The 2023 Vikings Have a Money Problem
Josh Frey
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The Kansas City Chiefs just won their second Super Bowl of the past four years, defeating the Philadelphia Eagles by a score of 38-35 in order to get their hands on the Lombardi Trophy. So, what exactly can we take away from this latest Super Bowl matchup? Can we learn anything about the Minnesota Vikings, and how they can eventually lift a Lombardi of their own?
Here’s one of my theories: the Vikings have a money problem as they head into 2023. They are paying too much money at the wrong positions for aging veterans that simply do not impact the game enough to warrant how much of the salary cap that they take up. Let’s go over the three biggest positional concerns by comparing what the Vikings will pay players in 2023 to what recent Super Bowl champions paid players at the same position.
Quarterback
Kirk Cousins and his contract have been topics of discussion virtually ever since he got to Minnesota. Now in 2023, he’s heading into the final year of his contract and carries a cap hit of $36.25 million, making up 16.1% of the Vikings $225 million salary cap for next season.
Here’s the full list of QBs to play in a Super Bowl since 2012. If an asterisk appears next to their name, they carried a cap hit of less than 10% of their team’s salary cap in that season.
- Joe Flacco*
- Colin Kaepernick*
- Russell Wilson*
- Peyton Manning
- Tom Brady
- Russell Wilson*
- Peyton Manning
- Cam Newton*
- Tom Brady
- Matt Ryan
- Nick Foles*
- Tom Brady*
- Tom Brady
- Jared Goff*
- Patrick Mahomes*
- Jimmy Garoppolo
- Tom Brady
- Patrick Mahomes*
- Matthew Stafford
- Joe Burrow*
- Patrick Mahomes
- Jalen Hurts*
So, as you can see, 12 of the last 22 Super Bowl QBs carried cap hits of a much lower percentage than Kirk Cousins currently holds going into 2023. And, the ones that make the Super Bowl despite this impact on their teams’ salary caps are (1) either named Brady, Mahomes, or Manning, or (2) they were coached by either Sean McVay or Kyle Shanahan, two of the better offensive minds in the game.
I am of the mind that Kirk Cousins is a good starting quarterback. In fact, he may still be among the 10-12 best quarterbacks in the NFL. That being said, there is no indication that he is nearly as good or certainly as impactful a player as Brady or Mahomes. The jury is still out on how big of a ceiling Kevin O’Connell has as a head coach, but it would take a lot for him to be considered in the same realm as McVay or Shanahan.
So, it looks like it may come down to two options. Either Cousins needs to take on less of a cap hit (likely through an extension), or the Vikings need to find a cheaper option at QB after 2023. The smoothest way to do that would be through the NFL Draft, but that could take years to accomplish. Finding a cheaper QB is probably going to be the largest puzzle of Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s tenure as GM.
Running Back
Dalvin Cook is set to carry a cap hit of $14.1 million in 2023, the sixth-highest of any running back in the NFL. Then, on Tuesday, news came out that the Vikings running back would undergo surgery to finally repair a shoulder injury tracing all the way back to 2019.
This goes against the model set by many Super Bowl champions in terms of roster construction. In fact, take a look at this chart from Marcus Mosher of Pro Football Focus, displaying the base salaries of the leading rushers from each of the past 14 Super Bowls.
Now, it’s important to note that this chart only displays base salary and not total cap hit. Dalvin Cook’s base salary in 2023 is set to be $10.4 million compared to his cap hit of $14.1 million.
However, the point still stands that there isn’t a leading rusher in the Super Bowl that has made more than $2.5 million over the past 14 years in base salary, less than 20% of what Cook’s is set to make next season. Granted, this doesn’t necessarily mean these players were the highest paid running backs on the rosters.
For example, Percy Harvin led the Seahawks in rushing during the 2013 Super Bowl, but Marshawn Lynch made $7 million in base salary during that season. Harvin rushed for 45 yards, and Lynch had 39 yards. Lynch took up 6.88% of Seattle’s salary cap in 2013, and Cook is slated to hold 6.27% of the cap for the Vikings.
However, those Seahawks also had the benefit of a QB in Russell Wilson on a rookie contract that made up a measly 0.6% of Seattle’s salary cap as well as a star-studded defense, meaning they could afford to invest some extra cash into the running back spot.
