When the news first broke yesterday that Vikings linebacker Anthony Barr was changing his mind on a deal with the New York Jets to stay with the Minnesota Vikings it was assumed that he would be taking less money to stay in a comfortable spot. The rumors surrounding the Jets deal were north of $15 million a year and that was something that the Minnesota Vikings simply could not compete with.
But they did, in a way. The were at least able to sweeten their offer enough to get Barr's attention and flip his decision back to purple.
Well, now we have the details of the Barr contract with Minnesota thanks to ESPN.com's Courtney Cronin and in looking at the way it breaks down it looks like Anthony might have left A LOT of money on the table with New York to stay with the Vikings.
According to Cronin's twitter account here's a quick overview and breakdown of Barr's 5-year $67.5 Million contract with the Vikings:
Cap Hits
- 2019 - $5.6MM, 2020 - $12.7MM, 2021 - $15.5MM, 2022 - $15.6MM, 2023 - $18.1MM
On top of that cap magic that Rob Brzezinski worked to get those numbers to line up, part of Barr's contract includes $33 million in guarantees, but of that number only $15.9 million of that is FULLY guaranteed. Meaning that in the future if things were to change the team wouldn't be on the line for gigantic hits to the cap if they parted ways.
Let's just use the median of the $15MM-$17MM range that was rumored from the Jets. For 5-years, that would be $80 MM from New York.
That would mean that only considering the base salary, and assuming that it all plays out to fruition, which it never does, that Barr left at least $12.5 million on the table.