Danielle Hunter and the end of team-friendly deals

The Vikings' star defensive end is the latest in a growing list of players who once took team-friendly deals now being unhappy

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By Matthew Coller

Are there truth to all rumors this time?

I’ll admit that if I explained to my college journalism professor 12 years ago that I needed to take a player’s likes on Twitter as serious evidence of unhappiness, he would have lost his mind but it was only one year ago that a Stefon Diggs tweet kickstarted a trade from Minnesota to Buffalo.

So when Vikings defensive end Danielle Hunter liked a bunch of tweets from different fan bases about potential trades, it sent up another flare that all is not well between the Vikings and their star pass rusher.

That’s 2021 for you.

Of course, there’s more parallels than just social media interaction between the Hunter and Diggs situation.

Last year at the NFL Combine, I asked GM Rick Spielman whether Diggs had requested a trade.

“No,” he said.

Last week, colleague Chad Graff of The Athletic asked Spielman whether there was truth to the NFL Network report that Hunter wanted to either be traded or made the highest paid defensive end in the league.

“No,” Spielman responded.

There are some differences between the two situations. (Yes, Hunter has become “a situation”). Hunter hasn’t dropped any infamous one-liners in press conferences or briefly pretended to be sick in hilarious fashion like Diggs did. The Pro Bowl defensive end hasn’t spoken with the media in nearly a year. In other words: If he feels that the report was erroneous, he hasn’t said that publicly whereas Diggs all but confirmed it in his memorable media availability.

Hunter did, however, send out an Instagram post that more or less announced he was getting a second opinion on the neck issue that ultimately ended in season-ending surgery.

Hunter got hurt on the first day of training camp and Zimmer called it a “tweak.” The Vikings’ head coach later defended the remark, saying that he was led to believe at the time that the injury was not serious. Spielman also said at the deadline that the team traded for Yannick Ngakoue during camp with the expectation that they would have a pass rushing duo rather than a replacement.

How much they knew about his injury is a good question but not quite as interesting as how they felt about his decision to have surgery and miss the entire year. Did they sign off or think he could have played? We haven’t gotten much farther than “no” in terms of answers on the matter.

The details remain a little murky until somebody tells the whole story. It took Diggs until halfway through this year to lay it all out there to ESPN. Maybe someday we’ll get the tell-all from Hunter.

The bottom line is that we’re playing this read-between-the-lines game again.

We’ve been playing this game pretty often over the last few seasons and that’s quite a change from just a couple years ago.

In the offseason between the 2017 and 2018 season, everybody wanted to sign on the dotted line. Linebacker Eric Kendricks signed a long-term contract extension before the official start of summertime 2018. Hunter’s deal came next. Diggs’s came after that. Everybody went into 2018 ready for a “Super Bowl or bust” season.

All the contracts were considered well be team friendly. Three years after signing, there are 29 players who got more fully guaranteed money on their contracts than Hunter. When Diggs was traded to Buffalo, they re-worked his deal to guarantee him $11 more million because before that he’d received less than $17 million fully guaranteed after becoming the Minneapolis Miracle man. If you’re wondering, Julio Jones has $64 million fully guaranteed in his deal, per OverTheCap.

At the time nobody seemed to care how friendly the deals were to the team. Guys were trying to win a Super Bowl. There was an attitude around the locker room of, “just get the deal done and let’s go win.”

Sheldon Richardson showed up for pennies on the dollar (one year, $8 million) with hopes that he could latch onto a champion and then cash in. Terence Newman came back for $1.1 million (though he eventually retired).

The only player who didn’t ink a new deal was Anthony Barr but he was playing on his fifth-year option in 2018 so the team still had time to woo him back.

The downfall of team-friendly deals and amicable negotiations started after the Vikings went 8-7-1 in 2018.

Kyle Rudolph’s release was a reminder that he strong-armed the team over the summer between the 2018 and 2019 seasons, at one point telling the media that he knew other teams were interested in trading for his services. Rudolph made it clear that he wanted an extension or things were going to get nasty.

