INDIANAPOLIS – A year ago at the NFL scouting combine, as the Vikings marshaled their resources for a run at Kirk Cousins that would lead to the first fully guaranteed veteran contract in league history, coach Mike Zimmer stood at a podium and issued something of a word of caution about the potential effects of the team's upcoming decision.
"The thing that I told [General Manager] Rick [Spielman] was, 'Look, we've won this many games and these many years because of this football.' Because we've played really good on defense for the most part," Zimmer said on March 1, 2018. "This year obviously we played so much better on offense and were able to go further than what a lot of people thought we would, so it's important that we continue to put the pieces in place on defense. What I don't want to do is say, 'OK, this is the one thing — we're going to do this and we're going to take away from the rest of the things that have gotten us to this point.' "
The Vikings surged on ahead, giving Cousins a three-year, $84 million deal. He is projected to be one of three NFL QBs whose contract will occupy at least 15 percent of his team's cap space this season, as his cap number jumps from $24 million in 2018 to $29 million this year. The Vikings, in other words, could be about to test how much financial weight their roster structure can carry.
They are projected to have around $5 million in salary cap space to start the 2019 league year, putting it among the NFL clubs with the least money to spend once free agency starts March 11. The Vikings can remedy the problem by trading, releasing or attempting to restructure the contracts of several veterans, but such moves can come with a cost.
Minnesota's shrewd salary cap management, directed by Rob Brzezinski, is viewed almost as sorcery among a segment of the fan base, as if the vice president of football operations can simply wiggle his fingers to make cap space appear. The secret to the Vikings' salary cap sauce, traditionally, has been a pay-as-you-go structure that favors base salary guarantees or roster bonuses over big signing bonuses that take years to hit the cap.
That means dollars hit the cap at the same time they land in players' pockets, the Vikings avoid debilitating dead money charges late in a player's contract and they retain leverage over a veteran player whose deal contains no guaranteed money in its later years.
The Vikings figure to use the mechanism to their advantage again before the start of the new league year — chatter at the combine centered around potential salary reductions or releases for such players as defensive end Everson Griffen, tight end Kyle Rudolph, safety Andrew Sendejo and offensive lineman Mike Remmers — and they could quickly push their available cap space north of $20 million with a handful of decisions on their veterans.
But such moves, designed to clear space for the rest of the team's needs, could disrupt some of the cohesion the Vikings have carefully created on defense over the past five years. Nine of the 11 defensive starters in 2018 have never played for another NFL team, and a 10th, nose tackle Linval Joseph, has been with the team for all of Zimmer's tenure. The Vikings have reaped rewards from such continuity; they are able to disguise blitzes and make on-the-fly adjustments as well as almost any team in the league.
