Kyle Rudolph is not interested in taking a pay cut, which is certainly not music to the Vikings’ ears as they try to figure out what to do with the veteran tight end.
Will the Vikings and tight end Kyle Rudolph be able to work out a way for both sides to be happy with his contract? It sure doesn’t look like it.
Minnesota needs to deal with their salary cap and dropping Rudolph’s sizable contract from the ledger would help. Rudolph, however, wants his money.
“I think I’m worth every dime of my contract,” Rudolph said on the Unrestricted with Ben Leber podcast via NFL.com.
Asked if he’d take a pay cut to avoid being cut, the answer was clear.
“It wouldn’t happen,” he said. “You only get to play this game for so many years, and I feel like I have a lot of good football left.”
Kyle Rudolph isn’t going to make the Vikings’ life easier
Rudolph’s comments were twinged with frustration about his role with the Vikings from start to finish.
Take this passage:
“That doesn’t mean that I’m used to my potential and I’m used to do what I do well, so it will be interesting over the next few months. Like I said, I have three years left on my contract. I don’t want to go anywhere else. I’ve somehow become a pretty decent blocker because I’ve been forced to. It certainly wasn’t something that I ever did well at any point of my career. Maybe in high school because I was bigger than everyone else, but even then, I just wanted to run around and catch balls.”
The trouble for Rudolph is he’s not catching very many balls these days. He had just 28 catches for 334 yards and a single touchdown in 2020. His 37 targets were a far cry from his most recent Pro Bowl season in 2017 when he had 57 catches, 532 yards and eight touchdowns on 81 targets. The year before that he was targeted 132 times.
“Early on last season, the writing was on the wall,” Rudolph added during his podcast appearance. “I saw where our offense was going. I had like seven or eight catches in the first six games. It was just absurd. I was literally blocking all the time.”
So Rudolph wants to be paid like the passing target he has been in his career, but the Vikings aren’t committed to using him like that. It’s no wonder they’re not interested in paying him like it either.
If the Vikings cut Rudolph, they would save $5.1 million in cap space while taking a $4.35 million hit.