Hitman Back On Reworked Deal

Details of Harrison Smith’s new deal with the #Vikings:

–$9.901M cap number
–$8M signing bonus, $2M base salary, up to $250K per-game roster bonus
—$25M base salary for 2027 is fully g’td if Smith is on the roster the 3rd day of the ‘26 LY (similar to his last deal)
—Up to $750K…

— Ben Goessling (@BenGoessling) March 27, 2025

One last time.

Having Harrison Smith back is ‘massive’ for Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Early in Harrison Smith’s annual offseason deliberations about whether to play another season with the Vikings, the safety has a rule for Kevin O’Connell.

“I give him his space,” O’Connell said at the NFL owners’ meetings on Tuesday. “If I call or text him, we are not to talk about football until he’s ready. So there may have been a couple golf texts here and there, a couple of calls to check in on all the things happening in the world.”

One morning this month, O’Connell got the call from Smith he was waiting for.

“He said, ‘Hey, Boss Man, I think I’ve got one more in me,‘” O’Connell said. “And I was like, ‘Am I allowed to talk about football yet?’ I took that as a yes. He heard my excitement.”

The 36-year-old Smith’s decision to return for a 14th season provided a jolt for O’Connell, who’d campaigned along with defensive coordinator Brian Flores for Smith to keep playing. The Vikings gave him a new deal for 2025, with an $8 million signing bonus, a $2 million base salary and a raft of incentives and bonuses that could push his compensation as high as $14 million in 2025. Tucked among the incentives in the contract: a “Hitman to the HOF” bonus that pays Smith $500,000 if he intercepts four passes in 2025.

It’s a lot of money for a safety who’s played at least 900 snaps every year since 2017, but the Vikings still deem Smith too valuable to think about life without him.

“I haven’t coached it down for the Minnesota Vikings without Harrison Smith here,” O’Connell said. “He’s a huge part of who I am as a coach. He’s a huge part of what we built together in Minnesota. He stands for so many things that I believe in, in this game, in the locker room. Having him back is massive for me. And I thought he had a really good year. I think sometimes we get caught up in the nostalgic side of things with, he’s made it 14 years one team, 36 years old. He’s closer to my age than anybody in the locker room. We still have our coffee every Friday. But he’s still a really good player and brings so much to the table to our defense.”

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