The Minnesota Vikings have many difficult questions to answer this offseason before they prepare for the 2025 season. One that no one wants to talk about is, “Will Dalton Risner be back in Minnesota for 2025?”
Risner was with the team in 2023, and his return to the team was up for debate and doubt for much of the offseason. He would ultimately return to the team on a one-year deal despite them signing Blake Brandel. This signaled a competition at the guard spot, with Brandel earning the left guard spot and Risner competing with Ed Ingram for the right guard spot.
Unfortunately for Risner, he never found much consistency, and the Vikings’ interior offensive line was an eye-sore for much of the year.
The team at OTC projects Risner to sign a deal for an average of $3.3 million per year, a slight uptick from his salary of $2.4 million for the 2024 season with the Vikings. For that much money, there is a world where the Vikings could bring him back to partner up with a draft pick to compete for the guard spot, but at this point, why would they run back that scenario again?
The money isn’t much but for a cap-conscious general manager like Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, it could be. I can see a world where we see a similar situation where most of the offseason is spent trying to upgrade the position, with the team referring to Risner later in the offseason.