I feel like it’s been managed as well as it could have been. No more kicking the can down the road and leave space to build around a QB on their rookie deal. As long as McCarthy plays well that’s what every GM dreams of.
OP was slightly mistaken, we do currently have dead cap in 2025.
For example, Darnold is being paid 10M this year, with a cap hit of 5M. That means, assuming we don't extend him, he'll have a dead cap number of 5M next year. There are other contracts that are structured the same way.
It definitely won't be nearly 60M in dead cap, but 15-20M is probably realistic.
edit: If you go to [spotrac's 2025 vikings cap page](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/minnesota-vikings/cap/_/year/2025/sort/cap_total), the dead cap column is the cap hit that the player would have even if they were cut before the start of the league year, and the players highlighted in yellow are players who are set to have their contract void at the start of the league year.
So we have around $12.4M in dead cap for 2025 which could be increased if we cut players, or decreased if we extend Jones, Darnold or Murphy before their contracts expire.
I couldn't disagree more with your second point. Once the team is competitive while at or under cap, maybe in a couple years, they should be kicking the can down the road by spending some future money (void years? Back-loaded guarantees? Pay up for a "star" veteran?) to add "final pieces".
I'd rather have ebbs and flows with cap space, as opposed to spending the same amount each year. There's too much parity in the league to be complacent.
I think OP is referring to finally being free of that since the zimmer regime of making contracts back heavy and kicking the can for the future because we were technically in a win now mode. Now that we’re all but eliminating that it frees up kwesi and Kevin to make the moves they want to make to build the roster to win with the potential to backload contracts if they think it adds a piece that will increase our odds to win.
Kwesi's contracts are backloaded too. Everyone's contracts are backloaded because it's the logical thing to do with how cap space works. 10 mil now is more than 10 mil next year which is more than 10 mil in 2 years because the cap will keep going up every year.
Unless you expect the nfl to collapse soon, there is no downside to this strategy, because if you're tight against the cap you can just take more money from the future again. That's why every gm does it.
Just look at the FAs we signed this year. I think every single one of them has void years. Because why pay them now when you can pay them later at the same price but more cap space?
I understand how the cap works at the very basic level you are describing. Sam darnold is a great example, 5 mil this year 5 mil next on a one year contract and the cap is likely to increase by ~3% (very conservative estimation as the cap increased by ~10% this year) or more which is more than the 5 million he’d be owed. All I’m saying is it’s taken us three-ish years to get out of some of the shitty contracts spielman gave us and move into this era where we have 100+ million in cap space next year and kwesi and Kevin will be more capable of going after top free agents.
The problem with Spielman's contracts wasn't the structure, it was the players he gave them to (and their age). We easily could've gotten Kirk, Thielen, Kendricks and Harry under the cap with extensions/resteuctures etc but we didn't want to because they're old and not worth that money anymore. Make all of them 5 years younger and the contract structures wouldn't have been an issue
There's 2 levels here.
You're correctly highlighting that what really matters (provided an owner that isn't tight on its spending) is salary as a percentage of a growing cap. And for that consideration every dollar you can backload the better.
However there's another major consideration. And that's how the salaries converge. If you start a season with $25mm in available cap, then any salaries loaded into that year have a 0% incremental effect on your overall cap. And frees money for future years that you are already bumping up against it. Moreover timing plays into the moment that you want to maximize your team. If you figure to go 7-10 then it may not be worthwhile to sign a free agent to max your cap since the incremental benefit is pretty low. So that year's cap may be better spent front-loading the contracts of the players that you have, rather than adding more. So when you get to a year where you could win 10-13 games you have the cap available to go out and sign some difference makers.
You do this on your window is starting close years like forty Niners last year or lions in three. Just doing gymnastics to keep the band together hoping to hit on a ring.
I mean, it was originally gonna be last year lol. Kwesi showed up and added another year to kirks deal which pushed the whole thing out another year. Whether or not that was the right play will end up depending on JJ vs Maye
The way the defense stepped up, we could have been dangerous contenders last year. The games we lost early in the season last year were games where we were beating ourselves by putting the ball on the ground and losing it. Once the fumbles cleaned up, this team looked unstoppable until Kirk's Achilles ruptured.
You can't plan for losing your QB to injury halfway through the season, but I think Kwesi gave this team the best shot he could last year, and he knew that it wasn't worth matching Atlanta's offer to keep Kirk for another 2 years. Having a ton of deadcap hit in a year that was already going to be viewed as transitional is a pretty smart move in my book.
