2022 Offseason Discussion - moves, stats, pressers, misc.

Certainly not dumb questions at all and I'll be the first to tell you that I'm not an expert on all-things salary cap related.

From what I do know, here are the answers I can provide to your questions:

- Per OTC (link) we are currently cap compliant and per Spotrac, we're just a smidge over by $370k (link), so we may need to do a small move to ensure we're under by 4PM ET, 3PM CT today.

- When the Phillips deal is officially signed and the Vikings are right at the cap, then they need to create cap space for Phillips in 2022. If teams are found to not be cap compliant at any point of the league year (which starts today at 4PM ET, 3PM CT), they could be fined as much as $5m for each infraction and could have draft picks confiscated and player contracts voided. Teams can announce a deal is struck and make it public, but they need to create the space for it first (if they need to) because once pen hits paper, the team better be under the cap...or else.

- The key is the pen hitting the contract and having it be processed by the league office. Once that occurs, I'm sure there are NFL employees in the league office in NYC that keep their own team salary cap tables (like OTC & Spotrac) and once they get a new contract to process through a team's cap, they better be in the black after it's processed. That doesn't prevent the Vikings from talking w/ player agents or striking deals, but they had better have a plan already locked in to create the necessary space before striking that deal or else the deal could be voided. For example, if you remember last offseason when Patrick Peterson's agent contacted Rick and stated Patrick would like to play for Zimmer and the Vikings in 2021, and since we were up against the cap at the start of last offseason, Rick immediately went to Brez and had to work out how we were going to make room to fit Patrick in. I'm sure Brez and Rick then agreed to a way to create the room (and if that involved restructuring another player's deal, then they probably should be contacting that player and agent, too) they had to turn that into the league office to process first and then they could process the Peterson signing. The Vikings could have announced the deal publicly even before all the background processing was completed because all an announcement is...well, just an announcement, but you just have to make sure you cross all your T's and dot all your I's in the background.

So if the Vikings "announce" a new free agent signings in the next few days, depending on how large they are, you can bet they will probably also announce how they will create the room because that work would have already had to be done. That's why we should hear a Hunter restructure and/or extension first (and or a Thielen restructure) prior to or along with those free agent signings.

Hopefully that made a little sense and I didn't bog it down w/ too many details.