In Part 1 of this series, we looked at how the Vikings can create enough salary cap space to operate in 2026. In this piece, we will determine whether or not the Vikings should bring back their various free agents.
Fortunately, the Minnesota Vikings have relatively few of their major contributors from 2025 scheduled to become free agents in 2026, but the team will still have to decide who to keep and who to let walk.
The Vikings have 21 players whose contracts are set to expire. Here’s the full list, courtesy of OverTheCap.com.
As seen in Part 1, after restructuring a number of contracts and making a few releases, the Vikings can easily create somewhere in the ballpark of $20-30 million to spend on new players. The moves I suggested in Part 1 created nearly $30 million in effective cap space, but I suggested the team reserve $10 million of that space for in-season moves.
If you look at that, and then think about the fact that you probably want to re-sign 10-15 of the players on the list below, you might get concerned about the team’s ability to add outside free agents. After all, if you wanted to split $30 million among six players, it would be just $5 million per player.
Fortunately, that’s not exactly how it works. While my salary cap primer in the previous article in this series covered a number of topics, it did not get into detail about how the NFL’s Top 51 rule works. Let’s look at that, and a few other definitions, before we dive into the Vikings’ pending free agents.
More Definitions!
Top 51 Rule - During the NFL’s regular season, all players on the team’s roster (53), practice squad (16), and IR (variable) count against the salary cap. That’s a minimum of 69 players, but clubs obviously carry more throughout the offseason, with a 90-man roster limit. To account for this, the NFL uses a different accounting structure for the salary cap in the offseason than it does after roster cutdown day. The offseason structure is known as the “Top 51” rule — only the team’s 51 highest cap hits (plus any dead cap hits) count against the salary cap. This means that if a team has more than 51 players, every time they add another, the lowest-paid player drops off. This drastically reduces the cap impact of signing a low-cost player.
Example — At this moment, the Vikings have 54 players under contract. When the league year starts, it will be 53, as Harrison Smith’s contract will void before then. Right now, the lowest cap hit for any Vikings player is $885,000. There are eight players with that cap hit, and OTC shows Caleb Etienne, Joaquin Davis and Jacob Roberts as the players below the Top 51 cutoff. If another player signs, it would put Dontae Fleming below that line. If the Vikings were to ERFA tender Jalen Redmond — we’ll get to what that means in a minute — he would count for $1,075,000 against the cap. Because that move knocks Fleming off the Top 51 list, the cap impact of doing so is only $190,000. Essentially, the team will offset about $1 million against the cap on every signing they make this offseason.
Exclusive-Rights Free Agent (ERFA) — The most restrictive form of free agency, ERFAs apply to players with fewer than two accrued seasons in the NFL. Players only gain an accrued season if they are on a team’s 53-man roster or IR for at least six weeks during a season. Because draft picks get four-year deals, and undrafted free agents (UDFAs) get three-year deals, ERFA status mostly applies to players who did not make an initial 53-man roster, but worked their way up from the practice squad to the active roster during a given season. If a team applies a tender to an ERFA, that player does not have the right to negotiate with other teams and automatically receives a one-year, league-minimum contract with the team. If an ERFA is not tendered, they become an unrestricted free agent.
Restricted Free Agent (RFA) — Restricted free agency is for players with three accrued seasons. This primarily consists of players who were UDFAs who played out their entire rookie contracts. Teams can tender RFAs at various levels — First Round, Second Round, Original Round, or Right of First Refusal. Other teams can offer contracts on tendered RFAs, but if they sign a deal, the original team can choose to match it or receive the draft pick benefit listed with the tender. For UDFAs, the original-round tender does not include a draft pick. The benefit of the tender for the player is that it carries a guaranteed one-year salary. For 2026, the salary for the First Round Tender is $7,983,000, Second Round is $5,658,000, and RoFR is $3,453,000. If a team chooses not to tender an RFA, they become an unrestricted free agent.
Unrestricted Free Agent (UFA) — Unrestricted free agents are your standard free agents. When a veteran with four-plus years of experience has his contract expire, he becomes a UFA. He is free to negotiate and sign with any team, with one exception. The NFL has a rule allowing teams to Franchise or Transition Tag players. Those tags carry very high, one-year salaries. The Franchise Tag prevents any other team from negotiating with that player, while the Transition Tag means that another team can negotiate with the player, but the tagging team has the right to match the deal, and the new team would also have to give up two First Round picks to the team that tagged the player, functionally preventing outside negotiation.
“Void” Free Agent — This technically isn’t an NFL term, but OTC uses it to denote players who will become free agents because of voided contracts. These players will become UFAs, but there is a benefit to a team if it extends a player on a voidable contract before his contract actually voids. When a player’s contract voids, the cap hit in the void years of the deal accelerates into the next season. However, if an extension is reached before the void date, the contract void date is pushed back via the extension. This means that there’s no cap acceleration.
Example: The Vikings have only one voidable contract, Harrison Smith. Currently, Smith is slated to count for $10.6 million in dead cap for the Vikings in 2026. However, if the team were to extend him before his contract expires, his prorated signing bonus would count only $3 million against the cap, a functional savings of $7.6 million. Obviously, they still owe the money against the cap in the future, but it provides short-term relief. If the contract is voided, there’s nothing preventing the team from re-signing the player anyway, but having a large dead cap hit and then having to pay the player more is not desirable.
Who Should the Vikings Try to Keep?
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