Harrison Smith Is Back!

After losing Danielle Hunter to the Houston Texans during the league’s legal tampering period, I wasn’t sure that I could handle the loss of Harrison Smith as well.  

No worries now, Harrison Smith is back!

Facing serious salary cap restraints last season, the Vikings and Harrison Smith reworked his contract to provide some financial flexibility and to keep him on the roster. That reworked contract brought a cap number north of $19 million this year and $22 million next year. Those are difficult numbers for a 35-year old safety no matter how well he’s still playing. For the second straight offseason, Smith took a cut in pay to stay in Minnesota. NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported that Smith’s new deal is for $9 million this year, providing $10 million in cap space.

Harrison Smith has been one of the Vikings best players and quiet leaders since he was selected with the 29th pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. Defensive coaches from Leslie Frazier to Mike Zimmer to Brian Flores have relied on his steady and heady play for twelve seasons. His quiet excellence on and off the field has made him a fan favorite. I know that he’s been one of my favorites since the day he was drafted. My hopes for him has always been a championship and to retire as a Viking. The former might be quite the challenge this season but he moved a step closer to the latter. 

The annual roster churn that comes with today’s NFL can be difficult if you truly care about your team and the people that populate it. When I fell for the Vikings in the early 1970s, I thought that Alan Page, Jim Marshall, Chuck Foreman, Fran Tarkenton, Mick Tingelhoff, and Bud Grant would lead my team forever. I learned the sad day that Page was released during the 1978 season that change is inevitable. Players leave. Rosters churn. I watched the greats from the Vikings Super Bowl teams leave. Keith Millard, Chris Doleman, Joey Browner, Carl Lee, and Anthony Carter left a decade later. Randall McDaniel and John Randle left a decade after that. Randy Moss left far too soon. Jared Allen, Steve Hutchinson, and Adrian Peterson left with a bit of tread remaining. For over thirty years now, free agency has sped up the annual roster churn. A coaching change often triggers a roster overhaul. Hired in 2022, general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell, hoping to remain competitive in the moment, have paced the Vikings overhaul a bit. This is the start of their third offseason and the somewhat paced overhaul is nearly complete. Only a handful of players remain on the roster from the 2021 season. Even with the most successful teams, roster consistency is nearly impossible to maintain. Actually, maintaining roster consistency is even more difficult for those teams. Hoping to catch a spark of success, the bottom teams routinely raid the rosters of top teams. NFL rosters are shuffled every offseason. Players like Mick Tingelhoff, Jim Kleinsasser, Chad Greenway, and Brian Robison are becoming so rare. Players that play their entire NFL career with a single team. I hoped that Danielle Hunter would be one. Thankfully, Harrison Smith is still on pace to be the next one.