Executive Rob Brzezinski is considered very good at a specific and important task: Helping the Vikings navigate the tricky NFL salary cap with creative contract structures that give Minnesota a chance to compete in both the present and future.
But these days we can all be Brzezinski — and by extension Vikings General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah — with the push of a few buttons.
Navigate to Spotrac, a good source of NFL team salary cap information, and you can choose a "roster and salary cap manager" option. From there, you can cut players, restructure contracts and add free agents for the Vikings — all hypothetical, of course, but also a very real exercise considering the Vikings are more than $20 million over the cap heading into 2023 and will need to clear tons of space to be in compliance with league rules and to add players to their roster.
I took a spin the other day, as I talked about on Tuesday's Daily Delivery podcast.
Getting under the cap? Oh, it's not that hard!
I released wide receiver Adam Thielen, resulting in a lot of "dead money" but saving $6.5 million on next year's cap. Harrison Smith? Your deal is getting restructured, saving $9 million on the cap. Za'Darius Smith, Dalvin Cook, Eric Kendricks, Jordan Hicks and C.J. Ham? Sorry, you're cut, too. All it took was clicking on a red "x" a few times.
Boom. Just like that the Vikings are $31 million under the cap. Plenty of room to sign some players and draft picks, with enough left over to think about a Justin Jefferson extension.
But ... um ... don't you kind of like those players? Haven't a lot of them been around for a long time. Who exactly is going to play running back, wide receiver and linebacker next year?
