MINEPOLIS – The tight end of the Minnesota Vikings Kyle Rudolph knows he deserves it, and he won’t give up before his 11th season in the NFL.
In an appearance on the “Anti-Ben Labor” podcast, Rudolph lamented his role in the Vikings’ offense over the past two seasons, becoming the second or third leading receiver in Minnesota from 2015 to 2018 after the game passed in 2020.
Minnesota is estimated to be worth, 12.8 million before the new league year, and if they leave Rudolph this season (which comes with a dead money of 4. 4.35 million), Cape Space will gain 5. 5.1 million. The Vikings could reconfigure Rudolph’s current deal with three years to go, so that his 2021 cap number would drop from $ 9.45 million to almost half.
This will not be the first time the Vikings have reached a tight end to the two-time Pro Bowl with a re-creation proposal. In June 2019, Rudolph renewed his contract in a four-year extension, two months after Minnesota used a second-round pick to draft Irrawaddy Smith Jr. out of Alabama. Last season, Smith finished third in the Vikings to receive and touchdown (365 yards, five TDs).
Rudolph said he was not sure how the Minnesota front office would approach his situation before the fee-free agency, but he was adamant with the belief that the full amount of anything that applies to his contract should be paid.
“Obviously, I’m real. I look at both sides,” Rudolph said. “If I were you [team owners] Wolves, if I were you [general manager] Rick [Spielman], I’m looking at this situation like, ‘Hey, we pay this guy a lot of money and you’re not using it, so why do we continue to pay him a lot of money?’
“With that being said, I think I’m valued for every step of my contract. That doesn’t mean I’m used to my potential and used to doing what I can, so it will be interesting the next few months. That said, I have three years left on my contract. I have nowhere else to go. I have somehow become a pretty restrained, because I have been forced to. It was definitely not something that I always performed well at any stage of my career. “Maybe in high school because I was older than everyone else, but still, I just wanted to run and catch the ball.”
“At the beginning of last season, the writing was on the wall,” Rudolph continued. “I saw where our offense was going. I had seven or eight catches in the first six games. It was just nonsense. I was literally blocking all the time.”
Rudolph caught 28 passes on 35 targets in 2020, his lowest output since the 2014 season. He churned on 4 receiving y receiving yards and one touchdown, which was low for a former second-round pick of a later career.
Rudolph was asked to pass a block on sn 43 snaps last season, down from 68 pass-blocking snaps he played in 2019. The experienced tight end reveals the reason for his late-injured reserve position on the podcast that forced him to miss Week 13. To 17: Lisfrank sprain at his feet.
Asked what he would do if the Vikings brought him a re-creation proposal that would put him in the same role as the offender, Rudolph made it clear he would not agree to a reduced salary for 2021. He has decided to build a base next season.6 salary of 7.65 million.
“It won’t happen,” he said. “You’ve only had the opportunity to play this game for so many years, and I think I have a lot of good football left. Now we’re moving fast, I’ve played these three years on this contract and now I’m 33, 33 and 34 and They’re like, ‘Hey, we want to keep you in very small numbers for a few years, but we want you X, Y and Z to help these young people’ – sign me up.
“But as I said, at 31, knowing how I feel physically, with what I can do … it’s just a lack of opportunities. In the past, I was getting a red zone target. I can’t sign. For that again. “
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