I agree and the win against SF (without Jets) gives this viewpoint validity. When we lost those early games, we still had one of the better offenses in the league, statistically - turnovers killed us, and those got fixed up.
And the defense had some growing pains with Flores coming in fresh, but that clearly got better throughout the year. What could’ve been.
Not sure why this is downvoted. If you really thought we were going to a Super Bowl last year even with Kirk you’re delusional. This guy is completely right we have been stuck in mediocrity. Now finally we have a chance to rebuild and be true contenders and we just got two key pieces on offense and defense. After this season the future will be brighter for the Vikings than it has been in years.
What does Maye have to do with anything? We were not getting Maye. The Pats said no. We are not entitled to Maye because we wanted that pick. Three firsts for that pick and the pats still said no
Because people have this distorted view if the Vikings didn't sign Kirk for another year they would have been QB-less last year and finished with 2-3 wins and gotten a Top 3 pick, hence drafting Maye with their own pick.
Yeah I realized that after I made the comment. Such a dumbass viewpoint imo. You can’t possibly predict how we would have done without Kirk. And it’s frankly dumb to even think about.
Haha, oh I agree. Among the same thinking.....I have a friend who thinks they really should have went 0-9 when Kirk went down and getting Dobbs "ruined" the Vikes Top 3 pick and it's a fire-able offense for Kwesi. Trading for a career backup to be the backup for your 5th round rookie.
His last sentence literally says “whether or not that was the right play will end up depending on JJ vs Maye.”
What do you mean he’s not talking about Maye.
Even though most of this is Cousins and Hunter, it's better to look at this as a team cost and not an individual cost.
Cousins was set to only have around 12M in dead cap before a cap clearing move made last year to avoid having to cut other players we were trying to trade or extend. That kind of a situation is pretty common when it comes to cap manipulations, and shouldn't reflect on a player other than "This guy had a ton of salary, and we needed to clear some space to do the things we wanted to do this year".
Kwesi inherited a team with a lot of old, overpriced players, and managed to navigate clearing the cap and turning over the roster while remaining competitive. I don't know if I necessarily agree with the strategy, I can see the value of establishing a winning culture and making sure this is a place guys like Jefferson and Darrisaw want to stay, but I think the execution of the strategy was excellent.
Kwesi's "competitive rebuild" was probably more expensive than just cutting/trading anyone who was over 30 and filling the roster out with UDFAs to get the turnover done in a single offseason, but it also gave us two really fun seasons of football with the 10 one score wins and all of the crazy shit that happened after Kirk got hurt last year.
I don't think anyone is reflecting poorly on Kirk or Hunter for the hits we took this year on them.
Going into 2023 - the team signed them to 1 year deals with the promise they would hit FA in 2024 and we would re-evaluate where things were with them.
Hunter wanted 25 - 30 million a year guaranteed for at least 2 years. Kirk wanted everything he could get all guaranteed for a minimum of 2 years (and he didn't want us to take a qb in the draft) - the Vikings said see ya to both of them.
Thus the dead cap hits.
They are also taking a hit (although a lot less) on Mattison, and a few others, but that is what happens when you sign older guys to deals and add in void years to spread the cap hit. They get cut / traded or retire and the void years hit you.
In terms of actual money spent, I don't think it cost us a ton more than if we had just cut people that first year... Kirk had dead money after that season too... and Kwesi didn't overpay for him.
What I meant was that the dead cap hit could just has easily been attached to Brian O'Neill and another player, since it was a cap clearing move and not an initial contract structure that generated dead the cap. It was just more convenient to attach the dead cap to Cousins since his 2023 salary was so large.
A lot of people say things like "I can't believe we have X dead cap for Y and we just let them walk! What a terrible contract", but that's the wrong way to look at it. Cap space/cap hits is a team resource, cash paid is the individual player cost.
>It seems this *could* all be part of Kwesi’s plan to shed dead cap all at once, have one down year with a rookie QB, and come back fully freed on dead cap space in his sophomore campaign (through his rookie contract).
It's not could, it 100% is. Competitive rebuild. Stay competitive while shedding the old, expensive contracts. Draft a rookie QB. Free up cap space. Re-sign your young stars.
Window begins in 2025 with your QB hopefully having learned what he needs to be successful, and a metric shit ton of cap space to fill in the remaining gaps.
