On Thursday, ESPN's Jeremy Fowler revealed that former Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman Jonathan Allen has agreed to a two-year contract with the Cincinnati Bengals that has a max value of $28 million.
On the surface, it just seems like Allen finding a way to convince another team to pay him way too much money again. But thanks to this reported deal from the Bengals, the Vikings' salary cap situation is expected to experience an unexpected benefit.
According to SKOR North's Thor Nystrom on Thursday, Allen had offset language in his contract, and he shared how the defensive lineman's new reported deal with Cincinnati should help Minnesota.
"Text from a source familiar with Jonathan Allen’s contract: 'My understanding is that it offsets all of the Vikings money so they won’t owe him anything.'”
Jonathan Allen's contract with Cincinnati Bengals expected to help Minnesota Vikings
On Wednesday, the Vikings released Allen with a post-June 1st designation, which means the team wasn't expected to experience any of the salary cap relief from his departure until after June 1st.
According to OverTheCap.com, Allen's release was supposed to create $11.2 million more cap space for Minnesota after June 1st and leave the team with $12.67 million in dead cap.
But according to Nystrom, the amount of money that Allen is going to reportedly receive from the Bengals should be enough to eliminate all of the dead cap that the Vikings were originally going to be stuck with from the defensive lineman's departure.
Whether Minnesota gets to take advantage of this newfound spending money now or after June 1st is currently unknown, but at the very least, Allen's reported contract with Cincinnati is expected to give the Vikings some additional salary cap flexibility at some point this offseason.