Josh Metellus has been present at the Minnesota Vikings’ OTAs but is not fully participating. Access Vikings’ Ben Goessling has speculated that this may be part of Metellus’ hold-in, who is in line for a new contract as he enters the final year of the extension he signed in 2023. Set to earn about $5.5 million in cash this season, Metellus is clearly underpaid for his contributions to the team.
Metellus holding in isn’t a sign of tension with the team. Attending OTAs isn’t mandatory, so even showing up is a sign of good faith. Instead, it’s good business sense. It doesn’t benefit the Vikings or Metellus if he gets hurt practicing before he signs a new deal. Reporters with strong team sources, like The Athletic’s Alec Lewis, have pegged Metellus as the next player in line for an extension following Andrew Van Ginkel‘s reworked deal.
This feels like a situation where both sides want a deal to get done, meaning it most likely will. The only question is what value Metellus might command on an extension, which is tricky given his unique role in Minnesota’s defense. Let’s explore that and some comparable players, and then come up with a projection for his deal.
What do you do here, exactly?
If a broadcast is talking about Josh Metellus, it’s probably to mention his versatile role in Brian Flores’ unique defense. An excellent graphic from Minnesota’s 2023 game against the Las Vegas Raiders perfectly encapsulated this:
https://x.com/cjzero/status/1733998152645062761
His wide variety of alignments last year drove this home. According to NexGenStats via NFLPro, Metellus lined up at LB on 408 snaps, in the slot on 267, at safety on 118, on the DL on 128, and at outside CB on 17.
From a personnel perspective, the Vikings base out of a “big nickel” defense, indicating that the team has five DBs on the field, three of which are safeties.
Metellus is often lined up in the slot in those five DB packages, replacing a slot CB. Sometimes, he’ll become an LB against heavier offensive personnel, usually next to Blake Cashman, with five defensive linemen in front of them.
When the offense spreads the Vikings out, they’ll bring a third CB on the field, creating a dime package with six DBs. In those situations, Metellus is often a “dime linebacker” playing next to Cashman with four defensive linemen in front of them.
The Vikings also frequently use Metellus as a blitzer. They like to show six-plus-man surfaces on early downs because it takes away zone runs. Metellus will often be one of the players threatening blitz in those situations, leading to his high rate of “defensive line” snaps.
Across those personnel packages, the Vikings occasionally line Metellus up as a deep safety. He often played deep while Harrison Smith was allowed to play in the box, or in the rare situation where the Vikings only had two safeties on the field.
If I had to boil Metellus’ game down to his best role, it would be the Dime LB position. He’s a proficient coverage player who can cover TEs and shows good discipline and instincts in zone coverage, whether deep, at LB, or in the slot. However, he might lack the elite quick-twitch movement to match up against the league’s best TEs or play a true post safety role.
Going forward, he’s an excellent blitzer who deconstructs RB and TE blocks and has a great knack for finding space to get to the ball carrier against the run. However, he’ll get swallowed up by offensive linemen blocking him.
How does he compare to other players?
You must stack Metellus against his peers to build a contract projection for him. Most NFL contracts work off precedent. That’s why it was easy for me to get very close in my contract projections for Justin Jefferson and Christian Darrisaw, who are elite players at their positions.
Despite being a quality starter, Metellus is not widely recognized as one of the best safeties in the league in the way Jefferson and Darrisaw are for their positions. Compounding that is Metellus’ unique role. Should he be considered a safety or a linebacker?
The answer to that question may not matter. Kerby Joseph, the top-paid safety, just signed an extension worth $21.25 million per year. Fred Warner is the league’s best off-ball LB, and the San Francisco 49ers recently extended him for $21 million per year.
If you go to Over the Cap and combine the list of safety and linebacker contracts, there are six safeties in the top 10 and four linebackers. Below are the top 20, which includes 12 safeties and eight linebackers.
These contracts give us a baseline at the two positions, but who does Metellus best compare to?
