With a lower salary cap in 2021, who might the Minnesota Vikings part with?
During the majority of Mike Zimmer’s tenure as the team’s head coach, the Minnesota Vikings have done their best to build their roster through the NFL Draft. For the most part, the Vikings have been pretty successful by following this strategy.
With this method, however, these young players all eventually want to get paid if they are able to remain on the roster after their rookie contract runs out.
During the last few years, Minnesota has given new contracts to a number of their top young guys including Danielle Hunter, Anthony Barr, and Eric Kendricks. They have also spent a bunch of money to have some abnormal stability under center with quarterback Kirk Cousins.
In 2021, the Vikings could be forced to make some very difficult decisions. Due to the effects of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the NFL salary cap for the 2021 season could decrease to around $175 million, which would be a drop of almost $25 million compared to this year.
If the 2021 offseason were to begin with a $175 million salary cap, Minnesota’s current contracts would put them around $4.6 million over the cap according to recent estimates from OverTheCap.com.
Depending on how the league attempts to handle this, the Vikings could be looking at saying goodbye to some fan favorites in order to have enough cap space to fill out their entire roster in 2021.
So if this salary cap increase does happen, who are some of the big names that could be let go by Minnesota in order to get under the $175 million salary cap?