Extension for Danielle Hunter not expected to happen until 2022
By Adam Patrick
It’s been a while since Danielle Hunter last appeared in a game for the Minnesota Vikings. Thanks to a neck injury that Hunter sustained last summer, he was forced to miss the entire 2020 season.
His absence made a tremendous impact on Minnesota’s pass rush, unsurprising to most. The Vikings defense finished the 2020 campaign with an embarrassing total of just 23 sacks. With Hunter on the field from 2015 to 2019, Minnesota never finished a season with less than 37 sacks.
The talented Vikings defensive end is expected to return to the field in 2021 and this should immediately improve the team’s pass-rushing abilities significantly.
Will the Minnesota Vikings extend Danielle Hunter this offseason?
Back in October when NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport announced that Hunter was having surgery to repair his neck injury, he also mentioned that Minnesota needed to either make him the highest-paid defender in the league or trade him.
This threw a lot of people off, especially since Hunter was in the middle of missing an entire season due to injury and since he just signed a $72 million extension with the Vikings in 2018. There had never been any mention or report of him wanting more money before this tweet from Rapoport.
There still hasn’t been really anything to come out on this subject since last October. But some are still wondering if Hunter has really given Minnesota an ultimatum to either pay him or trade him.
Recently, The Athletic’s Chad Graff predicted that the Vikings holding off until 2022 to extend the defensive end is the scenario that currently seems to be the most probable. This way, Minnesota can see if Hunter returns to his normal form on the field in 2021 before they decide to back up the money truck to his front door.
This is definitely what makes the most sense as no one really knows what to expect from the pass rusher when he gets back to playing next season. If the Vikings choose to extend Hunter this summer and his performance regresses or he re-injures his neck, then the team will look incredibly foolish.
So until a new report comes out regarding Hunter’s desire for an extension before the 2021 campaign, stick with what Graff believes and don’t expect any sort of new deal to happen until 2022.