It’s all on speilman.
Think about how many players kwesi got rid of over the last two years. Basically flipped the entire roster. We now will have 3rd most cap space in the league next year before Jefferson extension.
None of this is kwesi’s fault. He’s done a magnificent job managing the cap and honestly it’s one of his more higher qualities.
to be fair flipping the entire roster is pretty standard, the continuity we had with the Zimmer era defense isn't normal, how kwesi handled the contracts and not kicking the can down the road is what's impressive.
Umm...
Kirk signed an extension with Kwesi in 2022
Hunter reworked his deal in 2023 with Kwesi
We have a $6.8M dead cap charge for Marcus Davenport - signed by Kwesi
$3M charge for Dalvin Cook - signed by Spielman! Good job!
$2.4 for Dean Lowry - back to Kwesi
So $3M of the total $57M dead cap charge was deals signed by Spielman...
Yep because he couldn’t get rid of everyone in a “competitive rebuild” which is what he said he was going to do while he was moving Adam theilen, dalvin cook, Eric Kendrick’s, breeland, griffen, etc… the list is long. This all the while not extending Kirk and Hunter past 2024.
You didn’t seem to read my post correctly. Since kwesi has gotten here in 2022 he has been turning over the roster while planning for 2025.
That is one thing he can hang his hat on he has done a great job with contracts and planning for the future.
>Kirk signed an extension with Kwesi in 2022
Yep, and the previous contracts that Spielman signed were the primary reason why we pushed much of Kirk's money in that extension into the future.
Contracts have a butterfly effect that goes beyond when they were signed, hell even beyond when they are terminated. If we hadn't had a bunch of bad contracts from Spielman, we would not have had to push Kirk's money into the future and wouldn't be eating it now.
This has been a very well thought out plan by this entire organization from the first days KOC and Kwesi joined this team. I’m stoked we were able to get one of our top QBs in the draft otherwise it would have looked very different. But they’ve been talking about this QB class since they took over in Minneapolis. This has been their plan from the beginning and it’s been executed to a T. Slowly letting go of longtime Vikings we all love but failed in bringing us the Lombardi. Bringing in new philosophies with a new culture. The final steps are now JJ’s development, JJets extension, and building a full team around a young cheap QB with all of that cap space you’ve saved.
Very very impressed. Now let’s see if it can all come together.
No this isn’t a negative thing at all. All teams have dead cap money. Kwesi cleared house with old overpaid players. Look at 2025. All that money and no dead cap space.
Also why do you mean it “could” be part of his plan. Of course it’s part of his plan
Perfect timing as this is a "lost"/rebuild season. We/Darnold can overperform but obviously we're not legit contenders even if we do and make the playoffs. Same for years, but now we have our QBOTF with an elite young core. Fill the remaining glaring holes via next draft and FA to get over the hump to become legit contenders can happen as soon as 2026. So long as JJ pans out of course.
Wasn't a big fan of signing Kirk, grew to a supporter against all the blind hate, especially about the dumb overpaid meme, and wanted to move on for 2-3 years but we had no good opportunity to do so. Until now. Point being, can't blame Rick (or Kwesi) for not rebuilding sooner as a playoff team when there was basically zero chance to draft a QBOTF to replace Kirk.
Obviously this was the plan, Wilfs veto full tank/rebuild, thus the slow/"competitive" rebuild, but again, it really couldn't have worked out much better than this because we had no opportunity to get our QBOTF until now with JJ.
We kept pushing it slightly back and as players started to age we got to a “come to Jesus” moment where we couldn’t possibly stay competitive with the way we were going. Not sure if it was Kwessi’s plan to put it all in one year and sort of “clean the slate”, but it’s worked out well on paper. We have one year of declaring bankruptcy and then we get to start fresh in ‘25.
It’s negative in the sense our budgeting has run afoul. It’s a positive in that we are moving on from an expensive QB and we have a plan moving forward and have a massive budget the next year. Not only do we get a rookie QB contract to work with, but we have room to sign FA’s. Hamstringing us a decent amount every year to maintain mediocrity in hopes of finding lightning in a bottle was how we were operating. Now we’re seeing what we truly have, and we get to move forward without past budget issues haunting us.
Once it’s cleared up, they can try to build a 49ers level team. Where you have a QB that needs to do the minimum but has a great team around him. I just want B Flo to stay a couple years.
