The Sneaky Upside Hiding in the Vikings’ Budget Ahead of Free Agency

The Vikings’ budget has more upside than a lot of people realize.
The NFL’s salary cap is a malleable monster, capable of being manipulated and moved around. The savvy GM will hand over seemingly easy to understand compensation — say, a three-year commitment coming in at a total of $60 million for a $20M/year average — that nevertheless eludes simple cap hit allocations. Quite often, the initial cap charges are low, allowing for immediate flexibility as the larger charges get pushed into the future. That basic reality is going to allow the Vikings to punch above its weight class in March.
The Vikings’ Budget & The Hidden Upside
Minnesota Wild fans will likely know that the NHL salary cap functions differently.
In the offseason (earlier?), Kirill Kaprizov — a stud — is going to get a huge contract offer, but let’s keep the numbers very simple: an eight-year commitment that pays him $80 million (a bargain when compared to what he’ll actually get). The math in the NHL is quite simple: Kaprizov will carry a $10 million cap charge for the duration of his deal since the total money ($80M) gets divided equally across the years (eight).
That’s not how the salary cap works in the NFL.

Consider, for instance, a trio of free-agent deals that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has signed since taking over as Minnesota’s GM. The initial cap charges are modest before seeing a notable spike as the contracts unfold. Check it out:
Players | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | 2027 | 2028 |
Murphy, Byron (CB) | $2,961,765 | $11,000,000 | $4,200,000 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Oliver, Josh (TE) | $2,554,000 | $6,174,000 | $9,424,000 | $2,848,000 | N/A | N/A |
Greenard, Jonathan (EDGE) | N/A | $5,800,000 | $22,300,000 | $22,300,000 | $22,300,000 | $3,300,000 |
The players under consideration play different positions and came over from different teams. They were signed to their own unique contracts with differences in terms of total years, start/end date, and overall compensation. What’s consistent is the desire from Kwesi Adofo-Mensah to drop the initial cap charge(s) down to bargain bin levels before seeing things rise as the contract moves through its lifetime.

Consider, as well, the numbers in red. Those are upcoming dead money charges if these players don’t get extended. Put differently, cap charges that will get taken out of that year’s budget. They’ve been baked into the contracts by the GM as another way to lessen the initial cap hits for the players he invites to play for the Vikings.
Now, the sneaky upside.
Over the Cap insists that Minnesota is working with roughly $58 million in cap space in 2025. That number is going to fly around faster than fries coming out of a McDonald’s fryer. In-house talent is going to get re-signed, taking a bite out of the total room. Moving in the other direction is the players who are going to get their contracts extended, restructured, or trimmed with a pay cut, putting more space into 2025 (fries flying through the air; numbers jumping around on Adofo-Mensah’s spreadsheet).
Again, lots of shuffling for Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, particularly as March starts to heat up (see the important dates for the offseason; free agency gets going with legal tampering on Monday, March 10th).

The upside: the 2026 cap space is looking rotund. OTC projects that the open room is currently above $100 million. Keep in mind that that’s a number that’s already accounting for sizable cap hits being given to Justin Jefferson ($39M) Brian O’Neill ($23M+), Christian Darrisaw ($23M+), Jonathan Greenard ($22M+), and T.J. Hockenson (21M+).
Before those numbers calcify into immovable cap charges, Adofo-Mensah seems quite likely to shuffle money around, pushing some of the cap charge(s) into the future in the perpetual game of manipulating the NFL’s malleable salary cap. And on and on the game goes as the savvy NFL GM works the numbers to keep things flexible in the immediate.
So, remember that Minnesota sits in a nice spot if we only consider the present moment — the 2025 cap space. The $58 million in open room comes in at 7th in the NFL. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, however, is going to lean into future abundance — the $100M+ in 2026 — to help finance what’s taking place in the short term.
The end result should be another fun free agent frenzy for the Minnesota Vikings.
Editor’s Note: Information from 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 Twitter, as a co-host for Notes from the North, and as the proprietor at The Vikings Gazette, a humble Vikings Substack.