When the Vikings’ Salary Cap Will Get a Fresh Infusion of Open Room
Lately, the Vikings’ salary cap space has been dropping faster than a boulder being dropped into Lake Minnetonka.
Ask the folks on Over the Cap and they would insist that Minnesota is sitting at second in the NFL in free-agent spending, coming in at a whopping $119,251,500. Pretty wild, right? Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has aggressively addressed roster deficiencies with well-established veterans, handing out some major-money deals in the process. The good news is simply that Minnesota will experience a mini financial windfall in the summer.
The Vikings’ Salary Cap & The Summer Budget Boost
At no point did Garrett Bradbury fully live up to being the No. 18 selection in the 2019 NFL Draft.
Yes, he’s perhaps the most athletically-gifted center in the NFL, but he consistently struggled to anchor. The end result was the QB getting walloped far too often when powerful defensive tackles lined up across from the 1st-Round talent. Minnesota is seeking to rectify the issue, welcoming Ryan Kelly to town while deciding to say goodbye to Mr. Bradbury.
The caveat with the Bradbury release is that Adofo-Mensah opted for a post-June 1 cut. In so doing, the GM hasn’t yet seen any cap relief. He’ll need to wait until June to get that added cap space.
Tom Pelissero offered the clarity back in the middle of March: “The #Vikings are releasing veteran center Garrett Bradbury with a post-June 1 designation, per me and @RapSheet. After trying to trade him, Minnesota now officially moves on from Bradbury, their former first-round pick.” Ian Rapoport chimed in, explaining, “The #Vikings will, in fact, release C Garrett Bradbury, and he gets a post-June 1 designation to spread out the cap hit.”
The basic idea is that Minnesota is spreading out the dead money hit. Garrett Bradbury will be leaving behind $814,000 in dead money for 2025. Jump ahead to the 2026 budget and OTC has Minnesota sitting on $1,628,000 in dead money due to the Bradbury cut. Simply cutting the lineman with a pre-June 1 designation would have involved all of that dead money collapsing into the present season, but Adofo-Mensah decided against that approach.
In June, the Vikings’ salary cap will see $5.25 million added back into the mix. That’s money that can either be spent to improve the roster for the upcoming season or it can be rolled over into 2026.
One also wonders if it’s being viewed as payment for the draft picks. Not too long ago, PurplePTSD offered a piece that details how much the 2025 draft class is likely to account for in the accounting. The basic idea is that Minnesota will need somewhere around $3 to $5 million, depending on how trades work out and the total number of picks that get used by the Vikings.
The end result may be a situation where the Bradbury release basically functions as a dollar-for-dollar move. Subtracting the veteran center could almost perfectly cover the cost of the incoming rookie class, at least when it comes to the top-51 cutoff for the offseason.
As things stand, the Vikings are sitting on roughly $17.1 million. The spending is likely to be very modest for the next month so as not to upset the compensatory picks. After the draft, Adofo-Mensah could see how much is left in the budget before dipping into free agency yet again. He’ll do so with the assurance that he’ll add a bit more cap space once June arrives.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference and Over the Cap helped with this piece.
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K. Joudry is the Senior Editor for Vikings Territory and PurplePTSD. He has been covering the Vikings full time since the summer of 2021. He can be found on social media (Bluesky & Twitter). If you feel so inclined, subscribe to his Substack, The Vikings Gazette, for more great Vikings content.
