Vikes boost D with DE Greenard, two linebackers After making a little over $1 mil/yr, he's jumping up to $18/yr with $42mil guaranteed! Vikings add DE Jonathan Greenard to boost pass rush The deal: Four years, $72 million with $42 million guaranteed Grade: A The Vikings are (presumably) letting Danielle Hunter walk out the door, but in Greenard they are replacing him with another very good pass-rusher -- and at a good price, too. Greenard is a metrics darling, recording a 22% pass rush win rate that ranked sixth among edge rushers last season, ahead of stars such as Haason Reddick, Brian Burns and Trey Hendrickson. And he's a solid run defender, too, with a 37% run stop win rate at edge that would have led the position had he played enough to qualify. (That he played a little less on early downs and didn't qualify is perhaps a sign he wasn't as strong as the figure implies, but Greenard was consistently above average in the metric in both 2021 and 2022.) Oh, and did I bury the lede? Greenard brings more than under-the-hood production, as he had 12.5 sacks too. And he did it on only 345 pass rushes. Among players with at least 200 pass rushes, Greenard ranked fourth in sack rate (3.6%). This is not a move without risk. Greenard has struggled to stay on the field at times -- he played 12, eight and 15 games per year in 2021, 2022 and 2023, respectively. The Vikings are buying the breakout, as Greenard's pass rush win rates were solid in the past but not on the level of his 2023 play. He did have eight sacks in 2021, though. But the $18 million APY price tag is not that of a superstar edge rusher. After adjusting for cap inflation, that makes this deal in the same realm as Alex Highsmith's extension with the Steelers last year or Matthew Judon's contract with the Patriots in 2021, per OverTheCap. And it pales in comparison to top-of-the-market deals like Olivier Vernon's free agent deal with the Giants in 2016 ($28 million in today's dollars) or Montez Sweat's extension with the Bears ($27 million), let alone T.J. Watt's deal ($39 million). While there's risk in buying high, to me this is a gamble easily worth making. This isn't just a single year of sack production. All the signs are there of Greenard being a very high-level edge player. Those don't come around on the free agent market at age 26 often. -- Walder What this means for the 2024 draft: Looking at the Vikings' roster before free agency, the expectation was that if the team didn't re-sign Hunter, selecting a pass-rusher was in play early in the draft, potentially at No. 11 overall. With Greenard signed, pass-rusher can now move down the team's list of needs. The focus in Minnesota now is all on quarterback. -- Matt Miller
Grantham’s most notable contribution; perhaps the only one, but it was huge. One of my favorite Gators over the last 10 years.