Derwin James, Minkah Fitzpatrick, and Budda Baker are certainly safeties with flexible roles, but they’re also perennially earning All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors. Maybe Tre’von Moehrig, Jevon Holland, and Metellus’ former teammate Cam Bynum are better comparisons as players without postseason accolades that signed market deals this offseason. Jamien Sherwood and Nick Bolton earned similar value at the LB position, which indicates a tier. However, those players function in more traditional safety and linebacker roles than Metellus.
On the open market, teams can easily see those players translate to their scheme. However, they might struggle to find a role for Metellus. Metellus has the most value to the Vikings, but that also means the Vikings will value him the most. Knowing this, I think it’s unlikely they will match the money teams were willing to give Moehrig, Holland, and Bynum.
Of the list above, Metellus compares best to the New England Patriots’ Kyle Dugger. Dugger earned his extension after playing a unique role in Bill Belichick’s defense, which obviously has ties to Flores. There are a couple of other players with similar roles across the NFL, like Jeremy Chinn, who signed with the Raiders this offseason for a modest two-year, $16.25 million deal. Jabrill Peppers, a fellow Michigan alum also on the Patriots, is earning $8.3 million per year.
You could also argue that Metellus compares best to slot defenders. Kyler Gordon is the highest-paid slot, earning $13.3 million per year. Mike Hilton is one of the best slot defenders in recent memory and is coming off of a contract that paid him $9.2 million per year when adjusting for the 2025 cap.
Full contract projection
Distilling this information, we can develop a range for Metellus’ extension. The absolute floor is Chinn’s $8 million, but I think offering lower than $12 million would be insulting. I see a market-adjusted version of Dugger’s contract for the ceiling, which would be roughly $16 million per year. If I were Metellus’ camp, I would try to get that.
Like most things, I expect this to be negotiated towards the middle. If I average Dugger and Peppers’ contracts, and prorate it for the 2025 cap, I get $12.5 million. That seems reasonable, but I think Metellus would want to clear the bar Gordon set at a minimum, so I will bump it up to $13.5 million.
For term, I’ll choose a three-year extension. That would put Metellus under contract through 2028, his age-30 season. That’s just in time for him to try to cash in via free agency one more time before the twilight of his career.
Metellus is set to earn $3.7 million this season. He has a play-time incentive that pays $1.6 million if he plays 80% of the snaps or $2.5 million if he plays 90% or more. He also has interception incentives that could pay up to $500k. It would be nice for the Vikings to wrap this incentive into the extension, making his total payout roughly $47 million over four seasons.
How much of the deal should be guaranteed? If you look at deals in that range, most have about 50% of the contract value guaranteed.
Usually, that guarantee comes as a signing bonus and two years of salary. Gordon’s contract is a good basis for the structure.
Fifty percent of $47 million is $23.5 million, which will be the number I use for the Metellus deal. I’ll project a bit more than half of that, $12 million. With five accrued seasons, Metellus has a minimum salary of $1.17 million for 2025. I’ll go a bit above that, $1.5 million to make the numbers round. That leaves a $10 million, fully guaranteed, base salary for Metellus in 2026. I’m incrementing the salary slightly in subsequent years to hit the full $47 million
Most Vikings contracts also include a per-game roster bonus and workout bonus. The roster bonus helps the team save some money in case the player misses time due to injury, and the workout bonus incentivizes players to attend offseason activities, like OTAs. So $500k and $250k, respectively, are pretty common numbers for those two bonuses.
Here’s my full projection for Metellus’ extension. Note that he has $1 million left from the signing bonus on his last deal, so that’s included in this projection to show accurate cap numbers.
Like with his last contract, the Vikings may choose to load the deal with play time and interception incentives and maybe even add in team success, Pro Bowl, or All-Pro incentives. Those numbers would inflate the agent-driven total that Ian Rapoport or Adam Schefter would tweet out, but not alter the base deal.
As it stands, this deal would likely be reported as a three-year, $43.25 million extension with $23.5 million guaranteed.
