So the Vikings are running it back?
The team worked out a new deal with Aaron Jones on Wednesday, making them basically the same squad as 2025
By Matthew Coller
Yesterday, I wrote about how the Minnesota Vikings were going to resolve their issues in the backfield. The conclusion: It wasn’t going to be easy to find anyone that could move the needle without making a crazy trade to move up in the NFL Draft for Jeremiah Love or possibly creating a trio in the backfield with a veteran, Jordan Mason and a middle-round draft pick.
That was written on the basis that Aaron Jones was going to be gone. Last week there were reports that the team was going to release the veteran and there were other reports on Monday stating that they had showed interest in Jaguars standout Travis Etienne.
And then the Vikings tossed in a twist on Wednesday. They re-signed Jones to a new contract, paying him $5.5 million for 2026.
The NFL is three days into free agency (two “legal tampering,” and one actual day), and the only outside player that the Vikings have added is veteran cornerback James Pierre. All of their other moves have been in house.
They re-worked TJ Hockenson’s contract, kept Eric Wilson, kept Ivan Pace Jr., kept Jalen Redmond, kept Zavier Scott, kept Bo Richter, kept Andrew DePaola, kept Tavierre Thomas… am I forgetting anybody? It sure looks like Blake Brandel is going to be the starting center. It sure looks like Jay Ward and Tai Felton are going to get their shots as young, developing players.
A week ago when the first wave of news started to come out about what the Vikings were going to do this offseason — i.e. cut Jones, Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave and trade Jonathan Greenard — it appeared they were going for a “competitive rebuild” type offseason.
At the NFL Combine, acting GM Rob Brzezinski talked about having “guardrails” as a decision maker and looking beyond 2026 with the team’s decision making, which seemed to speak even more to a readjustment of their priorities.
While they certainly haven’t sold out the future for win-now type decisions, there also haven’t quite been the level of moves that would indicate a true look toward the future either.
This seems to be close to what we would have expected them to do if Kwesi Adofo-Mensah had been the general manager still. It looks very much like the team that he built, sans a couple of expensive DTs. For now, they are sticking to the plan to maintain most of the roster in the 2025 and 2026 win-now window that was laid out when they drafted JJ McCarthy.
What does it mean?
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