I think the Vikings Hunter ultimately work things out. If Zimmer is willing to bend over backwards for ineffective players like Barr and Rhodes. I’m sure he will do the same for one of the best pass rushers in the league
The pay cap is a cruel, cold, unforgiving mistress. You can kick the financial obligation can down the road for a while, but eventually you have to pay the contract reaper...
I instinctively believe we should unload/trade as many of the "A Team" players possible (Barr, Hunter, Reiff) for draft picks/pay cap relief and bring in cheap, young talent. The team has to get the proverbial talent level/pay cap monster under control. Of course, this will set back the "winning contender" schedule and probably cost Spielman and Zim their jobs...
Ever since the KFC signing, we have just been overloaded on salary cap and consistently making bad personnel decisions. Barr was a huge mistake, we should have let him walk. He gets paid like an elite pass rushing LB, but we don’t use him to rush the passer. Rudolph was an average TE, and we extended him as if he were Top 5 — and then turned him into a blocking TE (and he isn’t a good blocker). Cook is great, but we didn’t have the cap room to make him a $12M/yr RB. And the KFC extension was criminal. He had not earned a huge bonus payday, and we gave him one to make salary cap room for 2020. Totally unnecessary since they should have known 2020 was a rebuild after jettisoning so many defensive starters. And they also gave the Mercenary KFC the keys to hijack the team for another KFC friendly extension - which they will announce soon or right before next offseason. And, to be honest, I don’t know if I will remain a Vik8ngs fan if they force us to tie our fandom to that loser for any longer.
The KFC era is a failed experiment, they need take the pain and start over. The SB window is firmly closed based on overall talent and the fact that we pay KFC like an elite QB but he is not. I don’t see a scenario where we win a SB with KFC unless the defense carries the team.
Just pull off the band aid, ditch KFC, and start over fresh.
And, yes, Spielman should be fired for the total mismatch between who the team has rewarded and how they play/are used.
There is no incentive for Hunter to want to go to Houston. It would be a great story but Houston has no cap space and no quality players on the roster other than DeShaun Watson who doesn’t even want to play there.
The Athletic Football Show (NFL podcast from the Athletic) has had a great week relating to the interworkings of free agency. A few of the biggest takeaways:
The vast majority of the free agents don't really care what team they are going to, they just will take whichever one offers the most money. I think it was Louis Riddick who said that Za'Darius Smith hadn't even really sought out the Packers, but instead that his agent just told him that he *was going* to the Packers because the Packers had offered the most money. Similarly, they mentioned about how J.J. Watt not dissimilarly happened to take a far larger amount of money than what was anticipated to go to a team that hasn't gone to the playoffs since 2015 (though came close last year) and ended the year looking like a very discombobulated team in the Cardinals.
They also mentioned how each year there are only a few teams that players will legit take a discount for, maybe 2 or 3 a year, and further how few true impact players are willing to take a discount. If that is the case, we should be happy that the Vikings were recently one of those teams, more so than despondent that the Vikings are no longer one of those teams.
That said, they also mentioned about how not treating your own draft picks fairly and equitably can make it hard to keep them, and that part is troubling to me... I wonder how much things like Zimmer publicly calling out Barr, and Zimmer seemingly telling Diggs that the offense would run through him, the curiously and seemingly needlessly antagonistic way in which the Vikings talked about the Hunter injury last year, etc., have resulted in recent successful draft picks feeling somewhat disrespected. If there is some rumblings in the locker room about Zimmer et al. not being truly fair with how they communicate and deal with their drafted players, that would explain the drama that the team has had in the last year. Winning would cure much of that, but the Vikes would need to get lucky in the draft to have a legit team again.
Yes I think that’s right on free agents and your point is valid that there aren’t that many teams that become a magnet for team friendly deals. The Bucs with Brady would obviously be an example last year. So you don’t get to be that team very often.
