The Minnesota Vikings have worked really hard to maneuver with the salary cap with their competitive rebuild. Over the last three offseasons, general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has worked hard to get the Vikings roster in position to potentially make a run at the Super Bowl.
What he has done is load up with young talent at premium positions and get the salary cap in a much healthier spot. Yes, the Vikings are eating $57,391,874 in dead cap, but it's all about clearing things out for the future.
With the Vikings having a lot of projected salary cap space, is having it a good thing? I explored that topic on The Real Forno Show, and it's not exactly a simple answer.
"T'he hypothesis here is answering the question 'is having a lot of salary cap space a good thing?' It's not quite simple to answer that question. Now, if you have holes to fill and you have players you want to fill those holes with having cap space is great! Having cap space to be flexible rocks but having a lot of cap space usually necessitates having a lot of holes to fill and having major issues with your roster construction or ones where you're trying to fill.
"So, when you have a rebuilding team you're going to have a lot of cap space at a certain point in your rebuild and you're going to have a lot of holes to fill on the roster. Now, the more complete teams in the NFL are not going to have a lot of holes and they're not going to have a lot of cap space. Take the (New England) Patriots for example they have a ton of cap space available to them this year and next. Why? Because they don't have a whole lot of good players on their team that they're paying right now. They're in a rebuild mode they're going to have to draft and find some in free agency to get up to that point absolutely. So it's never quite as simple as 'oh I love having cap space.'"
Right now, the Vikings have a lot of salary cap space, including my initial projection of $94 million. Now, that cap space can significantly change with extensions for the likes of Camryn Bynum, Byron Murphy Jr. and Harrison Phillips. That would eat up around $20-30 million.
This is where the balancing act comes into play. Salary cap space should be used to pay your own players first with outside talent being the second priority. Where the Vikings currently sit, having salary cap space with their roster construction is a great thing because it allows them to fortify the roster while having multiple premium positions locked down.
The 2025 offseason is going to be a pivotal one for the Vikings and they are in a great position to make a move.
