Minnesota Vikings free agency: Five moves they should make
By Dan Zinski
4. Re-negotiate with Mike Wallace
We were talking before about veterans who want to come back to the Vikings and contribute. Mike Wallace is another older player who could still have a role with the Vikings but must be willing to come back at the right price. Unlike Chad Greenway and Terence Newman, Wallace to my knowledge has not expressed a desire to return to Minnesota. However, Mike Zimmer has said nice things about Wallace and indicated he would like to have Wallace back.
Given Wallace’s relatively feeble 2015 production, it’s easy to say the Vikings should just cut him and his huge cap number and move on. But what do you do if you cut Wallace? Stefon Diggs is a nice player but is he really someone defenses respect? If you draft a player like Josh Doctson or Laquon Treadwell, is there any guarantee they will be able to come in and provide Teddy Bridgewater with the “weapon” everyone thinks he needs?
Dipping into free agency to replace Mike Wallace frankly isn’t all that attractive an option. With Alshon Jeffery now off the table, the best available free agent receivers are people like Marvin Jones, Rishard Matthews and Travis Benjamin. There just isn’t much out there.
I say Minnesota should bring back Mike Wallace if he wants to come back, pay him a reasonable amount of money and continue to use him any way they can. Perhaps Teddy Bridgewater doesn’t throw a consistent enough deep ball for the Vikings to ever get a lot of big plays out of Wallace. So what? Wallace still has great speed, still commands respect from defensive backs and by all accounts was a good teammate last year.
For the right price, Mike Wallace still has value to the Vikings.