They have been piling up these disputes and there does appear to be a connection with the way Zimmer has handled some things combined with not winning. Everyone knows he’s a very good coach but each year they haven’t made the playoffs has been marred with things like you described
I’m wondering if it wouldn’t make sense to give Kirk a 3 year extension and make the 2023 the highest year in light of the new tv deal news and it’s affect on the cap. Something that would pay him 30 annually, and guarantee 90ish. Redo Hunter, lower his hit for this year and then give him something in the 20s annually for the next 5. Cut Reiff, Stephan and Colquitt, Redo Harry save this year, redo Thielen save this year. Trade a 4th for Geno, and sign a long term solution at LG. Not Thuney but maybe Feiler, and go after William Jackson. 1st rd pick take Slater, Darissaw, Jenkins at LT, and then find a wr3 in the 3rd and a rotational edge rusher. Only real question is Barr. Best case you can convert money for this year and keep him because it keeps Mike happy and it’s 1 less hole. I think that this would be effective both long and short term.
Are there any NFL teams that consistently handle the salary cap well? With successful veteran quarterbacks taking up 20% of the salary cap that almost precludes paying ANY defensive player the kind of money Hunter wants without starving the rest of the roster.
This makes me think that trading big stars for multiple picks makes sense. Of course you can't have the Vikings 2015 draft every year!
This is a high risk situation. Hunter just sat out a season with a serious neck injury. Now he apparently wants to be paid like a QB. It isn’t certain that he will be able to play at the same level as before.
We do not have the cap room to pay him more this season, something has to give. The Vikings have been reluctant to make tough decisions on their roster talent for years (Barr, Rudolph), but hey are going to have to be creative with Hunter.
Last point: just because other dumb GMs overpay doesn’t mean we should follow suit. It makes no sense at all to pay a DE (no matter how good) $27M/yr with a $180M salary cap. If that is the market, then trade him.
Danielle Hunter has every right to maximize his earning potential, as does every player in the league. The salary cap was supposed to keep a competitive balance between teams, but it has become a way to squeeze players to take less money to help out billionaire owners. When ownership starts honoring contracts then you can complain about players honoring theirs.
The NFL and all sports, especially the NBA are becoming harder for me and others to get excited for because of the greed of these players. It's become almost totally about the individuals and not the team. How much money do these guys need to feel appreciated and happy!? They act like victims because they signed a "bad deal" and then they miss an entire year to injury and don't miss a single paycheck and you want to get paid more? Maybe I'm just getting old but Hunter has made 41 million so far in his career and will get 12.75 million more this year. Does he really need more money? First question I would ask if I was Zimmer, is do you want to win a Super Bowl?
I would say this: Players only have a handful of years in their primes to maximize what they can make so i think any of us in that position would try to make as much as we could.
Any of us would do the same thing Hunter is doing if people m who do the same exact work were getting paid more. If you were a house builder and your competitors got $100k a house and you got $20k a house... would you want $100k or would you stick to making way less?
If Zimmer asks Hunter if he wants to win a Super Bowl, how exactly is he saying that Minnesota is the place to do that? The team went 7-9 last year and has not been to a Super Bowl since the 70s. That’s part of my point is that players did take less than their worth (including Hunter) to try and win. When they didn’t win and don’t presently appear all that close to winning, the focus shifts to trying to get paid fairly.
It’s interesting to me that the focus often becomes player “greed” when teams are rarely criticized for cutting players before their contracts are finished or demanding guys take less because the team messed up their cap situation
I would say comparing almost any other job to a professional athlete is pretty pointless because of the difference in salaries. At some point you have enough money for the rest of your life and what is an extra say, 10 million going to do for you over the next 3 years when you have taken in 50 million plus in your career? Will it make you feel good? Make you feel appreciated? Make you play better? Make you happier? Make you like the team more? I would guess it will do almost none of that in the long-term.
Professional athletes (especially really freaking good ones like Danielle) are in an extremely enviable position in that they will make plenty of money to the point of having their future setup for them and all their loved ones so why bleed every dollar out of the organization that you play for? Small financial sacrifices from the top guys on a team can make a huge difference in the overall quality of the roster.
We can complain all day about teams being cutthroat and using players to only kick them to the curb when they lose value but that is the nature of the beast. The other side of that coin is that what if the reason you are as good as you are is because of the team that trained you?
As a business owner myself I view creating an amazing work environment the key to keeping and holding onto great employees but their is only so much money to go around. When the highest earners on a team are crying for more money it rubs a lot of people the wrong way. They are well within their right to do so but if you want to have a better opportunity at team success (the ultimate goal) they better start thinking big picture.
