MINNEAPOLIS -- For all intents and purposes, the Minnesota Vikings' move back into the first round of the 2012 draft to select Harrison Smith functioned as the grand opening event for the team's new way of doing business. The Smith pick marked the first of three times in the 2012-2014 drafts in which the Vikings traded back into the first round to add an extra piece to their foundation at a price they could afford.

Adding those players in the first round, not the second, gave them another year of financial leverage (more on that in a minute). And the moves, in the first years of Rick Spielman's time in full control of the team's football operation, signaled a bold course from the new general manager. The Vikings' approach, first and foremost, was going to be about stockpiling as many high-end players as they could.

That approach was always going to come with a cost, as the Vikings' new deal with Smith proved again Monday morning. Smith's contract, which keeps him in Minnesota through 2021, includes $51.25 million of new money, according to a league source. That makes Smith the highest-paid safety in the league for now (if Kansas City's Eric Berry signs a new deal soon, he could surpass Smith), and his deal is the first installment of a news story that figures to repeat itself several times before the decade is out.

The big contract extension for Harrison Smith shows how serious the Vikings are about keeping their own. Tom Dahlin/Getty Images

Sometime between now and March, the Vikings will have to determine if they want to do a new deal with left tackle Matt Kalil. Cornerback Xavier Rhodes and defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd will play on their fifth-year options in 2017. And by 2018, the Vikings will be staring at a couple of major decisions: linebacker Anthony Barr and quarterback Teddy Bridgewater. Spielman and his lieutenants have assembled an impressive group of young players, and keeping that group together could be the biggest investment the Vikings make through the rest of the decade.

That's how contending teams are built, and the Vikings know it. They had already done deals in the past two years for tight end Kyle Rudolph, guard Brandon Fusco, kicker Blair Walsh and wide receiver Jarius Wright. And while the next few contracts, starting with Smith's, are bound to be more expensive than the first few, the Vikings have a plan in place to counter that issue.

From what we know about the structure of Smith's deal, it's bound to look fairly similar to the five-year, $36.5 million extension the Vikings did with Rudolph, who played at Notre Dame with Smith and shares an agent with him. Smith will receive a $10 million signing bonus this year, and he was already due to make $5.278 million on his fifth-year option in 2016. Add those two together, and you get $15.278 million -- the amount that was guaranteed Smith at signing time on Monday. In other words, all the Vikings have committed to at this point is a $10 million bonus beyond the money they already owed Smith in 2016.

The deal includes another $13.5 million in money that's currently guaranteed against injury only -- like Rudolph's deal, that money figures to become fully guaranteed through roster bonuses or base salary guaranteed on the third day of the next several league years. But the Vikings locked up one of the game's best and most versatile safeties while retaining some flexibility on Monday. That has been vice president of football operations Rob Brzezinski's m.o. over the past several years, and the Vikings figure to explore similar structures for the next few high-profile contracts they have coming.

For all of the enmity between Vikings fans and the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota has closed the gap with its rival by emulating the Packers' approach: Find impact players in the draft and keep them off the open market with deals that offer upfront cash instead of exorbitant, long-term guarantees. It's how both teams have avoided salary-cap purgatory, and by the time the Vikings have to pay Bridgewater, they already will have doled out most, if not all, of the guaranteed money in Smith's deal.

The quarterback's contract figures to be the outlier in the bunch, and it could force some difficult decisions when the Vikings have to determine a verdict (assuming Bridgewater is still in their long-term plans at that point). It's a lot easier to build a roster when the quarterback position counts only $5.65 million against the cap -- as it will for the Vikings' three quarterbacks in 2016 -- than when one player counts for more than $15 million in cap space, as 17 quarterbacks around the league will in 2016. But the Vikings don't figure to be paying Adrian Peterson an eight-figure salary by the time a Bridgewater contract would hit the books, and they're likely already planning for a financial future with a high-priced quarterback. They exited the bidding for New England's Devin McCourty and Cincinnati's George Iloka in the past two years once the prices for the safeties reached a point where the Vikings would have to commit big money to a free-agent safety and Smith.

Spielman is not as reticent to sign free agents as Packers GM Ted Thompson has been, but his forays are more targeted now. The Vikings have reserved their boldest plays for draft night in recent years, and they issued a $51 million reminder on Monday of how committed they are to that approach.