The Vikings gave him said extension because they were unclear whether Irv Smith Jr. could be the future answer at tight end and they couldn’t afford to take a weapon away from Kirk Cousins during their winning window.

Rudolph’s extension wasn’t egregious but it was favorable to the player. The veteran tight end made $9.2 million in cash in 2019 and $7.3 million in 2020 and then when they released him the Vikings were forced to take on $4.3 million in dead cap space.

Drama with Anthony Barr came that offseason too. He made it clear that he wanted a role rushing the passer more often and then when he hit free agency prior to the 2019 season the New York Jets came calling with that very role and a ton of cash.

Barr was convinced to come back to Minnesota. Part of the focus of his return was “taking less” but the total offered dollars equaling less than the Jets’ offer did not make it a team-friendly contract considering the positional value and cap situation. While his fully guaranteed money was similar to the others, Barr’s deal carried the third highest cap hit in the NFL at his position in 2020 and the second highest for 2021. He remains in the top six of average annual value two years later.

Last year we saw a mass exodus despite the Vikings expressing interest in keeping a number of the players who left. They reportedly asked Xavier Rhodes to stick around and he decided to sign for cheap with the Colts. Nickel corner Mackensie Alexander had interest from the Vikings but he went to Cincinnati for next to nothing. Zimmer openly campaigned for Everson Griffen’s return but he elected to go to Dallas on a very reasonable contract.

After all the dust settled on the offseason, Dalvin Cook began a contract battle that stretched out through the summer and included a claim that he would be sitting out virtual offseason meetings and one report that he might not come to camp (he did). Some thought that he may consider not suiting up Week 1 if the team didn’t sign him to a long-term deal.

They got the contract done at the 11th hour. Once again, it was not a horror show contract for the Vikings but it also wasn’t a steal either and it didn’t go quietly and nicely. In fact, it got very tense. Still Cook’s contract put him in the top five AAV among running backs, his fully guaranteed money sixth among RBs on second contracts and a cap number that’s going to jump next year to $12 million.

The only contract that notably went through without a peep recently was Kirk Cousins’s extension, which was masterfully crafted to set up for another extension down the road. Cousins is set to carry the fourth highest cap hit in the NFL in 2021, by the way.

Now we have Hunter appearing to hold the team’s feet to the fire. Other players who have done so in other cities like DeAndre Hopkins and Khalil Mack ended up getting traded.

The natural next question is: Why is this happening now?

One explanation is that this is the simply nature of the beast.

What comes along with good teams like the Vikings had from 2015-2019 is Pro Bowls, good stats and performances worthy of second contracts. With a salary cap that is indeed not a myth, there’s no way to make everyone happy and still fit every salary under the cap. There’s also hurt feelings and conflicts that go along with contract disputes and coming short of expectations, as the Vikings have over the last three years. All along the team was pinned in by the fact they were trying to recreate 2017 so they were almost powerless to push back too hard.

It’s not uncommon. You can think of plenty of examples when teams get past their winning windows and star players become frustrated. Earl Thomas flipped off his own team after getting hurt when they wouldn’t give him a new contract. LeVeon Bell sat out a full season. Yannick Ngakoue forced his way out of Jacksonville. So did Jalen Ramsey.

So the Vikings are at a crossroads with Hunter and generally as an organization. Neither direction that they travel is particularly favorable.

If they give in and sign Hunter to an extension, the cap gets harder to manage and they’ve set a precedent of re-doing a deal way before it’s up. That means that looking down the road won’t be much different than right now with the cap.

If they let him sit out, they’re wasting his talent and looking bad in the eyes of players in the locker room and across the league that might someday be chased by the Vikings in free agency.

If they trade him, they’re out one of the best players in the NFL and would have a tough time arguing that they’ll be back in contention for the NFC this year. If he goes, there’s a lot of rebuilding to be done.

We could see them try to keep what’s left of the 2017 family together and pay top dollar. Or we might see them go their separate ways and look for the next Hunter in the draft because having good players on rookie deals is how the 2017 family was created — and because the days of team-friendly contracts in Minnesota are over.

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