As the 2026 regular season begins, the Minnesota Vikings face a long list of questions, and one of the biggest centers on the future at quarterback. Kyler Murray is primed to earn the long-term job if he has a strong season, but that raises another layer of uncertainty: what would his contract extension actually look like?

The discussion has circled around $60 million per year potentially being too much. In fact, some would believe that even $40 million is too much. However, Baker Mayfield’s new deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offers a fascinating lens to evaluate what Murray’s extension might cost. 

Mayfield signed a 3-year deal worth up to $165 million, putting his average annual value at $55 million. The raw number sounds like a lot, and it is. But there are other ways to evaluate quarterback contracts, and one of the most useful is the percentage of salary cap at the time of signing.

Baker Mayfield’s contract extension gives a blueprint for Kyler Murray

Mayfield’s contract comes in at just over 18.2% of the salary cap, and that number is important. Looking at historical context, that number looks similar to these quarterbacks.

• 1995: Drew Bledsoe, 6 years, $40.46 million, $6.74 million AAV, 18.2%
• 1997: Steve Young, 6 years, $45 million, $7.5 million AAV, 18.1%
• 2019: Ben Roethlisberger, 2 years, $68 million, $34 million AAV, 18.1%
• 2013: Aaron Rodgers, 5 years, $110 million, $22 million AAV, 17.9%
• 2019: Jared Goff, 4 years, $134 million, $33.5 million AAV, 17.8%

These contracts are the closest contemporaries to what Mayfield just got, and you could easily see Murray being grouped with those players. Yes, Young is a Hall of Famer, but this was the last contract he ever signed, and 2013 Aaron Rodgers, while he was great, had yet to truly be what he ended up becoming. Roethlisberger was at the tail end of his career and Goff signed an extension from his rookie contract. All of these players still had some level of questions about them.

For even more context, let’s talk about former Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins. When Next year, the salary cap is projected at around $325 million. At 18.26%, that would translate to $59.3 million a year for Murray. So a $60 million cap hit is realistic if the Vikings follow the percentage-of-cap model.

That number would not put Murray anywhere close to the top of the quarterback market, even though the dollar amount would suggest as such. $60 million in 2026 is cheaper than $50 million just four years ago.

Aaron Rodgers in 2022 signed at 24.1% of the cap at $50.271 million. The most expensive quarterback contract of all time belongs to Joe Burrow, who signed in 2023 for $55 million a year at 24.5% of the salary cap. Murray’s hypothetical $60 million deal would come in more than 6% lower, essentially a 25% discount from the all-time high.

That raises a lot of interesting elements. There are levels to the conversation about what Murray’s contract could look like, but the Mayfield deal feels like the closest comparison.

Will the Vikings pay up?

Where things get even more compelling is when you look at quarterback contracts across the league. Only Dak Prescott and Patrick Mahomes have ever touched $60 million per year. Even Mahomes’s deal from earlier this offseason, at $64 million a year, sits at only 21.2% of the salary cap.

Will the Vikings want to pay that? Nobody wants to pay that. Every team wants more flexibility on the cap. But will having stability at the quarterback position after what happened in 2025 be the deciding factor?

That’s the question Minnesota will have to answer over the course of the next few years. A $60 million deal sounds astronomical in raw numbers, but the percentage of cap tells a different story, one the Vikings can’t afford to ignore. Cousins signed his deal with the Atlanta Falcons in 2024 for $45 million a year, it was 17.6% of the salary cap. The 3-year, fully guaranteed $84 million contract Cousins signed in 2018 was just 15.8%.

For context, a deal for Murray at the same price Cousins signed in 2018 would be for $51.35 million AAV. $40 million AAV would drop to 12.3% of the salary cap, which is equivalent to what Brett Favre signed with the Vikings in 2010 (1 year, $16 million), and 0.3% higher than Sam Darnold’s 3 year, $100.5 million deal last season with the Seattle Seahawks.

Mayfield’s deal is expensive in raw dollars, and maybe a little bigger than he should have gotten. But it also provides a blueprint for that level of quarterback, which is where Murray is likely to be after the season.