I agree with your statement about not comparing... I just mean to say that Danielle Hunter has been underpaid compared to his peers. Any one of us in the same position -- especially with a short window to earn money -- would try to maximize our value. You're getting pretty philosophical with whether 50 million would make someone happier than 10 million but I can't figure out why I would want less than I'm worth under any circumstance unless there's some huge benefit like winning a super bowl.
I think it's unfair to paint athletes who are asking for their market worth as being greedy or crying. Hunter isn't asking to own the team. He's asking for what Joey Bosa got paid... another guy who does the same job.
I 100% agree with you about creating a great environment and how that can help keep employees happy. The Vikings as an organization have tried to do that but I think there's also some clear cut instances where they have not made it a favorable environment and they've lost some players because of that.
I totally understand why fans of any team would be extremely frustrated when they lose star players because of money. The league is set up that way though. If there was no cap, they'd just pay Hunter and we'd move on with our lives.
I also appreciate you taking the time to read my work and subscribing. Thanks for the back and forth! We'll see if this Hunter issue gets resolved soon. Should be an interesting offseason either way
What I was saying or trying to, is if he received his "worth" over the next 3 years that would be approx. 10 million more then what he will receive at his current salary. Is that extra 10 million he feels he deserves on top of the over 50 million he has made already going to make a difference? I say no, but that is definitely a little philosophical and in some ways unanswerable in a broad sense.
If he is unhappy with the organization and they way it operates which it sounds like he most likely is, then that is on Zimmer etc. and I don't blame him for wanting out. If he loved playing for the Vikings and wanted to stay their is a good chance the contract wouldn't even be a talking point but who really knows right!?
Keep up the good work man. Love the content and your opinions/insights, even though I don't agree with them all the time! Thanks for the back and forth and I look forward to the offseason, should definitely be interesting.
I think you're right about that... if he was happy with how things are going, this probably wouldn't be a conversation. That's the subtext to the article is that players were once pretty happy to sign deals and get back on the field and in recent years that hasn't happened.
Thanks again for the support! Disagreement is alright, sports would be boring without it :)
I think the Vikings Hunter ultimately work things out. If Zimmer is willing to bend over backwards for ineffective players like Barr and Rhodes. I’m sure he will do the same for one of the best pass rushers in the league
The pay cap is a cruel, cold, unforgiving mistress. You can kick the financial obligation can down the road for a while, but eventually you have to pay the contract reaper...
I instinctively believe we should unload/trade as many of the "A Team" players possible (Barr, Hunter, Reiff) for draft picks/pay cap relief and bring in cheap, young talent. The team has to get the proverbial talent level/pay cap monster under control. Of course, this will set back the "winning contender" schedule and probably cost Spielman and Zim their jobs...
Exactly right.
Ever since the KFC signing, we have just been overloaded on salary cap and consistently making bad personnel decisions. Barr was a huge mistake, we should have let him walk. He gets paid like an elite pass rushing LB, but we don’t use him to rush the passer. Rudolph was an average TE, and we extended him as if he were Top 5 — and then turned him into a blocking TE (and he isn’t a good blocker). Cook is great, but we didn’t have the cap room to make him a $12M/yr RB. And the KFC extension was criminal. He had not earned a huge bonus payday, and we gave him one to make salary cap room for 2020. Totally unnecessary since they should have known 2020 was a rebuild after jettisoning so many defensive starters. And they also gave the Mercenary KFC the keys to hijack the team for another KFC friendly extension - which they will announce soon or right before next offseason. And, to be honest, I don’t know if I will remain a Vik8ngs fan if they force us to tie our fandom to that loser for any longer.
The KFC era is a failed experiment, they need take the pain and start over. The SB window is firmly closed based on overall talent and the fact that we pay KFC like an elite QB but he is not. I don’t see a scenario where we win a SB with KFC unless the defense carries the team.
Just pull off the band aid, ditch KFC, and start over fresh.
And, yes, Spielman should be fired for the total mismatch between who the team has rewarded and how they play/are used.
I love Hunter but until he proves he’s healthy I wouldn’t pay him. He’s from Houston, maybe the Texans have something we could use 😄
There is no incentive for Hunter to want to go to Houston. It would be a great story but Houston has no cap space and no quality players on the roster other than DeShaun Watson who doesn’t even want to play there.
