Entering seventh season, Vikings coach Mike Zimmer might need to overhaul team he built

INDIANAPOLIS – Six winters ago, after he took a Vikings head coaching job that became available in part because of the 480 points the team allowed the year before, Mike Zimmer surveyed his roster and readied himself for a massive fix-it job.

"We looked at the depth chart," he said. "It was pretty ugly at that point, so we had to manipulate that."

The Vikings parted with longtime fixtures Jared Allen and Kevin Williams, signed nose tackle Linval Joseph and cornerback Captain Munnerlyn in the first days of free agency and used the 2014 draft's ninth overall pick on linebacker Anthony Barr. The moves began an overhaul fueled by draft capital — three first-round picks, two second-rounders and two third-rounders from 2014-18 — that turned the Vikings' once-sordid defense into a model of consistency.

Of the 10 defenders who started at least 13 games in 2019, half had been with the team for each of Zimmer's six seasons; the other five had been in Minnesota for five of those years. The Vikings jumped from 32nd to 11th in points allowed during Zimmer's first season; they haven't finished lower than ninth since.

But six years of continuity is a remarkably long time in the NFL life cycle, and the Vikings appear headed into Year 7 under Zimmer with clear-eyed realism. Their salary cap situation, pressed tight from years of sizable contracts to keep their own players and a lucrative deal for quarterback Kirk Cousins, could compel tough decisions on a number of veterans, at a time when the Vikings seem inclined to pursue updates for a defense that showed signs of slippage.

A contract extension for Cousins, who has one year left on the three-year, $84 million deal he signed in 2018, could come with a structure that provides the Vikings cap relief, and the widely held belief at the NFL scouting combine was that they could soon opt for a new deal with the quarterback both Zimmer and General Manager Rick Spielman praised openly in Indianapolis.

Such a deal wouldn't necessarily be a panacea for the Vikings' cap issues: Cousins, with strong leverage after a career year, seems unlikely to take a major discount when the quarterback market is as robust as ever, and rules in the final year of the NFL's collective bargaining agreement would prevent Minnesota from paying Cousins a marginal base salary this year before stuffing large salaries into years governed by a new CBA.

That means a deal for the quarterback could be a piece — but not the entirety — of the Vikings' cap solution.

A defensive refresh seems imminent. The architect of the defense acknowledged as much.

"We've got a lot of work to do, depending on what happens and where we go," Zimmer said. "We've got a lot of work to do, first of all, figuring out players, and then figuring out the scheme they can do."

The major change could come in the defensive backfield, where safety Anthony Harris and cornerbacks Trae Waynes and Mackensie Alexander are set to hit free agency. Alexander is eager to test the market, while Waynes and Harris could price themselves out of the Vikings' range. Harris tied for the NFL lead in interceptions last year, and even though Waynes has looked vulnerable in pass coverage at times, he's a 27-year-old former first-round pick at a position of high demand.

Cornerback Xavier Rhodes, who turns 30 in June after two disappointing seasons, could be a cap casualty. The Vikings would incur $4.8 million of dead money if they released Rhodes with three years left on his deal, but they would save $8.1 million of cap space.

"Xavier has been a Pro Bowl corner, you know?" Spielman said. "He maybe had not as great of a year as he's had in the past, but he still helped us win games. So he's just one of them, just like every other player. We talk about the practice squad guys. You take each one of those individual players and then assess where they're at in their career and where they're at financially and then you make decisions."

The Vikings could lean more on 2018 first-rounder Mike Hughes, as well as Holton Hill and Kris Boyd. Sources told the Star Tribune in January that Hughes broke a vertebra in his neck at the end of the season, though Zimmer said this week the corner is "going to be fine."

As for what he can expect from his young corners, Zimmer said, "They're still a ways away, a little bit.

"Hughes and Hill and Boyd, they have the ability to do it. Like, during the season I gave them an assignment that I wanted them to do every single day and they did it. That tells me that they want to do it. I think that's half the battle."

Defensive end Everson Griffen voided the final three years of his deal in January (though Zimmer said this week he expects Griffen to return to the Vikings), and the team could recoup $10.4875 million in cap space by releasing Joseph. Any combination of moves could trigger a shift on defense in 2020, and Zimmer said they might have to change some of their "pressures, coverages and fronts" to suit a new group of defenders.

The Vikings could lean on new defensive assistant Dom Capers for different blitz looks, using the former head coach and defensive coordinator's expertise with zone blitzes and unorthodox fronts from the 3-4 scheme he ran especially with the Steelers and Packers.

The Vikings might not have as much of the plug-and-play approach they've enjoyed on defense in recent years.

"It is what it is," Zimmer said of potential changes on defense. "If it is that way, then we just have to do a good job keeping guys in there and making sure they can play and trying to help them as best we can. We're not going to cry because we don't have some of those guys.

"Our job is to figure out how to get guys in there and get them to play."

The Vikings are scheduled to carry a little less than $200 million in cap obligations into the 2020 league year, for which the salary cap has reportedly been projected between $196 million and $201 million. Cousins carries a $31 million cap hit in the final season of his fully guaranteed deal, and the widely held belief at the combine last week that the Vikings will soon pursue a new deal with the quarterback was rooted in the idea they could structure it to lower Cousins' cap number for 2020.

The Vikings have to see if players will approve the new CBA before the start of the league year on March 18 — and if the league will operate by the rules of the new agreement in 2020, or stick with the provisions in place under the old deal. If the old CBA rules are still in place, the Vikings would face some unique parameters as they structure a Cousins deal.

The league's 30% rule, which takes effect during the final season of a CBA, stipulates no player's base salary can increase annually by more than 30% of what he makes in the last CBA year.

Signing bonuses do not count toward the 30% rule and hit the cap in annual increments over the life of the deal (up to five years), so the Vikings could still use that mechanism to spread out some of the contract's cap value. But whatever base salary they gave him in 2020 would set the limits of their annual increases; if they paid Cousins a $10 million base this year, for example, they could only raise the amount by 30% — or $3 million — every year of the deal.

Cousins is guaranteed to make $29.5 million in 2020. He posted the second-highest passer rating in franchise history last year, before winning his first career playoff game. He doesn't turn 32 until August, and has yet to appear on a Vikings injury report. There's no reason to believe he's going to sign a new deal without parameters that make it worth his while, either in the forms of a new guaranteed money or cash up front. The Vikings' challenge, in other words, would be to structure a deal that saves cap value now and still pays Cousins enough for him to sign it.

"We have a lot of things on the priority list," Spielman said. "I know, just assessing where Kirk was last year, and putting him in a system that pretty much emphasizes what he does well, with the play action, and establishing a running game, and his accuracy is second to none, I believe, in this league, when he has time in the pocket — not only short or intermediate, but also when he throws down the field.

"To go into a system for two years in a row, we just see him progressing and improving more."

The Cousins conundrum is one of the Vikings' highest-profile offseason issues. Spielman also hinted at extension talks for running back Dalvin Cook, while declining to talk about Zimmer's or his own contract status; both the coach and the GM are in the final years of their deals.

The decisions the Vikings make in the coming weeks might well shape the remainder of Spielman and Zimmer's time together.

"You don't want to make knee-jerk decisions just because you're mad after we didn't play very well [in the playoffs] against San Fran, so all of a sudden, [you think] no one on your 53 can play because you're so emotionally raw from that," Spielman said. "So, you just want to just make sure you're away from it and then when you come back you've got a whole different perspective than if you're just trying to make knee-jerk decisions off raw emotions."