Years of poor drafting forced then-Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah into a spending spree in 2025 free agency. A focus of that was bolstering the trenches on both sides of the ball, but hindsight says the wrong choices were made on that front.
After the retirement of center Ryan Kelly and easy offseason decisions to cut defensive tackles Javon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen, right guard Will Fries is the last-man standing among those four notable lineman signings.
The Vikings are paying Fries like a top-10 guard in the league via his five-year, $87.2 million deal. He was the only projected starting offensive lineman to start every game for the team last season, which is a credit to him, but his performance defined mediocre.
Among 81 qualifying guards last year, Fries came in at No. 42 by overall Pro Football grade (61.7). He had the 47th-best run-blocking grade (60.1), and the 36th-best pass-blocking grade (62.9) of the group. The eye test backed those grades completely, as Fries rarely, if ever, stood out for the right reasons.
Will Fries is the latest Vikings' 2025 free agency mistake that's setting them back
Through Week 8, with one game left in the week as of this writing, Fries has the 55th-best PFF pass blocking grade among qualifying guards (52.3). The three sacks he has allowed are tied for third-most among guards, while he has been a mix if up and down and noticeable when it comes to allowing pressures.
An adjustment in the Vikings' run scheme this season felt like good news for Fries, but he has not been a force in that area either. His 61.3 PFF run blocking grade is barely top-50 among his peers, and the eye test still backs up that milquetoast performance completely.
Two other top NFC contenders, the divisional rival Chicago Bears and San Francisco 49ers. made notable additions at defensive tackle last week and the Vikings will play them both. So Fries will be tested in games that matter a lot from here on out, and there can't be any faith he'll be up to the task.
An injury-shortened 2024 campaign with the Indianapolis Colts, where he posted what would've been the third-best overall PFF grade among guards if he had played enough snaps to qualify, looks like the clear-cut outlier of Fries' career. But it was enough to convince the Vikings to pay him very handsomely, and if they hadn't done so, another team likely would have.
The Vikings can easily move on from Will Fries in 2027
Fries has matching cap hits of $21.5 million in each of the next three years. $10 million of his $16.89 million 2027 base salary becomes guaranteed on the third day of the league year. If he keeps up this level of play, the Vikings will surely want to avoid that payout. A contract restructuring could be in play, but an outright cut feels more likely as things stand right now.
According to Over The Cap, cutting Fries before June 1, 2027 would leave the Vikings with $12 million in dead money and 9.5 million in cap savings. A post-June 1 cut would spread that $12 million in dead money over the remaining three years of the contract (2027, 2028 and 2029) while creating $17.5 million in 2027 cap space.
Unless Fries can find a higher level of performance over the rest of the season, the Vikings will have an easy decision come the offseason. He's delivering average to below-average impact at a premium cost, which at minimum is a bad allocation of cap dollars that will surely be rectified.
Fries is tracking toward deserving a notable pay cut in 2027, at minimum. But, unless he suddenly becomes an on-field reincarnation of Will Shields, moving on via a clean post-June 1 cut designation will be much easier.
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