It’s likely neither player will be back
On Monday, the Minnesota Vikings saw the contracts of two of their veteran players voided, a likely indication that neither of them will be back with the team in 2023.
Defensive lineman Dalvin Tomlinson and cornerback Patrick Peterson both had their contracts voided on Monday, adding approximately $8.25 million in dead money to the team’s salary cap for the upcoming season. These figures had already been figured into the numbers that we’ve seen for much of this offseason so far, so they don’t make the team’s salary cap situation any worse.
Tomlinson’s contract accounts for approximately $7.5 million of the dead cap space, which almost certainly means that he won’t be back this upcoming season. If the team had been interested in bringing him back, they could have worked something out before now to mitigate some of that cap hit and bring him back into the fold.
Peterson’s case might not be quite as clear-cut. Much like last offseason, Peterson has made no secret of the fact that he’d like to remain with the Vikings, and since he’s not taking up nearly as much dead cap space as Tomlinson is, the team could end up bringing him back to once again mentor the team’s young cornerback corps.
The Vikings are going to have to make a lot of moves to get themselves under the salary cap and ready for this offseason, which officially starts with free agency in mid-March. With the team still tight against the cap and several important situations that need to be resolved, it will be interesting to see just how Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and company handle things to try to keep the Vikings in the competitive portion of their competitive rebuild in 2023.
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