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It’s all or nothing for the top young cornerback in the 2025 free agency class
When we took a look at the 2025 free agency class earlier this offseason, it became clear that the top two young cornerbacks were Minnesota’s Byron Murphy Jr. and New Orleans’ Paulson Adebo. While Adebo is recovering from a broken femur, Murphy is healthy — which should end up netting him the biggest contract of the entire 2025 crop.
On Tuesday, ESPN’s Dan Graziano broke some news on the Murphy front: Murphy and the team pushed back the date when his void years trigger on his contract. Minnesota had paid Murphy $17.5 million for his two seasons there but only accounted for $13.7 million of that on their cap from 2023-2024. The remainder of that cap accounting will accelerate to 2025 as dead cap unless the two sides can come to an extension.
Here’s an interesting thing, though: Murphy pushing the void date from this week to the day before the new league year starts, as Graziano reported, takes the franchise tag completely off of the table for Murphy. The Vikings’ deadline to franchise tag Murphy would be March 4th, per NFL rules, while the start of the new league year is March 12th. Since Murphy has these fake “void” years tagged to the end of his deal, which helped Minnesota spread around the cap accounting of his contract through the 2025 salary cap, he can’t be franchised. On paper, he’s technically not set to be a free agent until his void years actually trigger, which is well after the franchise tag deadline.
This puts a ton of pressure on the Vikings, who are set to lose the most snaps of any team in the NFL this free agency period, to ink a long-term contract with Murphy. If they fail, Murphy could be the top free agent on the Green Bay Packers’ board this spring.
Due to cornerback Jaire Alexander’s contract, which is set to pay him $17.5 million in 2025, the Packers are almost certainly going to release or restructure the former All-Pro. If they get rid of him, it opens up a pretty significant hole on their depth chart. Opposite of Keisean Nixon, Green Bay’s only other starting option under contract would be Carrington Valentine, who failed to keep a full-time job over Eric Stokes.
With Stokes, Corey Ballentine and Robert Rochell all hitting free agency this year, the Packers’ depth chart would be extremely thin following an Alexander release. There’s no question why Murphy, a player with elite ball skills, would be coveted in Green Bay’s position.
Now, we just have to wait and see if Murphy will actually test the market in March or if the Vikings’ big bet will pay off.
