Vikings Punter Britton Colquitt Takes Pay Cut to Stay in Minnesota in 2021
The Vikings' front office continues to find ways to create cap space ahead of the start of the new league year and free agency next week. On Thursday, punter Britton Colquitt agreed to take a pay cut of $1.375 million in 2021, reducing his base salary to the veteran minimum of $1.075 million. This comes after the Vikings released Kyle Rudolph, Dan Bailey, Riley Reiff, and a few others in recent weeks.
Colquitt's salary for 2022 is unchanged. He turns 36 this month and is entering his 12th season in the NFL.
“I love being a part of the Vikings family and am happy to help them get where they need to be in this difficult time," Colquitt said, via Schefter. "Hopefully that also means playing for a Super Bowl title.”
This comes across as a helpful, team-first move from Colquitt, but he may not have had any choice. It's possible the Vikings approached the veteran punter and gave him an ultimatum like the one they gave Reiff late last summer: take a pay cut or be released.
Considering his struggles in 2020, Colquitt wouldn't have had much leverage to refuse that ultimatum. He also may not have wanted to test the open market in a year where the salary cap is way down.
Out of 33 qualified punters, Colquitt was PFF's 32nd-graded punter last season. He also finished second-to-last in net yards per punt at just 36.7 and was one of only two punters to have multiple kicks blocked. The poor return yardage numbers against him (321 yards, third-most) and the two blocks can't entirely be blamed on Colquitt, as he suffered from being a part of a historically bad special teams unit.
With a new special teams coordinator (Ryan Ficken) and another year working with long-snapper Andrew DePaola, who replaced Austin Cutting last November, the Vikings will hope Colquitt can have a bounce-back season in 2021. Back in 2019, during his first season with the Vikings, he was PFF's No. 2 punter in the NFL and finished tied for fourth in average net yardage.
If Colquitt can bounce back, the Vikings will have a good punter on a very affordable $1.84 million cap hit. Another reason why keeping Colquitt around makes sense is that he has familiarity holding for Minnesota's new kicker, Greg Joseph. The two played for the Browns together in 2018.
The Vikings now have roughly $9.5 to $10 million in cap space (it's hard to find an exact number this time of year) after Colquitt's pay cut.
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