Now that the draft is done and gone for another year there are still some big questions the Vikings need to answer before training camp kicks off in late July.
Chief among their offseason questions is what exactly to do with star pass rusher Danielle Hunter. Hunter will turn 29 in October and had a bounce-back season in 2022 (10.5 sacks) after only playing seven games total in the previous two season due to injuries.
The three-time Pro Bowl pass rusher is set to make $4.9 million in the final year of his deal, a number that is vastly under market value for a player of his talent.
While Hunter will only be paid $4.9 million his cap hit will be $13.1 million and that’s a problem for a Vikings team that still has plenty of holes, especially on defense, and very little cap space to use to fill them.
There was no blockbuster draft day trade for Hunter because of the language of his contract makes it far better financially for the Vikings to wait post-June 1 to make such a trade. According to OverTheCap, a pre-June 1 trade would see the Vikings eat an $18.8 million dead cap hit as opposed to $7.6 million dead cap hit for a post-June 1 trade.
Re-signing Hunter would prove incredibly expensive for a guy who’s taken under-the-market deals his entire career. Top end pass rushers are getting contracts that pay out on average $30 million annually, something we’ve already established the Vikings don’t have the room to do without pushing money down the road and causing cap issues similar to what’s currently happening.
So what should the Vikings front office do? Forcing Hunter to play out the final year of his deal would be incredibly unwise because they would risk losing him in free agency for nothing, not to mention he might just hold out. In fact, if the Vikings let him walk into free agency next year they would still incur an $11.2 million dead cap hit due to void years on his contract. That would $11.2 million on top of a $28 million dead cap hit coming if the Vikings move on from Kirk Cousins next offseason as well.
Wasting nearly $40 million in cap space is simply not an option if the Vikings want to remain competitive in an increasingly weak NFC North.
All of this is why trading Hunter might make the most sense.
What does a trade for Hunter look like? Let’s first take a look at some previous trades around the NFL for high-end pass rushers.
- Denver received a 2023 first-round pick and a 2024 fourth-round pick for OLB Bradley Chubb in a deal with the Dolphins (Oct. 2022)
- Bears received a 2023 fourth-round pick from the Eagles for DE Robert Quinn (Oct. 2022)
- Raiders received CB Rock Ya-Sin from the Colts for Yannick Ngakoue (Mar. 2022)
- Chargers sent the Bears a 2022 second-round pick and a 2023 sixth-round pick for OLB Khalil Mack (Mar. 2022)
- Broncos acquired 2022 second- and third-round picks for Von Miller (Nov. 2021)
Outside of the deal for Chubb, who is two years younger than Hunter, teams have generally been willing to part with at most a second-round pick as well as a day three pick.
“Hunter’s trade value should be very high considering he proved to be healthy last season,” says Purple Insider’s Matthew Coller. “Everyone needs more pass rushers so there has to be at least a dozen teams that would make that phone call. The only holdup is that he needs a new contract so the acquiring team has to be ready to sign up for ballpark $25 million per year. Still, I’d expect a win-now team would offer at least a second-round pick, maybe more.”
The injury history, which could still be a sticking point for teams despite Hunter playing every game in 2022, and the fact the acquiring team will have to hand out a new market-setting deal, could drive down what the Vikings could get in return.
A second-round pick, at the least, should be what the Vikings are looking for considering past precedent in these types of moves. If general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah can get a bidding war going later this summer then more could be in the cards for the Vikings.
Now, is it a good idea to trade an elite pass rusher entering his prime? Not really, but as Coller points out, “everyone has a price point.”
“If he wants to be one of the top five highest-paid pass rushers in the league that might just be too rich for the Vikings’ blood and it’s time to shop him. If he is willing to do something a little more reasonable then it makes sense to keep him,” says Coller.
If the Vikings are able to get a decent return for Hunter. they can use the draft capital acquired, on top of the picks they already have, to move up in next year’s draft to select their quarterback of the future.
Trading Hunter also frees up cap space to bring in free agents or rework Za’Darius Smith’s deal. So the Vikings wouldn’t necessarily be sacrificing a year of competing by moving on from Hunter.
