The Minnesota Vikings have reportedly made a move involving Kirk Cousins, with NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport saying they have working a “cap conversation” to Cousins’ contract that will create additional cap space for 2023.
A cap conversation simply the moving around of money, converting part of his base salary into a bonus. According to Ben Goessling of the Star Tribune, the conversion will trim about $16 million from Cousins’s $36.25 million cap hit in 2023.
The #Vikings' salary cap conversion with Kirk Cousins saves $16 million on their 2023 cap, according to a league source.
— Ben Goessling (@BenGoessling) March 14, 2023
Before the move, OverTheCap had the Vikings at $9.9 million over the cap, so if accurate the $16 million in savings will get Minnesota to about $6 in cap space just in time for the new league year to begin Wednesday, which is when all teams need to be cap compliant.
What exactly does the cap conversion for Cousins mean? Matthew Coller explains…
“In the Vikings’ current cap situation they didn’t have many other buttons to push in order to create enough cap space to fill out their roster in free agency and sign their next draft class. The only other choice would have been signing Cousins to an extension to lower his cap hit but all signs are pointing to an impasse. It’s still possible they could extend him but they needed to get cap compliant today so they had to do something,” Coller told Bring Me The Sports.
The move is also another potential indication that Minnesota is not going to give Cousins a contract extension, meaning he could be playing out the final year of his deal with Minnesota without any future guarantees.
Another possibility would be Minnesota lowering his cap hit to make him easier to trade, according to Coller, who noted in a text message that such a scenario is “less likely.”
