Handing out bad contracts is something that every team’s front office dreads. However, it’s also unrealistic to think that there won’t be at least one bad contract on every team. Whether that’s due to simple poor performance, injuries derailing a career, or other external factors, it’s inevitable that a team regrets at least one contract.
For the Minnesota Vikings, that contract is recent free agent acquisition Shaquill Griffin, according to Pro Football Network’s Dallas Robinson. Robinson recently looked at every team’s roster and found the worst contract on each team, and this pick has less to do with Griffin himself and more to do with the circumstances surrounding it.
The Vikings had a clear need at the cornerback position, and Griffin was a solid option to fill that need. The Vikings also gave the veteran cornerback a modest deal, and just one year and slightly over $4.5 million. So why, then, is this deal for a former Pro Bowl cornerback deemed the team’s worst?
Robinson argues that this contract is the team’s worst because of the future ramifications the deal has. Namely that signing Griffin when the team did cancelled out one of the compensatory picks the team would have received in the 2025 NFL Draft for losing free agents Kirk Cousins and Danielle Hunter to the Falcons and Texans respectively.
Had the Vikings waited on signing Griffin until after the May 1st deadline, they would have been able to plug the hole in the secondary while also gaining the full slate of compensatory picks for next year’s draft — a draft where they’re already significantly strapped for capital.
The flip side of that argument is that, had the Vikings waited to sign Griffin, there’s no guarantee that he would have been on the free agent market when the team was ready to make a deal. Still, would that have been such a loss? Would the compensatory pick the Vikings sacrificed to sign Griffin have been better for the team in the long run? Only time will tell.
