Just 17 months into the job as the Minnesota Vikings general manager, we are still trying to understand the thought process he utilizes in how he is building this team. He has signed multiple free agents to contracts and only one of them received a contract longer than two years. That was outside linebacker Za’Darius Smith.
There are a lot of reasons why that is with maintaining flexibility being the biggest one, but they all share something in common.
Age and/or injury concerns.
Smith fit both of those categories and the contract ended up being a great value for the Vikings. They paid him just over $10 million in cash for 80 pressures and 9.5 sacks. That’s a great value for the Vikings. It was also structured in a way that the third year looked fake at over a $20 million cap hit. It was also structured so that the Vikings would only incur a $3.33 million dead cap hit if he didn’t play much due to his injury history.
The contracts for Marcus Davenport and Byron Murphy Jr. are both examples of Adofo-Mensah betting on high upside. They each have a concerning history of injury, but the short-term nature of their contracts make it a calculated risk without a major penalty if they don’t work out. If they show their high-end ability and stay healthy, the void years attached to the contract make them both easy to extend. He is setting them up for extensions if they prove themselves.
You could also have said the same about Smith, who they could have modified due to his success, but it worked out in a different way due to factors that we don’t completely know.
On the age front, Dean Lowry is getting older at 28 and they gave him a two-year deal, which would in theory take him through his prime. Smith was also over 30 when he signed his essentially 1-2 year contract. Quarterback Kirk Cousins also fits that same criteria with his age now 35.
Flexibility in continuing to build this roster will continue to be a priority for this franchise in building the team, but that doesn’t mean Adofo-Mensah won’t sign longer-term deals. Players like Justin Jefferson and Christain Darrisaw are going to get at least three-year extensions and they will both have age and injury history on their side and not be viewed as a negative. Look for those contracts to be filled with movable money to make the Vikings as flexible as possible.
The one thing you can count on with Adofo-Mensah is for each decision to be well thought out and be laced with context with the future in mind. He has structured his contracts like that up to this point and don’t expect that to change moving forward.