• Let’s get this out of the way—Justin Jefferson is going nowhere.
I feel like an idiot even having to type those words, but after he addressed the idea that Minnesota could offload players ahead of the trade deadline (which is still a month away), that’s something I at least wanted to make a couple of calls on. And I can say the Vikings aren’t going to entertain trading him. So if you root for a team that could use him, and a lot of teams could, forget it. If you see someone doing a trade destinations blog post, ignore it.
With that established, we take a look at what he said about the trade deadline this week, which was at least interesting given that Minnesota goes into October at 0–3.
“I’m tired of people saying that we’re looking into next season, or all of the trades and stuff like that,” said Jefferson during Vikings media access this week. “We’re still focused on this season. We have a lot more games to go, and we have a lot more things to accomplish this season. We’re still focused in, and we still have the same goal as we had before the season. We just need to fix a few things, and I feel like we’ll be back on track.”
There’s some truth in that, of course. After going 11–0 last year in one-possession games, the law of averages has struck the Vikings—all three of their September losses came by a single score. Also, while there’s been retooling on the roster—as Minnesota cleaned up its salary cap—the roster isn’t devoid of talent.
Still, if 0–3 turns into 1–6, there will be incoming calls to Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell to gauge their appetite for trading accomplished veterans on the roster.
It wouldn’t make sense to deal off Jefferson or Christian Darrisaw or T.J. Hockenson, guys who are still young and foundational pieces for the franchise moving forward. But would the Vikings listen to teams calling on, say, Kirk Cousins, Danielle Hunter or Harrison Smith, all of whom might have value to a contender?
My guess would be that the Vikings would work with those guys privately on that stuff, with each of them having restructured their contracts this year, and let them help chart the course. It’s how they handled veterans last offseason, and I’d expect how they would handle them in a situation like this, too.
And, obviously, as Jefferson said, those guys can make this all moot by winning games in the coming weeks.
