020 lines than me) - but Cook did not live up to his $12 million 2022 cap hit. So, I am no longer as confident as I was even a month ago that Cook will return in 2023. Luckilly, if we cut or trade him, we would save $7.9 million off of his $14.1 million cap hit, or a bit over 55%. While I do not believe that running backs are a dime a dozen - try wading through each year's Day 3 RB's or UDFA's and see what proportion of them turn into Isiah Pacheco, James Starks or
LeGarrette Blount - I can now see the Vikings deciding to roll with a 2023 RB room of Ty Chandler, Kene Nwangwu and some low-priced veteran RB (maybe former Ram Darrell Henderson), to be challenged by a collection of UDFA's and maybe a low Day 3 pick in camp. Especially if Kevin O'Connell persists in being a pass-happy JDF2. My guess: Traded or Cut, saves $7.9 million.


C.J. Ham
- O'Connell insisted last off-season that he was excited to be working with Ham in 2022, and to figure out ways to incorporate him into the fullback-less McVay scheme he was installing. Well, Ham's carries and targets both fell, his offensive snaps were cut by more than half, and while he did score two rushing touchdowns for the first time in his career, he mainly saw an increase in his already considerable special teams snaps, to a career high, in fact. The free agent signings of Patrick Ricard and Alec Ingold in 2022 pushed Ham to #5 in fullback AAV, so the position is hanging on in the 21st Century NFL, but 2023 (age 30) is the last year of the four-year extension he signed in 2020, and the team would save $3.05 million (~80%) off of his $3.8 million cap hit if he was cut or traded. I could imagine scenarios in which Ham's deal is restructured or even extended, or he's traded (maybe if Lamar Jackson ends up somewhere other than Baltimore), but...My guess: Cut, saves $3 million.

Kirk Cousins - What more is there to say? My recent recommendation is that we trade him to San Francicso to get the Shanahan-Cousins band back together again, especially since Jimmy G is a UFA, Trey Lance may need still more coaching up (and that roster, which includes some free agents they will want to re-sign, is built to compete for a Lombardi now), and Brock Purdy's elbow injury could see him on the shelf well into the summer. Kirk would bring a $30 million cap hit with him (while saving us a sweet $17.5 million), but that just leaves open the strong possibilty of an extension, or maybe a restructuring involving his 2024 and 2025 void years. We probably still can't maneuver enough to move up in the draft to get one of the top QB prospects, but whatever happens with the draft, possible bridge QB's include Jimmy Garoppolo, Teddy Bridgewater, Taylor Heinicke and maybe Geno Smith (or is he this year's Case Keenum?). Or if KAM and KOC really want to go all in, do they go after Lamar Jackson, Derek Carr or Daniel Jones? More likely, they could extend Cousins to lower his cap hit by a quarter (2022) or a third (2020), or just stand pat and let Cousins play out his current deal, trusting that they'll know what to do, and won't have burnt any bridges, in 2024. My guess: Extended, saves $10 million.

Guessed at salary cap savings:

Tomlinson - $1 million

Z. Smith - $5.5 million

Hunter - $5 million

Kendricks - $9.5 million

Hicks - $5 million

H. Smith - $6 million

Thielen - $6.4 million

Cook - $7.9 million

Ham - $3 million

Cousins - $10 million

Total - $59.3 million

Five players would have been cut or traded (Kendricks, Hicks, Thielen, Cook and Ham), four extended (Tomlinson, Z. Smith, Hunter and Cousins), and one restructured (H. Smith). This would wipe out our current cap deficit of $23.4 million, leaving us with ~35.9 million for free agency, our draft picks and UDFA signings, and any emergency trade or free agent acquisitions made over the summer or during the 2023 season. And this would have been accomplished because Rob Brzezinski IS as good a salary cap maestro as his reputation among his peers and the professionals say he is, no matter what the fan, fantasy football and Madden wannabe general managers think. Flexibility, baby, flexibility: "Cut, trade, restructure or extend. Cut, trade, restructure or extend."

At least for 2023, we should already have replacements for Hicks, Thielen and Cook on the roster, supplemented by low-cost UFA's, draftees and/or UDFA's, and Ham will likely not be replaced by anything more than a fourth RB or TE, if that. Kendricks could be replaced by a Day 1 or Day 2 draft pick, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a free agent brought in, more likely Tier 3 ($7-10 mil/yr) than Tier 1 ($17-20 mil/yr) or Tier 2 ($11-15 mil/yr), and probably someone young, though I've long wished that Lavonte David could be a Viking (and the play of veteran FA's Demario Davis and Bobby Wagner this season could widen David's market some). A third or fourth rounder might still be spent on a linebacker, in addition to the moderately priced young veteran free agent. Beyond that, I expect two or more likely three veteran cornerbacks to be signed: Duke Shelley, hopefully, a veteran slot corner, and a veteran outside CB, possibly, but only possibly, Patrick Peterson. If the medical reports are all good for Cine, Booth and Evans, I wouldn't expect additional draft capital to be spent on the secondary, at least not in the first three rounds, but that could change if any of those three are not seen as likely to return next season. I still expect Garret Bradbury to be re-signed, especially if they think his improved pass blocking was not just a contract year bump, but I'm no longer quite so certain of it. And Greg Joseph, for all his missed PAT's and erratic long-range accuracy, has consistently put his teams in a position to win. I'm working on another fanpost, but preliminary analysis says he's suceeded in crucial situations in the fourth quarter or overtime in 13 out of 15 of his 50 regular season games (his only game-losing failures being in Arizona and Carolina in 2021), and he's never missed a kick in four playoff games. I wouldn't be shocked if he got an extension from the team that at least put him in the top half of league placekickers, say $3.5-4+ mil/yr.

Personally, I think $36 million is a not extraordinary but pretty good chunk of change to be playing around with in free agency, especially if they supplement that with restructuring Brian O'Neill's contract to free up another $6-10 million in 2023 cap space (hell, that could pay for the first year of a Bradbuy extension and then some). So, no, the reports of the Vikings being in "salary cap hell" are, as usual, overwrought, as are the explanations (if they ever go beyond mere assertions) for how they supposedly got there.

This FanPost was created by a registered user of The Daily Norseman, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the site. However, since this is a community, that view is no less important.