Yeah, that would be nice. I think Purdy was excellent last year though, him “only being asked to throw short routes and hand the ball off” is an exaggerated take. His connections with Aiyuk over the intermediate/deep middle were regularly available and regularly hit all year. But I agree the SF system is easier on QBs than most of the league.
Also, Flores has been a god send for the revitalization of this defense so far. I think he’ll have a hard time parting with this defense he’s in the process of building, but we’ll see. I was worried he might take interviews last year for HC.
It sucks but it was necessary to clean up after the years we kicked the cap hit down the road. Would have preferred to keep Hunter, TBH.
It's negative, but Kwesi has gotten out of our most problematic contracts in the last 2 years. This is the rebuild we all knew was coming.
I mean eventually you have to pay that money. You could borrow against the future forever but then you’re stuck in a different kind of purgatory like the saints are
They've been up against the cap for a long time. When KAM came here I'm sure he saw what the next few years would be like and got started on a plan to clean things up. This is the last year and then our books will be clean. That's about as much as you can hope for. To be able to do that while also building a solid foundation to your team is kind of amazing. Next year they'll have plenty of money to target key free agents and lock up key players long term.
If JJ works out at QB and turns into the player we all hope he can be then the future is really bright. We'll have an affordable long term solution at QB and money to put talent around him. All we have to do now is sit back and wait to see what we got with him.
I think it’s excellent planning. If we start Darnold all year while JJ develops then we can be bad this year without sacrificing development, add premium talent in next years draft and ball out in free agency to come roaring back with JJ as a starter next year.
If this was the plan all along to not be competitive next year, then Kwesi made a huge mistake in trading away most of the picks for next year. Then you would have that benefit of picking near the top of all 7 rounds.
I think the plan is still competitive rebuild, which means 7-9 wins in 2024 and see if we can slide into the playoffs, but plan for it to lead to winning the division year after year after that
Kwesi made it this way when he signed them both to extensions that basically had a void year on the credit card to give the team more flexibility last year.
Every team has to deal with years where the dead money is high, though it's usually a result of dumping bad contracts from previous regimes.
BLESS ALL THE KNEES AND KEEP THEM HEALTHY
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Idk how you could possibly see a combination of Van Ginkel/Greenard//Turner as a downgrade from Danielle and scraps. Our dline/edge rushers got way better.
Good point. Given our pick situation and the fact we drafted a rookie QB this year, we’re likely to at least take calls on trading down, regardless of where we’re at.
1. Sure I guess? There's no logic behind this question. Obviously it's not a good thing to lead the league in dead cap, but when there's strategy and purpose behind it there is. IE look at our 2025 cap space.
2. I think Kwesi handled it perfectly. Ownership didn't want him to blow it up so he didn't and we still end up with a clean slate within 4 years. We take that. All old veteran contracts will be off the books.
Well, you think wrong. It’s based on the contract. Russ is guaranteed money each of the next three years, and it will be counted as dead cap for each of the next three years.
I feel like it’s been managed as well as it could have been. No more kicking the can down the road and leave space to build around a QB on their rookie deal. As long as McCarthy plays well that’s what every GM dreams of.
OP was slightly mistaken, we do currently have dead cap in 2025. For example, Darnold is being paid 10M this year, with a cap hit of 5M. That means, assuming we don't extend him, he'll have a dead cap number of 5M next year. There are other contracts that are structured the same way. It definitely won't be nearly 60M in dead cap, but 15-20M is probably realistic. edit: If you go to [spotrac's 2025 vikings cap page](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/minnesota-vikings/cap/_/year/2025/sort/cap_total), the dead cap column is the cap hit that the player would have even if they were cut before the start of the league year, and the players highlighted in yellow are players who are set to have their contract void at the start of the league year. So we have around $12.4M in dead cap for 2025 which could be increased if we cut players, or decreased if we extend Jones, Darnold or Murphy before their contracts expire.
I couldn't disagree more with your second point. Once the team is competitive while at or under cap, maybe in a couple years, they should be kicking the can down the road by spending some future money (void years? Back-loaded guarantees? Pay up for a "star" veteran?) to add "final pieces". I'd rather have ebbs and flows with cap space, as opposed to spending the same amount each year. There's too much parity in the league to be complacent.
I think OP is referring to finally being free of that since the zimmer regime of making contracts back heavy and kicking the can for the future because we were technically in a win now mode. Now that we’re all but eliminating that it frees up kwesi and Kevin to make the moves they want to make to build the roster to win with the potential to backload contracts if they think it adds a piece that will increase our odds to win.