And, in case you still aren’t convinced, here are the running backs with the highest cap hit for each of the past 10 Super Bowl champions along with the percentage of the salary cap that they took up for that season:
- 2022 Chiefs: Ronald Jones II ($1,500,000; 0.72%)
- 2021 Rams: Sony Michel ($1,792,731; 0.98%)
- 2020 Bucs: Leonard Fournette ($2,500,000; 1.26%)
- 2019 Chiefs: LeSean McCoy ($3,000,000; 1.59%)
- 2018 Patriots: James White ($3,000,000; 1.69%)
- 2017 Eagles: LeGarrette Blount ($1,250,000; 0.75%)
- 2016 Patriots: Brandon Bolten ($1,272,500; 0.81%)
- 2015 Broncos: Ronnie Hillman ($942,708; 0.66%)
- 2014 Patriots: Rhamondre Stevenson ($1,127,264; 0.85%)
- 2013 Seahawks: Marshawn Lynch ($8,500,000; 6.88%)
As you can see, Lynch’s cap hit is by far the highest of the past decade of Super Bowl champions. Each of the past three champions haven’t had a running back take up more even 1.5% of the salary cap. Lynch’s 2013 cap hit shows it can be done at a comparable price to Cook, but again, Seattle had an extremely cheap quarterback and studs on rookie contracts all over their defense.
Wide Receiver
The Minnesota Vikings look like they are going to have a ton of money tied up in the wide receiver position for the next few years. Justin Jefferson should get a monster extension from the team this offseason. While that contract won’t officially kick in until the 2025 season, Adam Thielen has cap hits of $19,967,647 in 2023 and $21,655,882 in 2024. Thielen’s percentage of the salary cap in 2023 also sits at 8.88%.
Here are the highest WR cap hits for a Super Bowl team over the past 10 years along with the percentage of the salary cap that they took up:
- 2022 Chiefs: Marques Valdes-Scantling ($4,880,000; 2.34%)
- 2021 Rams: Cooper Kupp ($5,300,000; 2.9%)
- 2020 Buccaneers: Mike Evans ($8,387,500; 4.23%)
- 2019 Chiefs: Sammy Watkins ($19,200,000; 10.2%)
- 2018 Patriots: Julian Edelman ($3,940,361; 2.22%)
- 2017 Eagles: Alshon Jeffrey ($10,750,000; 6.44%)
- 2016 Patriots: Chris Hogan ($5,500,000; 3.54%)
- 2015 Broncos: Demaryius Thomas ($13,200,000; 9.21%)
- 2014 Patriots: Danny Amendola ($4,700,000; 3.53%)
- 2013 Seahawks: Percy Harvin ($4,900,000; 3.96%)
Not only is Thielen set to carry cap hits higher than any wide receiver for a Super Bowl champion of the past 10 years, but he also takes up a higher percentage of it than any receiver on a Super Bowl champ other than Sammy Watkins with the 2019 Chiefs and Demaryius Thomas with the 2015 Broncos.
Not only that, but in 2024, Jefferson’s fifth-year option is also scheduled to make him $19,743,000, meaning he also carries a cap hit higher than any of these receivers, and that total and his percentage of the salary cap will only skyrocket with his extension.
Add that on top of the fact that the Vikings don’t have a cheap quarterback or a cheap running back, and that could cause a major problem down the road for the Vikings. Does it necessarily mean that the Vikings can’t compete in the coming years? No, of course not. There is always a route towards freeing up cap space.
However, it does mean that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah may need to get creative when filling in the rest of this roster. The hire of Brian Flores should help the defense improve in 2023, and that is half the battle for the Vikings right now.
The rest of it is finding cheap contracts that can provide a positive impact to cancel out the lucrative deals for the Vikings offensive players. We’ll have to wait and see how Minnesota goes about doing this.
Editor’s Note: Information from Over the Cap and Spotrac were used in this article.
Josh Frey is a Class of 2020 graduate of The College of Idaho with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. He also earned minors in History, Human Biology, and Journalism. When he’s not writing about the NFL, Josh enjoys marathon training, playing video games, or rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks. For more of his opinions, check out his Twitter account: @Freyed_Chicken.