The Christian Darrisaw Deal: Did the Vikings Underpay Him? How Much Are Left Tackles Worth, Anyway?

The Vikings struck a record-breaking deal with franchise left tackle Christian Darrisaw. Despite that, is it possible that they underpaid him? And can we quantify what a left tackle should be paid?

Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images

The Minnesota Vikings recently agreed to terms with left tackle Christian Darrisaw on a new contract, one that initially looked difficult to interpret and compare with his peers at the position. On paper, it’s the largest deal on a per-year basis that an offensive tackle has ever signed. But that initial judgment can be deceiving.

The structure of the deal is a little strange – instead of replacing the final year of the original rookie contract or the fifth-year option, it tacks on four years so that Darrisaw earns the lion’s share of his projected $113 million from the years 2026 through 2029.

Update: After the details of Darrisaw’s deal were released, the numbers come out to $104 million over four years in new money — or $26 million per year, instead of the $28.3 million the $113 suggests.

How Do We Compare Tackle Deals?

When announced, that deal could have meant that we saw Darrisaw’s signing bonus paid out this year, which would spread out the cap impact of the bonus over the next five years of his time with the Vikings. That would mean an increase in his cap hits this year and next year, projected to be $4.2 million and $16 million before the new deal was announced.

It could also have meant no signing bonus – his next two years are completely guaranteed anyway – with a guaranteed option bonus activated in 2026. That would operate like a signing bonus signed that year, spreading out the impact of that over the next four years of the contract (or into a fifth void year).

How do we interpret or value that contract? If we’re trying to compare his deal to other offensive tackles, should we total up the six years of cash he’s expected to receive and divide by that amount?

In that case, his average value over the term of the contract would be $21.9 million, the sixth-highest among offensive tackles by total value and 15th-highest by percentage of cap at signing. That’s how much money he’s expected to receive – assuming the deal is unaltered through the life of the contract – but it is not what the cap impact would be for the Vikings.

To calculate that, one has to add the prorated signing bonus from his rookie deal into the equation, bumping the number up slightly to $22.2 million, which makes it fifth by total and 13th by percentage.

But using the new money and averaging it against the CBA-restricted salaries of his 2024 and 2025 seasons seems a bit unfair to Darrisaw and his agent. While it probably would have been smarter to replace the fifth-year option with the terms of a new deal and extend the lifetime of the contract and the initial guarantees, it offers a poor starting point for comparison against other tackles.

That’s probably why fans first saw reports framed in terms of “new money” added on to the deal. It makes Darrisaw’s agent look quite a bit better than “total money.” It’s always important to be aware of how these things get reported, though in this case there isn’t much in the way of deception.

The Vikings and Darrisaw essentially announced that they would agree to a new contract in 2026. If we look at it like that (especially if there had been an option bonus instead of a signing bonus), then the math is simple: $113 million over four years.

At $28.3 million per year, that would place Darrisaw’s contract atop the heap among offensive tackles, with only Penei Sewell’s $28.0 million average entering the same territory.

Nevertheless, the Vikings will probably be underpaying Darrisaw in terms of average annual salary by the time the contract is active.

That underpay wouldn’t be by much, at least by average value, and it certainly might not ring any enormous alarm bells for the Darrisaw camp if they achieved other goals in the process – things like security, prioritizing scheme fit, staying close to a new home and likeable teammates and so on – but it is an interesting examination in what it means to sign a new deal that massively exceeds the on-paper value of same-position peers while still looking a bit behind.

Cap space is difficult to anticipate several years into the future, but given that the NFL has already struck their broadcasting deal for this cycle, we can at least be reasonably confident in broader strokes. OverTheCap estimates that the cap will be at $284 million in 2026, while Spotrac estimates that it will be closer to $292 million.

If we split the difference at $288 million, then we can surmise that Darrisaw’s contract, when it largely kicks in, will be worth about 9.8 percent of the cap on an average annual basis at time of activation.

Update: That comes out to 9.0 percent at $26 million.

Because few elite tackles are on new deals, it’s difficult to get a full sense of the market, but it’s notable that Trent Williams, Laremy Tunsil, Penei Sewell, Andrew Thomas and Darrisaw’s teammate, Brian O’Neill, all earned at least 10.1 percent of the signing-year cap as their average annual value.

Because tackle salaries have gone up over the years – especially at right tackle – it’s difficult to use historical comparisons. Typically, only Hall of Fame tackles earned more than ten percent of the signing year’s cap allocation – people like Jonathan Ogden, Tony Boselli and Jason Peters.

Since 2020, that’s changed. The average cap space taken up by a top-three tackle contract in 2008 was 7.1 percent. It has fluctuated around the 7.5 percent mark until 2016, when it rose above 8.5 percent and then again in 2020 when it rose above ten percent – where it has largely remained.

Even in three-year windows, the top contracts had been below ten percent. From 2009 to 2018, the average top-three contract signed within a three-year window was 8.9 percent. Since then, the average has been 11.2 percent.

Data per OverTheCap

Of the 14 offensive tackle contracts that OverTheCap has data for – going back to 1999 – worth at least ten percent of the cap, 10 were signed since 2020. That means tackle salaries have gone up by more than the cap has.

David Bakhtiari is a good example. While it is the case that Bakhtiari is a near-lock for the Hall of Fame, he’s probably not in the category of a player like Ogden – but they signed similar deals, once you adjust for the cap. The fact that Tunsil and Thomas both signed deals north of ten percent suggest that high-level tackles are getting paid more in the modern NFL as well.

So too with Ronnie Stanley, who signed a deal above the ten percent threshold in 2020 – though it no longer counts as a comparison contract because it was reworked in 2024.

We’ll see what happens when high-level tackles like Rashawn Slater and Tristan Wirfs sign their contracts – there’s a good chance they sign for more than Darrisaw did.

That’s (probably) good for the Vikings but not wonderful for Darrisaw. While he’s not missing out on tens of millions of dollars like all high-performing players on rookie contracts do, his salary is still likely to be below his expected level of play.

Underpaying players can have negative consequences for the team. The Vikings soured their relationship with Danielle Hunter in part because they struck such a “team-friendly” deal that Hunter felt undervalued by the organization and was willing to hold out for a new contract – a more difficult negotiation the second time around.

This type of value-mining can have team-building consequences down the road, so it’s worth considering.

That said, it’s possible that Darrisaw’s frontline numbers are smaller than what one might expect for the position. As covered in the breakdown of the Justin Jefferson contract – a record-breaking deal whose real value is even higher than the stunning APY numbers – it is possible for the headline dollar amounts to lie to us.

Is it possible that Darrisaw will be paid like a top-level tackle even if the numbers only look good instead of great? For that we’d need to take a look at the contract structure.

The Contract Structure for Christian Darrisaw Complicates the Math