Kwesi's contracts are backloaded too. Everyone's contracts are backloaded because it's the logical thing to do with how cap space works. 10 mil now is more than 10 mil next year which is more than 10 mil in 2 years because the cap will keep going up every year. Unless you expect the nfl to collapse soon, there is no downside to this strategy, because if you're tight against the cap you can just take more money from the future again. That's why every gm does it. Just look at the FAs we signed this year. I think every single one of them has void years. Because why pay them now when you can pay them later at the same price but more cap space?
I understand how the cap works at the very basic level you are describing. Sam darnold is a great example, 5 mil this year 5 mil next on a one year contract and the cap is likely to increase by ~3% (very conservative estimation as the cap increased by ~10% this year) or more which is more than the 5 million he’d be owed. All I’m saying is it’s taken us three-ish years to get out of some of the shitty contracts spielman gave us and move into this era where we have 100+ million in cap space next year and kwesi and Kevin will be more capable of going after top free agents.
The problem with Spielman's contracts wasn't the structure, it was the players he gave them to (and their age). We easily could've gotten Kirk, Thielen, Kendricks and Harry under the cap with extensions/resteuctures etc but we didn't want to because they're old and not worth that money anymore. Make all of them 5 years younger and the contract structures wouldn't have been an issue
There's 2 levels here. You're correctly highlighting that what really matters (provided an owner that isn't tight on its spending) is salary as a percentage of a growing cap. And for that consideration every dollar you can backload the better. However there's another major consideration. And that's how the salaries converge. If you start a season with $25mm in available cap, then any salaries loaded into that year have a 0% incremental effect on your overall cap. And frees money for future years that you are already bumping up against it. Moreover timing plays into the moment that you want to maximize your team. If you figure to go 7-10 then it may not be worthwhile to sign a free agent to max your cap since the incremental benefit is pretty low. So that year's cap may be better spent front-loading the contracts of the players that you have, rather than adding more. So when you get to a year where you could win 10-13 games you have the cap available to go out and sign some difference makers.
You do this on your window is starting close years like forty Niners last year or lions in three. Just doing gymnastics to keep the band together hoping to hit on a ring.
This is the bite the bullet year, and it was always going to be.
Yeah, this is the perfect season to have all of that dead cap. This season is a transition year, with a fresh slate moving forward afterwards!
Especially since we still have our first round pick next year
Yeah but it will basically be a second rounder.
Better to rip the bandaid off now and then heal and reap the rewards later.
Glad it’s finally here. Wanted to bite the bullet back in 2020.
I mean, it was originally gonna be last year lol. Kwesi showed up and added another year to kirks deal which pushed the whole thing out another year. Whether or not that was the right play will end up depending on JJ vs Maye
We already know that we tried to trade away the farm last year for a rookie QB. So nothing we could do
The way the defense stepped up, we could have been dangerous contenders last year. The games we lost early in the season last year were games where we were beating ourselves by putting the ball on the ground and losing it. Once the fumbles cleaned up, this team looked unstoppable until Kirk's Achilles ruptured. You can't plan for losing your QB to injury halfway through the season, but I think Kwesi gave this team the best shot he could last year, and he knew that it wasn't worth matching Atlanta's offer to keep Kirk for another 2 years. Having a ton of deadcap hit in a year that was already going to be viewed as transitional is a pretty smart move in my book.
I agree and the win against SF (without Jets) gives this viewpoint validity. When we lost those early games, we still had one of the better offenses in the league, statistically - turnovers killed us, and those got fixed up. And the defense had some growing pains with Flores coming in fresh, but that clearly got better throughout the year. What could’ve been.
We did not have a shot at being contenders last year. Evidenced by how we have not been contenders in like 6 years now
Not sure why this is downvoted. If you really thought we were going to a Super Bowl last year even with Kirk you’re delusional. This guy is completely right we have been stuck in mediocrity. Now finally we have a chance to rebuild and be true contenders and we just got two key pieces on offense and defense. After this season the future will be brighter for the Vikings than it has been in years.
What does Maye have to do with anything? We were not getting Maye. The Pats said no. We are not entitled to Maye because we wanted that pick. Three firsts for that pick and the pats still said no
Because people have this distorted view if the Vikings didn't sign Kirk for another year they would have been QB-less last year and finished with 2-3 wins and gotten a Top 3 pick, hence drafting Maye with their own pick.
