With reports of the 2021 salary cap floor, where does that leave the Vikings?
As reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter, 2021’s salary cap will be a minimum of $180 million. With that in mind, Minnesota will still have to cut back on certain contracts, but it wouldn’t be nearly as costly as the base salary cap being even $10 million lower.
Over The Cap currently projects the Vikings to be more than 9.4 million over the salary cap, assuming the base cap space is $180.5 million for 2021. So that would leave Minnesota a little under $10 million over the salary cap if Schefter’s reported minimum cap ends up being the salary cap.
Also, since $180 million is the lowest the cap can be, Minnesota could get lucky and end up with a base salary cap of something higher. If it does end up being $180 million, though, the Vikings and 11 other NFL teams will be over the cap.
Minnesota might still have to restructure, cut or trade key veterans such as Kyle Rudolph, Anthony Barr, Riley Reiff and Harrison Smith. There’s also the possibility that the team could extend Kirk Cousins, lessening his cap hit on 2021, but that of course adds more money to later years.
