Vikings’ Dead Money Pile is Getting Worse, Soon to Surpass $40M
Coming into March, the Vikings dead money pile wasn’t in bad shape. No longer.
What was originally a hair above $5.6 million is now going to surpass $40 million in unusable cap space. Getting to that level is the result of deciding to move on from RB Aaron Jones, DT Javon Hargrave, and DT Jonathan Allen. Other moves — possibly involving EDGE Jonathan Greenard, RT Brian O’Neill, and/or others — will sink things down further.
The Vikings’ Dead Money Soon to Clear $40 Million
An educated guess puts the Vikings at roughly $50 million in dead money once the dust settles. Not great, right?
The thinking is that other cap moves are still to come. Trading away a talent comes with the benefit of picking up a draft pick and/or a player. So, too, does open cap space get created…but often at the cost of dead money sticking around on the books. All that a team can do is burn it off in any given year.
Consider, as a quick way to explain the issue, a player who agrees to a five-year contract that has a $50 million signing bonus included. We’ll call the fictional player Curt Muffins. Mr. Muffins is now the top passer in Minnesota.
What allows the finances to work is that the $50 million signing bonus gets stretched across the full five years of Muffins’s contract. Or, at least, that’s how it functions for cap charges. So, the first season takes on a $10 million cap charge, the second second season a $10 million cap charge, the third season a $10 million cap charge, and so on.
The great issue arises if/when Mr. Muffins gets cut.
He worked through his first year but flopped, leading to torches and pitchforks if there’s no cut. He gets shown the door accordingly. Doing so offloads a player but at the cost of dead money hitting the books.
What was supposed to be another four years to divvy up the remaining $40 million cap charges from the signing bonus — $10M/season — needs to get accounted for somehow. The NFL insists on signing bonus money hitting the books; the only factor that gets toggled is when. In this scenario, cutting Curt Muffins means taking on $40 million in dead money in the present-day budget.
Something similar is occurring as it relates to the Vikings’ dead money (albeit without the neat-and-tidy numbers of $50M across five years).
Worsening things in the Twin Cities is that some of the players who are being shown the door still have guaranteed money baked into their deals. Paying out the guarantees also worsens the dead money situation.
Consider how the math is looking, with a tip of the cap to Over the Cap:
- Jonathan Allen: $17,333,334
- Javon Hargrave: $10,497,500
- Aaron Jones: $6,800,000
- Initial Pile: $5,608,074
- New Dead Money: $40,238,074
Admittedly, the above number isn’t certain. A trade for one of the players above could lessen the dead money since a new team would inherit the guaranteed money left on the contract (if any at all). Signing bonus commitments stick behind on Minnesota’s budget.
Furthermore, there’s a small chance that a player or two gets designated as a post-June 1st cut. Doing so would spread out the dead money hit across a pair of seasons. But, crucially, the added cap space only opens up in June. So, that’s cap space that can help with signing a draft class or a free agent later on, but it won’t finance spending in March.
Upcoming decisions surrounding T.J. Hockenson, Ryan Kelly, and others will be impacting the budget. In other words, more pain to come as the Vikings get the finances in order.
The NFL’s new league year begins on Wednesday, March 11th.
