Which positions do the Minnesota Vikings spend most of their money on?
Hint: it’s definitely not at the running back position–at least not yet.
The NFL salary cap in 2020 for teams is uniformly $198.2 million. This spiked from the previous salary cap total in 2019 of $188.2 million.
The Minnesota Vikings currently have about $12 million in cap space. This is currently 19th-most in NFL. For context, the Kevin Stefanski and the Cleveland Browns have over $37 million to play around with.
A prevalent talking point (or grievance) is that the Vikings have an unfathomable amount of funds wrapped up in the quarterback position. As each day passes and new deals are inked, this notion is irrefutable debunked. The market has a knack for resetting itself seemingly on an annual basis.
If the quarterback and running back positions are not making the Vikings’ salary cap sag, just where are the 2020 dollars going?
The following are the top five positions on the depth chart in which the Vikings presently allocate funds. The positions are ranked from the least money to most money.
Honorable Mention
- Special Teams – $4.66 million (2.36% of 2020 cap, 22nd in NFL)
- Running Back – $5.21 million (2.64% of 2020 cap, 26th in NFL)
- Tight End – $12.79 million (6.48% of 2020 cap, 11th in NFL)
- Wide Receiver – $19.01 million (9.63% of 2020 cap, 24th in NFL)
In 2020 as it stands right now, the Vikings offensive skill position players combine to account for about 19% of the salary cap. This can be interpreted as a perk of the Stefon Diggs trade to Buffalo, a somewhat team-friendly deal for wideout Adam Thielen, or a significant and collective underpayment to the team’s trio of running backs. Pick your favorite talking point.
Even more interesting is that of the approximately $37 million spent on offensive skill position personnel, 58% of it is going to the pockets of Adam Thielen and Kyle Rudolph, or $21.6 million dollars. If one is curious as to why Dalvin Cook is requesting a pay raise, in the grand scheme of the NFL machine–this is a boldfaced clue as to why.
Cook notched about 30% of the team’s yards from scrimmage in 2019 whilst being compensated about one percent of the team’s salary cap.
As for the special teams unit, these players are generally paid lesser compared to other positions, so this $4.66 million total is not all that surprising.
No. 5 – Quarterback
$22,497,500 (11.4% of 2020 cap, 15th in NFL)
In 2020, the amount the Minnesota Vikings spend at the quarterback position is middle-of-the-road, or 15th in the NFL. Naturally, this is almost all Kirk Cousins‘ contract sopping up the spending along with a comparative smidgen allotted for backups Sean Mannion and Nate Stanley.
Cousins’ contract is the topic of incessant savagery, even after he restructured this past offseason. He is slated to make $21 million dollars in 2020, and this makes him the 14th highest-paid signal-caller for the upcoming season. If Cousins made his “customary” $28 million per season that was like bees-to-honey for scrutiny, it would still not make the quarterback position the highest-paid spot on the depth chart.
His contract will escalate yearly going forward in terms of cap hit, but for the purposes of 2020, Cousins and the quarterback room are the fifth highest-paid bunch on the team. For perspective, the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks are paying their respective quarterbacks north of $30 million in 2020.
No. 4 – Defensive Line
$26,151,720 (13.25% of 2020 cap, 24th in NFL)
To be fair, this ranking of number four on the list is predominately because the Vikings currently have 15 men classified as defensive linemen.
Nearly nine million of this figure is paid to defensive end Danielle Hunter. The next two players in order of most salary are Michael Pierce and Shamar Stephen–both around five million dollars apiece. The bottom twelve will all separately bring home under one million dollars in 2020.
Although this total number looks vast at first glance, the Vikings will spend the ninth-least amount of money in the NFL on defensive linemen in 2020.
As it stands, there is a clear path for youngster Ifeadi Odenigbo to start at EDGE opposite Danielle Hunter. His contract is the reason that Minnesota ranks toward the bottom of the league in defensive line dollars. Odenigbo will earn $812,500 in 2020.
There is still a feasible chance that longtime Viking Everson Griffen returns to the team. In this case, the defensive line position spending would increase, assuming Shamar Stephen is not jettisoned via trade.
No. 3 – Offensive Line
$26,440,564 (13.39% of 2020 cap, 29th in NFL)
Wipe that smile off your face; he’s not kidding.
The oft-criticized Minnesota Vikings offensive line can be perceived in two ways from a spending standpoint.
First, this unit takes up the third-most percentage of dollars on the team’s depth chart. So, the Vikings have prioritized the position in relation to their other spots on the team.
However, the Vikings will spend the fourth-least amount of money on offensive linemen in comparison to the rest of the 32 NFL teams. In layman’s terms: the Vikings spend a lot of funds on the offensive line by their own organization’s standards, but not all that much by NFL standards.
Of the $26-plus million spent by the Vikings on the offensive line unit, nearly half of it goes to left tackle Riley Reiff. The bottom 15 players split the remaining $13 million. On Reiff, this is likely why he is so often the subject of trade rumors.
If the Vikings had any interest in aligning with the rest of the league in terms of spending averages, they would need to entertain trimming dollars from their defensive personnel and donating those trimmings to the offensive line.
No. 2 – Linebackers
$29,464,997 (14.93% of 2020 cap, 9th in NFL)
Only eight other teams in the league spend more money on linebackers than the Minnesota Vikings. The team has decided recently to pay contracts north of $10 million dollars per year to both Eric Kendricks and Anthony Barr. An argument can be devised that this makes sense as these two men and positions are schematically the heart and soul of the defense.
Probable starter Eric Wilson makes over three million. But after that, none of the bottom six linebackers enter the seven-figure realm.
It is really no surprise that defense-first coach head coach Mike Zimmer values his defense to the utmost, and this is evident in contracts awarded to the homegrown likes of Kendricks and Barr. Kendricks achieved First-Team All-Pro honors in 2019; he was only the second Vikings linebacker ever to win such honors. Matt Blair nabbed the honor in 1980. As for Anthony Barr, he’s a four-time Pro Bowler.
No. 1 – Defensive Secondary
$30,075,304 (15.24% of 2020 cap, 17th in NFL)
Alas, the defense-first head coach that outwardly appears to have sentimental ties to the secondary–pays his secondary.
The Minnesota Vikings will pay their defensive secondary proportionally more dollars in 2020 than any other spot on the roster. This amount is largely slipped into the proverbial pockets of its safeties. Between the two of them, safeties Harrison Smith and Anthony Harris will bank nearly $22 million dollars in 2020. Cornerback Mike Hughes will bring home $2.7 million and the rest are below a million.
For what it’s worth, this could have been a lot “worse.” The team parted ways with seven-year cornerback Xavier Rhodes, five-year Trae Waynes, and four-year Mackensie Alexander this past offseason. They will attempt to piecemeal a secondary together infused with youth while having big-dollar safeties as the backbone.
All in all, the Vikings 2020 secondary expenditures are only 17th most in the NFL. Therefore, they are not grossly outspending other teams by any stretch of the imagination.
And, what they have decided to spend on the secondary in the last five years has indisputably worked. Since 2015, the Minnesota Vikings have boasted the league’s second-best passing defense in both yards and touchdowns allowed.