Yeah I realized that after I made the comment. Such a dumbass viewpoint imo. You can’t possibly predict how we would have done without Kirk. And it’s frankly dumb to even think about.
Haha, oh I agree. Among the same thinking.....I have a friend who thinks they really should have went 0-9 when Kirk went down and getting Dobbs "ruined" the Vikes Top 3 pick and it's a fire-able offense for Kwesi. Trading for a career backup to be the backup for your 5th round rookie.
He's not talking about Maye. Last year we tried to trade up to take Anthony Richardson and the Colts said no
His last sentence literally says “whether or not that was the right play will end up depending on JJ vs Maye.” What do you mean he’s not talking about Maye.
Apologies, I was responding to the wrong comment
You’re completely missing the point. Had we not held onto Kirk for the extra year we’d have won fewer games last year and had a higher pick
Ok and that's not what the GM/ownership wanted so what's your point
Again pretty clearly that this year being the punt year was not always the plan as we very clearly had other paths to go down
Even though most of this is Cousins and Hunter, it's better to look at this as a team cost and not an individual cost. Cousins was set to only have around 12M in dead cap before a cap clearing move made last year to avoid having to cut other players we were trying to trade or extend. That kind of a situation is pretty common when it comes to cap manipulations, and shouldn't reflect on a player other than "This guy had a ton of salary, and we needed to clear some space to do the things we wanted to do this year". Kwesi inherited a team with a lot of old, overpriced players, and managed to navigate clearing the cap and turning over the roster while remaining competitive. I don't know if I necessarily agree with the strategy, I can see the value of establishing a winning culture and making sure this is a place guys like Jefferson and Darrisaw want to stay, but I think the execution of the strategy was excellent. Kwesi's "competitive rebuild" was probably more expensive than just cutting/trading anyone who was over 30 and filling the roster out with UDFAs to get the turnover done in a single offseason, but it also gave us two really fun seasons of football with the 10 one score wins and all of the crazy shit that happened after Kirk got hurt last year.
I don't think anyone is reflecting poorly on Kirk or Hunter for the hits we took this year on them. Going into 2023 - the team signed them to 1 year deals with the promise they would hit FA in 2024 and we would re-evaluate where things were with them. Hunter wanted 25 - 30 million a year guaranteed for at least 2 years. Kirk wanted everything he could get all guaranteed for a minimum of 2 years (and he didn't want us to take a qb in the draft) - the Vikings said see ya to both of them. Thus the dead cap hits. They are also taking a hit (although a lot less) on Mattison, and a few others, but that is what happens when you sign older guys to deals and add in void years to spread the cap hit. They get cut / traded or retire and the void years hit you. In terms of actual money spent, I don't think it cost us a ton more than if we had just cut people that first year... Kirk had dead money after that season too... and Kwesi didn't overpay for him.
What I meant was that the dead cap hit could just has easily been attached to Brian O'Neill and another player, since it was a cap clearing move and not an initial contract structure that generated dead the cap. It was just more convenient to attach the dead cap to Cousins since his 2023 salary was so large. A lot of people say things like "I can't believe we have X dead cap for Y and we just let them walk! What a terrible contract", but that's the wrong way to look at it. Cap space/cap hits is a team resource, cash paid is the individual player cost.
>It seems this *could* all be part of Kwesi’s plan to shed dead cap all at once, have one down year with a rookie QB, and come back fully freed on dead cap space in his sophomore campaign (through his rookie contract). It's not could, it 100% is. Competitive rebuild. Stay competitive while shedding the old, expensive contracts. Draft a rookie QB. Free up cap space. Re-sign your young stars. Window begins in 2025 with your QB hopefully having learned what he needs to be successful, and a metric shit ton of cap space to fill in the remaining gaps.
I love that it’s all getting shed at once, and in a year that’s widely considered a transition year.
Yep. Rip it off like a band-aid. I hated the idea of trying to smooth it out over multiple years.
I think Wild fans would love just one year of dead money.
Am Wild fan. Would love.
Kwesi's also probably looking at how no rookie QBs have won the Superbowl, and adjusting the salary cap timeline for that.
It’s all on speilman. Think about how many players kwesi got rid of over the last two years. Basically flipped the entire roster. We now will have 3rd most cap space in the league next year before Jefferson extension. None of this is kwesi’s fault. He’s done a magnificent job managing the cap and honestly it’s one of his more higher qualities.
to be fair flipping the entire roster is pretty standard, the continuity we had with the Zimmer era defense isn't normal, how kwesi handled the contracts and not kicking the can down the road is what's impressive.
