Brian Flores, Vikings reportedly want Patrick Peterson back

The Minnesota Vikings are still pressing toward the start of the new league year with plenty of decisions to make, and one of them centers around a veteran that had a bit of a renaissance in 2022.

Darren Wolfson of KSTP is reporting that both the Vikings and new defensive coordinator Brian Flores want cornerback Patrick Peterson back on the team in 2022. Peterson is set to become a free agent, already having had a couple of years of his contract voided by the Vikings a couple of weeks ago, but he’s made no secret of how much he likes playing in Minnesota.

Peterson’s contract being voided puts some dead money on the Vikings’ salary cap for 2023, but at $750,000 it’s a fairly insignificant amount by NFL standards. Unlike what would have happened with Dalvin Tomlinson if the void date on his deal had not been extended, that amount of dead cap would likely not be a hindrance to the team bringing Peterson back for a third season.

While the cornerback position has been a very popular one to see mocked to the Vikings in this pre-draft season, the team could use someone with some veteran presence in the secondary given the number of young players they already have at the position. Peterson, who has signed consecutive one-year deals with the Vikings, had a pretty solid season for the Vikings in 2022. He finished with five interceptions to give him his highest total in that category since the 2012 season, which was his second year in the league.

If Peterson is willing to give the Vikings the sort of discount that he apparently gave them when he returned to the team this past season, it isn’t completely inconceivable that he could come back for a third tour of duty in purple in 2023. But if the team is more focused on the rebuild part of their “competitive rebuild” starting with the coming season, it’s quite possible that we’ve seen the last of Patrick Peterson in a Vikings uniform.