Minnesota Vikings
Projected Cap Space: $60.7 million
Draft Picks: 4
- 1st (No. 24)
- 3rd (No. 97, comp)
- 5th (No. 140, CLE)
- 5th (No. 161)
Notable Free Agents:
- QB Sam Darnold
- OT Cam Robinson
- CB Byron Murphy
- S Camryn Bynum
- RB Aaron Jones
- OLB Patrick Jones II
- QB Daniel Jones
- CB Stephon Gilmore
- CB Shaquill Griffin
- RB Cam Akers
- G Dalton Risner
- DT Jonathan Bullard
- OLB Jihad Ward
- DT Jerry Tillery
- OL David Quessenberry
- TE Johnny Mundt
- P Ryan Wright (RFA)
Top Three Needs
1 – Cornerback
The good news for the Vikings is they have a bounty of cap space to work with in 2025 and were able to keep DC Brian Flores for a third year after he drew head coaching interest. That’s a major win as Flores is running a scheme that’s unlike any other team and gives Minnesota a legitimate edge, one that would have been hard to replicate.
The bad news is the Vikings have a ton of pending free agents that will eat into that cap space, and many of them are on defense which will damage the continuity Minnesota gets from bringing back Flores. Right now the Vikings’ top three cornerbacks are all set to be free agents and there are real doubts about if they’ll be back. Murphy will be looking to cash in after settling for a two-year deal the last time he was a free agent, while Gilmore and Griffin are on the older side for the position.
The pipeline isn’t stocked behind them, either. The Vikings have drafted four cornerbacks in the past three years under GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and just one of them, 2023 third-rounder Mekhi Blackmon, is still on the roster. There’s a great chance the Vikings try again in the draft but with just four picks right now, they will have no choice but to fill out the rest of the room in free agency.
2 – Guard
Obviously the Vikings have some uncertainty about who will start at quarterback with Darnold a pending free agent and 2024 first-round QB J.J. McCarthy still essentially a rookie after missing all year with a knee injury. But Vikings HC Kevin O’Connell has shown a knack for getting the most out of whoever is under center, whether it’s Darnold, Kirk Cousins or Joshua Dobbs, which makes Minnesota about as well-equipped as any team to handle this. It doesn’t hurt to have a killer supporting cast with WR Justin Jefferson, the best at his position in football, another first-round receiver in Jordan Addison, TE T.J. Hockenson and an excellent tackle duo of Christian Darrisaw/Brian O’Neill.
The weakest spot of Minnesota’s offense is probably guard, where they’ve cycled through iterations including Risner, Ed Ingram and Blake Brandel over the past two years. Ingram is a former second-round pick who hasn’t lived up to his draft status and Risner has been signed after the draft in each of the past two years. Minnesota has indicated that upgrading this area of the roster for good is going to be a high priority this offseason, in order to continue providing a quality environment for whoever is under center, protect the tackles with Darrisaw coming off a major knee injury and allow the team to create more balance via the running game.
3 – Safety
The turnover in the secondary isn’t limited to cornerback. The Vikings could be looking at two new starting safeties with Bynum’s expiring deal and the possible retirement of 36-year-old Harrison Smith. Bynum in particular has emerged into a player the Vikings would love to keep but it will all depend on what his market ends up being and how the Vikings juggle their needs versus their available cap space.
Most teams don’t put a huge premium on the safety position but in Flores’ defense safeties carry extra importance because of how much he asks them to do. There’s also a lot of communication required and Flores regularly plays three or more safeties at a time. Veteran S Josh Metellus is still under contract but it seems like the Vikings will need to add at least one and potentially two more starters here if they can’t re-sign Bynum.
One Big Question
Can the Vikings stick the landing at quarterback?
Despite the way the season ended with a thud, the 2024 Vikings were still a remarkable success. No one had any serious expectations for the team after letting Cousins walk, signing Darnold to a bridge deal and drafting McCarthy. Even if some people thought the pairing of Darnold and O’Connell could be great for the quarterback, no one saw a 14-3 season coming, or Darnold throwing 35 touchdown passes.
Unfortunately the way the circumstances set up, even a remarkable breakout season like that doesn’t clarify the quarterback position for the Vikings for the future. Darnold put up two clunkers in his last two games, which unfortunately were the most important of Minnesota’s season with a chance for the No. 1 seed on the line in the regular season finale against Detroit and of course an elimination game against the Rams in the playoffs. Those were an uncomfortable reminder that the previous 16 games of mostly stellar play were the aberration in Darnold’s career to this point.
The presence of McCarthy is also a major confounder. Minnesota has tons of confidence in McCarthy as evidenced by their trade to land him in the top ten last year. He was impressing the Vikings during camp and before he got hurt there was a growing murmur that he could unseat Darnold sooner than anyone expected. Despite all that, McCarthy remains a major unknown and a significant projection for a Vikings team that now knows it can be a major player in the NFC. Handing the reins to McCarthy would be a major risk, and it would also go against O’Connell’s plan last year to make sure McCarthy didn’t start before he was ready. They could re-sign a bridge option like Jones or another veteran, but that would also be a major downgrade from Darnold.
There’s no simple answer. The Vikings would love to run it back just the way they had it last year but Darnold will cost exponentially more and have more options in terms of teams willing to commit to him as a starter. Fourteen wins is a heck of a ceiling but it would also be understandable if the Vikings had doubts about if they could win a Super Bowl while committing major money to Darnold. Meanwhile, there’s no guarantee McCarthy ever has a season as good as the one Darnold just put up. But the book on his career has hardly been started, and he could end up having a higher ceiling than Darnold in the end.
There’s an economic factor at play here. Ultimately the only way for the Vikings to guarantee they keep Darnold from reaching free agency, where most expect he’d be able to land something similar to the three-year, $100 million deal the Buccaneers gave QB Baker Mayfield, is the franchise tag. The tag, whether it’s the franchise tender or the transition tag, would eat up the majority of Minnesota’s available cap space this offseason. With how many pending free agents the team has, plus with how few draft picks, that’s a problem.
Ultimately this is a tightrope the Vikings will have to navigate carefully with no guarantee they stick the dismount. If there’s a bright side, it’s that in just a few years O’Connell has shown the rare ability to elevate just about any quarterback who gets plugged into the offense. Perhaps the answer to the question of whether it’s Darnold, McCarthy or an unknown third option is that it doesn’t matter.
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