A lot of talent could be on the way out
We’re a little more than five weeks away from the start of free agency in the National Football League, and we expect the Minnesota Vikings will be pretty busy given all of the cap space they’re going to have available. Just as important as who might be coming to Minnesota, however, is who might be leaving, and one news outlet shows that there could be a lot of talent walking out the door.
Behind the great E$PN paywall, Matt Bowen has racked and stacked the top 50 names likely to be available in free agency when the 2025 league year starts in mid-March, and five members of the Vikings are on that list, including three in the top 20.
As you’d probably expect, Sam Darnold is the highest-ranked of those five players, coming in at #6 overall and being listed as the top available quarterback. To show the gap in the quality of quarterbacks available in free agency, the next quarterback on the list doesn’t appear until #32 overall (Justin Fields. . .yes, really), and there are only three quarterbacks on the list in total (Russell Wilson checks in at #42). Darnold has put himself in a position to get a pretty serious payday, and there will be plenty of drama over the next few weeks surrounding whether that payday will come with the Vikings or not.
The other four Vikings who appear on the list are:
- OT Cam Robinson (#14)
- CB Bryon Murphy Jr. (#20)
- S Camryn Bynum (#29)
- RB Aaron Jones (#33)
We’ve heard a few rumblings from places about the level of interest the Vikings have in bringing some of those players back. They appear to be more interested in seeing Bynum and Murphy return than Robinson or Jones, but there’s still a lot of time between now and when free agency starts to see what their intentions are.
According to the folks from Over the Cap, the Vikings are currently projected to have a little over $58 million in available cap space for free agent spending and other things. There are things that they could potentially do as far as roster moves and contract restructures to create more cap space before the start of the new league year, but as things stand right now only six teams have more space available than the Vikings do.
I know I keep saying this a lot, but I can’t emphasize enough exactly what an interesting offseason this is shaping up to be for our favorite team. After putting together what is almost certainly the best free agency class in the history of the franchise last offseason, we’ll have to see what Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and company are going to do for an encore.
