Update:
NFL spokesman Brian McCarty tells Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk that no decision has been made regarding Teddy Bridgewater and his free agent status.
“No decision has been made,” McCarty said.
Meanwhile, Ben Goessling reports that NFLPA spokesperson Carl Francis said the union hasn’t received clarification yet on whether Teddy Bridgewater’s contract will toll. However, the issue should become clearer in the coming days.
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Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports Vikings QB Teddy Bridgewater is expected to be a free agent and Minnesota is not planning to contend that his contract should toll for the 2018 season.
Rapoport adds that the Vikings are proceeding as if Bridgewater is a free agent, which implies they’re comfortable with him testing the open market.
There has been a lot of buzz in the past few days about the Vikings possibly going after Kirk Cousins, so they may view Bridgewater as a contingency option, depending on how things go with their main targets.
The issue regarding Bridgewater’s contract was that he spent the first six games of the 2018 season on the PUP list and the Collective Bargaining Agreement states that any player who is in the last year of his contract is on the PUP list through the sixth game of the regular season will have his contract toll.
Bridgewater recently said that he “definitely” views himself as a starting quarterback next year.
“Definitely. No question,” Bridgewater said when asked if he views himself as a starter, per Dane Mizutani.
Bridgewater, 25, is a former first-round pick of the Vikings back in 2014. He’s currently in the final year of his four-year, $6,849,502 rookie contract and stands to make a base salary of $1,354,023 for the 2017 season.
The Vikings declined to pick up Bridgewater’s fifth-year option that would have cost them $12,198,000 million for the 2018 season, but was guaranteed only for injury and wouldn’t have prevented them from working out a long-term extension.
Bridgewater will now be an unrestricted free agent for the first time in his NFL career.
In 2017, Bridgewater appeared in one game for the Vikings and was 0-2 passing and threw an interception.
We have him featured in our Top 100 – 2018 NFL Free Agents list.
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