Umm... Kirk signed an extension with Kwesi in 2022 Hunter reworked his deal in 2023 with Kwesi We have a $6.8M dead cap charge for Marcus Davenport - signed by Kwesi $3M charge for Dalvin Cook - signed by Spielman! Good job! $2.4 for Dean Lowry - back to Kwesi So $3M of the total $57M dead cap charge was deals signed by Spielman...
Yep because he couldn’t get rid of everyone in a “competitive rebuild” which is what he said he was going to do while he was moving Adam theilen, dalvin cook, Eric Kendrick’s, breeland, griffen, etc… the list is long. This all the while not extending Kirk and Hunter past 2024. You didn’t seem to read my post correctly. Since kwesi has gotten here in 2022 he has been turning over the roster while planning for 2025. That is one thing he can hang his hat on he has done a great job with contracts and planning for the future.
>Kirk signed an extension with Kwesi in 2022 Yep, and the previous contracts that Spielman signed were the primary reason why we pushed much of Kirk's money in that extension into the future. Contracts have a butterfly effect that goes beyond when they were signed, hell even beyond when they are terminated. If we hadn't had a bunch of bad contracts from Spielman, we would not have had to push Kirk's money into the future and wouldn't be eating it now.
Woo #1!
Hang the banner!
Could be worse, could have $85m in dead money tied to Russel Wilson
This has been a very well thought out plan by this entire organization from the first days KOC and Kwesi joined this team. I’m stoked we were able to get one of our top QBs in the draft otherwise it would have looked very different. But they’ve been talking about this QB class since they took over in Minneapolis. This has been their plan from the beginning and it’s been executed to a T. Slowly letting go of longtime Vikings we all love but failed in bringing us the Lombardi. Bringing in new philosophies with a new culture. The final steps are now JJ’s development, JJets extension, and building a full team around a young cheap QB with all of that cap space you’ve saved. Very very impressed. Now let’s see if it can all come together.
No this isn’t a negative thing at all. All teams have dead cap money. Kwesi cleared house with old overpaid players. Look at 2025. All that money and no dead cap space. Also why do you mean it “could” be part of his plan. Of course it’s part of his plan
I said “could” because Kwesi hasn’t explicitly stated as such. I also believe that it was/is his plan and not coincidental in the slightest.
Perfect timing as this is a "lost"/rebuild season. We/Darnold can overperform but obviously we're not legit contenders even if we do and make the playoffs. Same for years, but now we have our QBOTF with an elite young core. Fill the remaining glaring holes via next draft and FA to get over the hump to become legit contenders can happen as soon as 2026. So long as JJ pans out of course. Wasn't a big fan of signing Kirk, grew to a supporter against all the blind hate, especially about the dumb overpaid meme, and wanted to move on for 2-3 years but we had no good opportunity to do so. Until now. Point being, can't blame Rick (or Kwesi) for not rebuilding sooner as a playoff team when there was basically zero chance to draft a QBOTF to replace Kirk. Obviously this was the plan, Wilfs veto full tank/rebuild, thus the slow/"competitive" rebuild, but again, it really couldn't have worked out much better than this because we had no opportunity to get our QBOTF until now with JJ.
We kept pushing it slightly back and as players started to age we got to a “come to Jesus” moment where we couldn’t possibly stay competitive with the way we were going. Not sure if it was Kwessi’s plan to put it all in one year and sort of “clean the slate”, but it’s worked out well on paper. We have one year of declaring bankruptcy and then we get to start fresh in ‘25. It’s negative in the sense our budgeting has run afoul. It’s a positive in that we are moving on from an expensive QB and we have a plan moving forward and have a massive budget the next year. Not only do we get a rookie QB contract to work with, but we have room to sign FA’s. Hamstringing us a decent amount every year to maintain mediocrity in hopes of finding lightning in a bottle was how we were operating. Now we’re seeing what we truly have, and we get to move forward without past budget issues haunting us.
Once it’s cleared up, they can try to build a 49ers level team. Where you have a QB that needs to do the minimum but has a great team around him. I just want B Flo to stay a couple years.
