Riley Reiff is staying put. The Vikings are on the verge of finalizing a restructured contract that will keep the starting left tackle in Minnesota, as Field Yates of ESPN.com tweets. 
Earlier this week, we heard that Reiff was expecting to be released by the cap-crunched Vikings. Thanks to the recent addition of Yannick Ngakoue, the Vikes were skittish about paying Reiff his scheduled $10.9MM in base pay and thinking about dropping him for $8.8MM in cap space. Heading into Tuesday morning, the Vikings had just $1.2MM in cap room, the lowest total in the league. The Vikings asked Reiff to decide on whether to take a pay cut or be cut by today, and he’s rendered his verdict.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL.com, Reiff has agreed to drop his salary from $10.9MM to $6MM (Twitter link). He can earn $2MM of that back via playing time incentives, with Mike Garafolo of the NFL Network tweeting that Reiff will earn an additional $1MM if he plays in 86% of the team’s snaps in 2020 and another $1MM if he plays in 93.75% of snaps. Reiff was on the field of 85.7% of Minnesota’s offensive snaps in 2019, so the incentives are reachable but will be considered not likely to be earned for cap purposes, meaning that they will not count as a cap charge.
Reiff, 31, signed with the Vikings in 2017. Since then, he’s made 43 regular season starts at left tackle, though the Vikings were once thinking about moving him to the interior. In April, the Vikes tapped versatile lineman Ezra Cleveland in the second round, but they believe that he’s still too green for significant playing time. With quality tackles in short supply, the Vikings are glad to have struck middle ground with Reiff.
That’s a relief. Although Reiff isn’t a standout by any means, he can at least serve as a competent blindside blocker until Cleveland is deemed ready. Otherwise, the Vikings would be forced to shift O’Neill to the left side and the interior would be in complete disarray
Agreed.
Hope it’s for $6 million or less……..