The Full Details of Justin Jefferson’s New Contract
On Monday morning, all of Vikings fandom gave a collective sigh of relief when Justin Jefferson signed a new four-year contract.
The star wide receiver inked a market-resetting deal that makes him the highest-paid non-QB in the NFL. His four-year deal will pay him a grand total of $140 million from 2025-2028, with an average annual value of $35 million.
It’s a massive contract, and with some help from Over the Cap, we have some new details regarding how the contract breaks down.
Full Details of Justin Jefferson’s New Contract
Of course, the contract won’t officially kick in until the 2025 season because Jefferson will play on the fifth and final year of his rookie deal this fall.
However, this contract extension actually saves the Vikings some cap space this year. Instead of playing on a cap hit of $19.743 million, Jefferson now carries a cap hit of just $8.6 million in 2024, thus saving the Vikings a tad over $11 million in cap space.
When 2025 rolls around, though, the Vikings won’t immediately jump into paying Jefferson exuberant amounts of money. In fact, his cap hit next year is still lower than that fifth-year option would have been, sitting at a very reasonable $15.167 million.
2026 is when the big money kicks in with Jefferson carrying a hit of just under $39 million before jumping into the $40 million number in both 2027 and 2028. Here is a look at Jefferson’s salary cap numbers for each of the next five seasons, again, per Over the Cap:
- 2024: $8,612,600
- 2025: $15,167,600
- 2026: $38,987,600
- 2027: $43,487,600
- 2028: $47,487,600
It should also be noted that Jefferson’s deal includes a void year in 2029, his age-30 season, with a dead cap number of $6 million. Overall, these are some massive numbers down the stretch of Jefferson’s contract, but Kwesi Adofo-Mensah provided the Vikings with some flexibility in those years.
Through the 2026 season, the Vikings are locked into having Jefferson on their roster because of massive amounts of dead money. However, if the star were to struggle in his late-20s for whatever reason, the Vikings can feasibly get out of the deal in either 2027 or 2028. Here are the yearly dead money totals as well as the cap savings if the Vikings were to cut Jefferson:
- 2024: $89,243,000 (-$80,630,400)
- 2025: $80,630,400 (-$65,462,800)
- 2026: $41,212,800 (-$2,225,200)
- 2027: $14,975,200 ($28,512,400)
- 2028: $7,487,600 ($40,000,000)
- 2029: $6,000,000 (-$6,000,000)
Overall, the Vikings did a great job of ensuring their best player will be taken care of while also providing flexibility for themselves in an unknown future.
Editor’s Note: Information from Over the Cap helped with this article.
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Josh Frey is a Class of 2020 graduate of The College of Idaho and managing editor of PurplePTSD.com. When he’s not writing about the NFL, Josh enjoys running, gaming, or rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks. Check out his Twitter account: @Freyed_Chicken.