The Athletic Football Show (NFL podcast from the Athletic) has had a great week relating to the interworkings of free agency. A few of the biggest takeaways:
The vast majority of the free agents don't really care what team they are going to, they just will take whichever one offers the most money. I think it was Louis Riddick who said that Za'Darius Smith hadn't even really sought out the Packers, but instead that his agent just told him that he *was going* to the Packers because the Packers had offered the most money. Similarly, they mentioned about how J.J. Watt not dissimilarly happened to take a far larger amount of money than what was anticipated to go to a team that hasn't gone to the playoffs since 2015 (though came close last year) and ended the year looking like a very discombobulated team in the Cardinals.
They also mentioned how each year there are only a few teams that players will legit take a discount for, maybe 2 or 3 a year, and further how few true impact players are willing to take a discount. If that is the case, we should be happy that the Vikings were recently one of those teams, more so than despondent that the Vikings are no longer one of those teams.
That said, they also mentioned about how not treating your own draft picks fairly and equitably can make it hard to keep them, and that part is troubling to me... I wonder how much things like Zimmer publicly calling out Barr, and Zimmer seemingly telling Diggs that the offense would run through him, the curiously and seemingly needlessly antagonistic way in which the Vikings talked about the Hunter injury last year, etc., have resulted in recent successful draft picks feeling somewhat disrespected. If there is some rumblings in the locker room about Zimmer et al. not being truly fair with how they communicate and deal with their drafted players, that would explain the drama that the team has had in the last year. Winning would cure much of that, but the Vikes would need to get lucky in the draft to have a legit team again.
It'll be an interesting offseason...
Yes I think that’s right on free agents and your point is valid that there aren’t that many teams that become a magnet for team friendly deals. The Bucs with Brady would obviously be an example last year. So you don’t get to be that team very often.
They have been piling up these disputes and there does appear to be a connection with the way Zimmer has handled some things combined with not winning. Everyone knows he’s a very good coach but each year they haven’t made the playoffs has been marred with things like you described
I’m wondering if it wouldn’t make sense to give Kirk a 3 year extension and make the 2023 the highest year in light of the new tv deal news and it’s affect on the cap. Something that would pay him 30 annually, and guarantee 90ish. Redo Hunter, lower his hit for this year and then give him something in the 20s annually for the next 5. Cut Reiff, Stephan and Colquitt, Redo Harry save this year, redo Thielen save this year. Trade a 4th for Geno, and sign a long term solution at LG. Not Thuney but maybe Feiler, and go after William Jackson. 1st rd pick take Slater, Darissaw, Jenkins at LT, and then find a wr3 in the 3rd and a rotational edge rusher. Only real question is Barr. Best case you can convert money for this year and keep him because it keeps Mike happy and it’s 1 less hole. I think that this would be effective both long and short term.
Are there any NFL teams that consistently handle the salary cap well? With successful veteran quarterbacks taking up 20% of the salary cap that almost precludes paying ANY defensive player the kind of money Hunter wants without starving the rest of the roster.
This makes me think that trading big stars for multiple picks makes sense. Of course you can't have the Vikings 2015 draft every year!
This is a high risk situation. Hunter just sat out a season with a serious neck injury. Now he apparently wants to be paid like a QB. It isn’t certain that he will be able to play at the same level as before.
We do not have the cap room to pay him more this season, something has to give. The Vikings have been reluctant to make tough decisions on their roster talent for years (Barr, Rudolph), but hey are going to have to be creative with Hunter.
Last point: just because other dumb GMs overpay doesn’t mean we should follow suit. It makes no sense at all to pay a DE (no matter how good) $27M/yr with a $180M salary cap. If that is the market, then trade him.
Danielle Hunter has every right to maximize his earning potential, as does every player in the league. The salary cap was supposed to keep a competitive balance between teams, but it has become a way to squeeze players to take less money to help out billionaire owners. When ownership starts honoring contracts then you can complain about players honoring theirs.
Great article Mathew its very possible Danielle Anthony Barr Reilly Reiff and kicker and punter are gone by training camp.
The NFL and all sports, especially the NBA are becoming harder for me and others to get excited for because of the greed of these players. It's become almost totally about the individuals and not the team. How much money do these guys need to feel appreciated and happy!? They act like victims because they signed a "bad deal" and then they miss an entire year to injury and don't miss a single paycheck and you want to get paid more? Maybe I'm just getting old but Hunter has made 41 million so far in his career and will get 12.75 million more this year. Does he really need more money? First question I would ask if I was Zimmer, is do you want to win a Super Bowl?
