4 biggest priorities for the Vikings in the 2021 offseason

Find a way to create cap space

This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The Vikings had very little cap space during the 2020 offseason and they’re expected to have even less when the new league year begins in 2021.

OverTheCap.com is currently estimating the NFL salary cap to be set at $176 million next year, which would be more than $22 million less than what it was for this season ($198.2 million). With their estimation, Minnesota would begin the year at $8.4 million over the cap.

It’s not as terrible as it’s estimated to be for some other teams around the league (Philadelphia Eagles and New Orleans Saints expected to be more than $70 million over the cap at the start of the 2021 league year), but the Vikings still have to at least figure out how to get their cap space out of the negatives before the new league year begins next March.

In order to do this, Minnesota might have to part ways with some longtime contributors including Kyle Rudolph, Riley Reiff, and Harrison Smith. The Vikings had to say their goodbyes to a number of veteran players last year in order to create cap space and they will likely have to do the same in 2021.