The Vikings have a little more time to work out a way to avoid taking on dead money from running back Aaron Jones’s contract under their 2025 cap.
Jones signed a one-year deal with the team last year, but it included a void year to spread out the cap hit. The contract was set to void on Monday, but Field Yates of ESPN reports that the Vikings and Jones have agreed to push the void date back to March 11. That’s one day before the start of the new league year.
If Jones’s contract voids, there will be a dead cap hit of $3.2 million for the Vikings. Pushing the date back gives the two sides a chance to work on an extension that would keep the Vikings from incurring that charge.
Jones ran 255 times for 1,138 yards and five touchdowns in 2024 while catching 51 passes for 408 yards and another score.
Saints coach Kellen Moore needs to hire a defensive coordinator. The interview list includes a member of the Vikings’ coaching staff.
Adam Schefter of ESPN.com reports that the Saints will interview pass game coordinator/defensive backs coach Daronte Jones for their job on Saturday.
Earlier in the current cycle, Jones interviewed for that same position with the Bears and Jaguars.
Jones, 46, started his coaching career in 2001. He got his first NFL job in 2016.
He worked for the Vikings as defensive backs coach in 2020, before becoming the defensive coordinator at LSU in 2021. Jones returned to the Vikings as part of Kevin O’Connell’s initial coaching staff in 2022. In 2023, he added the title of pass game coordinator.
Defensive end Myles Garrett wants out of Cleveland. And he has yet to relent on his trade demand.
While Browns owner Jimmy Haslam might decide to dig in his heels and refuse to give Garrett what he wants, there’s a way to eliminate a pair of massive headaches with one pill.
The message would go like this: “If you want Myles Garrett, you have to take Deshaun Watson.”
It would amount to an extra $92 million commitment, with the new team getting Garrett and owing Watson the balance of his five-year, $230 million, fully-guaranteed contract.
The new team wouldn’t put Watson on the field. He’s already highly unlikely to play in 2025, given that he had surgery last month on his re-torn Achilles tendon.
It would be a twist to the Brock Osweiler deal the Browns did seven years ago, when they absorbed $16 million in guaranteed salary and received a second-round pick.
If, of course, a new team takes Watson as part of a Garrett trade, the Deshaun Tax would reduce the draft-pick compensation and/or the new team’s willingness to give Garrett a market-value contract. But if the Browns could engineer the same kind of competition that the Texans finagled three years ago — with four teams (Browns, Panthers, Falcons, Saints) pre-approved to negotiate with Watson — the Browns could include Watson’s albatross contract in the minimal asking price for permission to talk to Garrett.
Would a contender take Watson to get Garrett? The three-pronged negotiations could include an effort to get the Browns to eat some of the $92 million. That would impact the draft picks and the Garrett contract. But if step one focuses solely on the Watson contract and the draft picks given to Cleveland, it would be for the finalists to then make their best financial case to Garrett.
Not many true contenders could pull it off. The Commanders have a massive amount of cap space for 2025. The Chargers do, too. The Vikings and Lions could also make it work without major pain. (The Vikings could justify dumping that kind of cash into a quarterback who won’t play by pointing to J.J. McCarthy’s slotted rookie deal, which averages less than $5.5 million per year.)
In the end, a team that’s currently on the Super Bowl porch would have to believe Garrett is the difference between knocking on the door and kicking it in. And that team would have to be willing and able to explain away the inheritance of the thoroughly unpopular Watson as a business proposition. Possibly, the winner of the Garrett/Watson package would have to cut Watson as soon as the ink dries on the trade paperwork.
And, yes, Watson has a no-trade clause. But if he still gets his money and if it gets him out of Cleveland and ultimately to free agency in 2026, he’d surely consider it.
Regardless, this might be the kind of outside-the-box approach needed to pry Garrett away from the Browns. If, of course, the Browns are willing both to move on from Garrett and to finally admit to themselves and everyone else that the 2022 trade for Watson was and is the worst trade-and-sign of the salary-cap era, and possibly the single worst transaction in NFL history.
The Saints landed their head coach in Kellen Moore and now they’re starting to work on filling out his staff.
Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports that the Saints have requested an interview with Vikings defensive backs coach/pass game coordinator Daronte Jones for their defensive coordinator position.
Jones’s name came up in other defensive coordinator searches around the league last month and he has had two stints with the Vikings. He worked for them in 2020 and returned in 2022 after spending a season on the staff at LSU. He’s also worked for the Bengals and Dolphins.
49ers assistant and former Chargers head coach Brandon Staley is reportedly a top candidate for the coordinator position in New Orleans.
Vikings fullback C.J Ham will spend some time recovering from an operation this offseason.
Ham’s wife posted pictures of her husband in a hospital bed with a boot on his right foot and ankle to Instagram on Wednesday. She wrote that it was a “simple procedure” without detailing what injury he was addressing with the procedure.
Ben Goessling of the Minneapolis Star Tribune notes that Ham was on the injury report with an ankle issue late in the season, but he did not miss any time.
Ham appeared in all 18 games for the Vikings. He caught five passes for 35 yards and ran twice for 10 yards in the regular season. He also had one catch in the team’s playoff loss to the Rams.
