Yet another big name player is getting the axe. The Vikings are releasing offensive tackle Riley Reiff, the team announced Wednesday afternoon.
We heard over the weekend that Minnesota was looking for Reiff to take a pay-cut, and obviously the two sides weren’t able to come to an agreement. The release will now save the Vikings about $11MM in cap space for 2021. Reiff had been due a $5MM roster bonus on March 19th, so there was a tight timeline here. With the move the Vikings are now officially under the salary cap as they get ready for free agency.
The cap savings are nice, but they’ll now need a new starting left tackle. Prior to Week 17 when he was placed on the COVID-19 list, Reiff hadn’t missed a snap in 2020. In his nine seasons in the league, Reiff has never played in less than 13 games, which will certainly help his cause on the open market. The Vikings did right by him and gave him a $1MM bonus back in February to make up for the playing time incentive he missed because of that COVID game, which had led to some optimism they’d be able to work something out.
The 23rd overall pick of the 2012 draft, Reiff spent his first five years in Detroit. He then signed a five-year, $58.75MM contract with the Vikings in March of 2017 and has been their left tackle ever since. Minnesota will now either look for his replacement elsewhere, or move Bryan O’Neill from right tackle to left.
Reiff will be hitting free agency again now at the age of 32. Although he’s never made a Pro Bowl or All-Pro team, he’s capable of being a solid starter. Plenty of squads should be interested as he joins a strong offensive line market, and a team like the Chargers make a lot of sense on paper.
Love to see all the same people complain about how the team signed a contract so they need to honor it.
Preach
The whole contract system in the NFL is just a complete nightmare…for both the players and owners. You’ve got holdouts in the middle of contracts and trade demands from the players, while the teams can cut players a year after signing them to multi-year contracts, re-structure contracts, turn salaries into signing bonuses, franchise tags, transitional tags, etc. What a freakin joke! Who came up with this crap, anyways?
To answer your question the owners and NFLPA agreed to this when they hammered out a CBA. Both sides have to make concessions and tradeoffs. It’s not a perfect system but if you have a better one I’m sure Goodell would love to hear about it.
seems like the perfect colts stop gap. they need a solid guy who doesn’t break the bank.
Or they will move Ezra Cleveland from the RG (out of) position he played in 2020 over to his natural position of LT. Vikings can then fill the RG position off their current roster, free agency or (most likely) the upcoming draft.
It’s actually been reported that the Vikes were looking for an extension from Reiff this year, not a pay cut, but when he saw Moton and Robinson get franchised for $14 million, he decided to test the market. If the Niners and Trent Williams can reach a deal, and with Eric Fisher recovering from a torn Achilles, Reiff moves up to being the second best free agent LT after Alejandro Villanueva, so he should do okay.
I’d love to see a Reiff/Remmers reunion in KC.