Josh Oliver’s Contract Signifies That Blocking Tight Ends Are Back
Admittedly, the Josh Oliver contract extension made me scratch my head a bit, just as the contract he received in 2023 to begin his Vikings career did. Maybe I got too caught up in being an absolute geek about money, and I’m not here to pretend like I know more about football and the value a player brings to the table than Kevin O’Connell and company.
Josh Oliver inked a new 3-year/$23.25 million contract recently, and with that, blocking tight end fans rejoiced, and the nerds cried into their positional value formula charts. Big boy ball might be all the way back.
I’m guilty of being a nerd about positional value a good amount of the time, but for full transparency, as a Vikings fan, I have officially decided to just trust whatever this regime is doing since I can’t control it and I like to sleep at night.
T.J. Hockenson and Josh Oliver will hit for a combined number of right around $25 million in the year of 2025, an amount that you wouldn’t really expect an NFL team to be paying a tight end room in this era of the game, on top of the drafting of Pitt TE Gavin Bartholomew and signing of UDFA Georgia TE Ben Yurosek. Regardless, the Vikings are doing it, and I guess I won’t question it because this new regime seems to know what they’re doing when it comes to team-building.
The Vikings’ offense (really just the passing offense) has been above league-average since Josh Oliver got here (not really thanks to him), although the rushing offense has been below league-average. Minnesota obviously still has faith in Oliver to aid them in this with the roughly $1 million annual increase and extension for three years, as well as the extension of Aaron Jones and the acquisition of Jordan Mason.
Focusing on TE1, the Vikings’ passing offense wasn’t noticeably different for better or worse when T.J. Hockenson came back from injury halfway through 2024, further justifying me scratching my head as to why the Vikings are so eager to throw money at the tight end position. Still, I will bury my opinion and trust in the regime that has built this team from the ground up over the last couple of years.
No matter which way you feel about it, the Vikings have made the statement: big dogs gotta eat, and the blocking tight end is becoming a premium position, apparently. Good for Josh Oliver, as we went down the slippery slope of teams taking a unicorn TE in Kyle Pitts in the top picks of the NFL Draft, and climbed back up the mountain to the point that true blue-collar, bring your lunch-pail to work type of tight ends are all the way back.
The establishment tried to force a certain prototype of tight end on the American people, but the American people raged against the machine, led by heroes Kevin O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. You can take the blocking out of the tight end, but you can’t take the tight end out of blocking.
