MINNEAPOLIS — A month from today, when the 2017 NFL year begins at 3 p.m. CT, the Minnesota Vikings will need to have finalized a decision about whether they’ll pick up Adrian Peterson’s $18 million option for 2017.
And from where we sit now, it appears to be a virtual certainty that the Vikings would require a restructured contract for Peterson to return to Minnesota. That has been clear for some time, since Peterson’s 2015 restructured contract placed the 2017 option (and its attendant $6 million roster bonus) in the deal as a kind of trigger for both sides to return to the bargaining table with Peterson about to turn 32, and both sides seem to know it. Peterson talked in a NFL Network interview from the Super Bowl last week about how his high cap number gives his side some leverage in negotiations, adding “I think we’ll be able to work something out.”
How would such a deal be constructed? To answer that question, we turned to ESPN NFL business analyst Andrew Brandt, who spent the first part of his career as an agent before negotiating contracts for nine years as a vice president of the Green Bay Packers. When Brandt arrived in Green Bay, one of his first tasks was something akin to what the Vikings are facing: approaching decorated veterans — many of whom had been instrumental in the Packers’ Super Bowl XXXI championship — and asking them to take a pay cut.
“I’m going to LeRoy Butler, Dorsey Levens, Antonio Freeman, Santana Dotson, trying to get their money down,” Brandt said. “You have to be professional. You have to be tactful. You have to show them purpose, if you can, that it’s for the greater good. In LeRoy Butler’s case, it was basically like, ‘I’m taking your money and giving it to your partner in crime at safety, Darren Sharper.’ That was kind of a way to explain it that hopefully had some benefits. It’s not easy.”
As Brandt points out, we should do away with the term “restructure” here, because that’s not what will happen with Peterson in all likelihood. A restructured contract allows a player to make the same amount of money he was originally scheduled to receive, only under a salary-cap structure that’s more palatable to the team. A reduction — what Peterson is likely headed for — means fewer dollars in the player’s pocket, plain and simple. With a player of Peterson’s stature, that’s what makes the Vikings’ situation a tricky one.
“The key is to try to make the agent and player feel like they’re doing as well or better than they could do if they were released into the market,” Brandt said. “That’s always a difficult conversation; if he’s free, the agent is always going to have a few teams like, ‘They really want him.’ You have to play like what you’re offering is what the marketplace is. You both are trying to hide that you wouldn’t know anything about that — and especially the agent’s in a tough situation, because they’re not supposed to be able to talk to other teams.”
Peterson’s $18 million cap figure is more than twice as high as any running back in the league for 2017; LeSean McCoy is next at $8.875 million, followed by Jonathan Stewart at $8.25 million and Doug Martin at $7 million. It’s possible that any number of those backs is also headed for a release or restructured contract, which could alter the market further. After Peterson, Martin and Kansas City’s Jamaal Charles have the next-highest cash figures at $7 million apiece, with DeMarco Murray, Stewart and McCoy all at $6.25 million.
So what would a competitive offer from the Vikings ultimately look like? “It’s tough to speculate what that number’s going to be,” Brandt said. “[It could be] in that $5 [million] to $7 [million] range, with incentives to push it up.”
Those incentives, Brandt said, would likely be structured around playing time, with Peterson earning extra payouts as he played certain percentages of the Vikings’ offensive snaps. Such a contract would still keep him among the highest-paid running backs in the league at age 32, while providing the Vikings with a cap number more than $10 million below Peterson’s option figure.
Would it be enough to keep Peterson from testing the open market for the first time in his career? We’ll find out in the coming weeks.
“At least you do have a deadline in March,” Brandt said. “If it was in September, we’d be hearing about this all offseason. We do have a decision date, which is nice to have.”
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