I would say this: Players only have a handful of years in their primes to maximize what they can make so i think any of us in that position would try to make as much as we could.
Any of us would do the same thing Hunter is doing if people m who do the same exact work were getting paid more. If you were a house builder and your competitors got $100k a house and you got $20k a house... would you want $100k or would you stick to making way less?
If Zimmer asks Hunter if he wants to win a Super Bowl, how exactly is he saying that Minnesota is the place to do that? The team went 7-9 last year and has not been to a Super Bowl since the 70s. That’s part of my point is that players did take less than their worth (including Hunter) to try and win. When they didn’t win and don’t presently appear all that close to winning, the focus shifts to trying to get paid fairly.
It’s interesting to me that the focus often becomes player “greed” when teams are rarely criticized for cutting players before their contracts are finished or demanding guys take less because the team messed up their cap situation
I would say comparing almost any other job to a professional athlete is pretty pointless because of the difference in salaries. At some point you have enough money for the rest of your life and what is an extra say, 10 million going to do for you over the next 3 years when you have taken in 50 million plus in your career? Will it make you feel good? Make you feel appreciated? Make you play better? Make you happier? Make you like the team more? I would guess it will do almost none of that in the long-term.
Professional athletes (especially really freaking good ones like Danielle) are in an extremely enviable position in that they will make plenty of money to the point of having their future setup for them and all their loved ones so why bleed every dollar out of the organization that you play for? Small financial sacrifices from the top guys on a team can make a huge difference in the overall quality of the roster.
We can complain all day about teams being cutthroat and using players to only kick them to the curb when they lose value but that is the nature of the beast. The other side of that coin is that what if the reason you are as good as you are is because of the team that trained you?
As a business owner myself I view creating an amazing work environment the key to keeping and holding onto great employees but their is only so much money to go around. When the highest earners on a team are crying for more money it rubs a lot of people the wrong way. They are well within their right to do so but if you want to have a better opportunity at team success (the ultimate goal) they better start thinking big picture.
I agree with your statement about not comparing... I just mean to say that Danielle Hunter has been underpaid compared to his peers. Any one of us in the same position -- especially with a short window to earn money -- would try to maximize our value. You're getting pretty philosophical with whether 50 million would make someone happier than 10 million but I can't figure out why I would want less than I'm worth under any circumstance unless there's some huge benefit like winning a super bowl.
I think it's unfair to paint athletes who are asking for their market worth as being greedy or crying. Hunter isn't asking to own the team. He's asking for what Joey Bosa got paid... another guy who does the same job.
I 100% agree with you about creating a great environment and how that can help keep employees happy. The Vikings as an organization have tried to do that but I think there's also some clear cut instances where they have not made it a favorable environment and they've lost some players because of that.
I totally understand why fans of any team would be extremely frustrated when they lose star players because of money. The league is set up that way though. If there was no cap, they'd just pay Hunter and we'd move on with our lives.
I also appreciate you taking the time to read my work and subscribing. Thanks for the back and forth! We'll see if this Hunter issue gets resolved soon. Should be an interesting offseason either way
What I was saying or trying to, is if he received his "worth" over the next 3 years that would be approx. 10 million more then what he will receive at his current salary. Is that extra 10 million he feels he deserves on top of the over 50 million he has made already going to make a difference? I say no, but that is definitely a little philosophical and in some ways unanswerable in a broad sense.
If he is unhappy with the organization and they way it operates which it sounds like he most likely is, then that is on Zimmer etc. and I don't blame him for wanting out. If he loved playing for the Vikings and wanted to stay their is a good chance the contract wouldn't even be a talking point but who really knows right!?
Keep up the good work man. Love the content and your opinions/insights, even though I don't agree with them all the time! Thanks for the back and forth and I look forward to the offseason, should definitely be interesting.
I think you're right about that... if he was happy with how things are going, this probably wouldn't be a conversation. That's the subtext to the article is that players were once pretty happy to sign deals and get back on the field and in recent years that hasn't happened.
Thanks again for the support! Disagreement is alright, sports would be boring without it :)