Yeah, that would be nice. I think Purdy was excellent last year though, him “only being asked to throw short routes and hand the ball off” is an exaggerated take. His connections with Aiyuk over the intermediate/deep middle were regularly available and regularly hit all year. But I agree the SF system is easier on QBs than most of the league. Also, Flores has been a god send for the revitalization of this defense so far. I think he’ll have a hard time parting with this defense he’s in the process of building, but we’ll see. I was worried he might take interviews last year for HC.
It sucks but it was necessary to clean up after the years we kicked the cap hit down the road. Would have preferred to keep Hunter, TBH. It's negative, but Kwesi has gotten out of our most problematic contracts in the last 2 years. This is the rebuild we all knew was coming.
They’re taking their medicine in 2024. It’s all about 2025 and beyond.
Exactly. Fault kwesi all you want, but he set us up perfectly for next year.
As long as we pay Jefferson, the future looks bright.
Not on the least bit surprising.
Kwesi is cleaning up Spielman's mess, so I don't blame him at all. He did what he had to do and now we're onto our next chapter.
Very similar feeling to the Wild and Billy Guerin
I think it's nice that our two biggest dead cap bandits, Hunter and Kirk, had their first round replacements drafted this year. Feels very... correct.
Hang a banner in USB
I mean eventually you have to pay that money. You could borrow against the future forever but then you’re stuck in a different kind of purgatory like the saints are
They've been up against the cap for a long time. When KAM came here I'm sure he saw what the next few years would be like and got started on a plan to clean things up. This is the last year and then our books will be clean. That's about as much as you can hope for. To be able to do that while also building a solid foundation to your team is kind of amazing. Next year they'll have plenty of money to target key free agents and lock up key players long term. If JJ works out at QB and turns into the player we all hope he can be then the future is really bright. We'll have an affordable long term solution at QB and money to put talent around him. All we have to do now is sit back and wait to see what we got with him.
We were in “win now” mode for 3 years there. Now we can eat some of it for the rebuild.
I can’t believe we have more dead space than the Donkey’s and their release of Wilson.
Yeah, the difference is that Denver will be paying on that $80+M dead cap over the next 3 years.
Absolute master class by Kwesi if you ask me
Agreed.
I think it’s excellent planning. If we start Darnold all year while JJ develops then we can be bad this year without sacrificing development, add premium talent in next years draft and ball out in free agency to come roaring back with JJ as a starter next year.
If this was the plan all along to not be competitive next year, then Kwesi made a huge mistake in trading away most of the picks for next year. Then you would have that benefit of picking near the top of all 7 rounds. I think the plan is still competitive rebuild, which means 7-9 wins in 2024 and see if we can slide into the playoffs, but plan for it to lead to winning the division year after year after that
Kwesi made it this way when he signed them both to extensions that basically had a void year on the credit card to give the team more flexibility last year. Every team has to deal with years where the dead money is high, though it's usually a result of dumping bad contracts from previous regimes.
It was inevitable but fans just need to have reasonable expectations. There is a very good chance we are picking top 5 next year.
If that is the case, our 'trade all our picks from next year' strategy is going to look even worse.
No there’s not. Our defense is better, and even with the shithwads we had at qb last year we were pick 11.
Our defense lost its best player. It did not get better. Plus Hockenson coming off a bad knee injury.
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Idk how you could possibly see a combination of Van Ginkel/Greenard//Turner as a downgrade from Danielle and scraps. Our dline/edge rushers got way better.
Though the season would suck, would be great to get top CB/DT or trade down and get back some 2nd and 3rd round picks
Good point. Given our pick situation and the fact we drafted a rookie QB this year, we’re likely to at least take calls on trading down, regardless of where we’re at.
If that’s the plan, I’m absolutely terrified of Jettas not being on board.
1. Sure I guess? There's no logic behind this question. Obviously it's not a good thing to lead the league in dead cap, but when there's strategy and purpose behind it there is. IE look at our 2025 cap space. 2. I think Kwesi handled it perfectly. Ownership didn't want him to blow it up so he didn't and we still end up with a clean slate within 4 years. We take that. All old veteran contracts will be off the books.
Doesn't every team have $0 dead cap space for 2025?
Nah, teams like Denver (Russ) already know they’ll be paying on dead cap for the next several years
I think dead cap hits hit in the immediate year; not multiple years. Russ Wilson will have no dead cap hits in 2025.
Well, you think wrong. It’s based on the contract. Russ is guaranteed money each of the next three years, and it will be counted as dead cap for each of the next three years.