There’s ‘Steam’ That Vikings Could Trade Justin Jefferson?

Are we buying or selling this as actual news?

Is there really “steam” that the Vikings could make Justin Jefferson available for a trade this offseason? That’s how it was worded in a throw-in comment near the end of Pioneer Press columnist Charley Walters’ article from this weekend.

Meanwhile, steam continues that the Vikings could make Justin Jefferson available for trade. The NFL’s salary cap increase of $31 million per team could push an extension for Jefferson to more than the initially projected $150 million over five years.

Steam is an ambiguous word that seems to straddle the line between reporting and speculation. This isn’t Walters saying “a source says the Vikings could make Jefferson available for trade.” It could be that he’s reporting things he’s heard, or it could be closer to an opinion or a regurgitation of an idea that others have floated. It’s like saying “there’s buzz” that something could happen. Is that a report? I don’t know. And that’s not an attempt to discredit Walters, who is a veteran journalist in the Twin Cities.

That line in his column turned into this tweet from controversial NFL news aggregator Dov Kleiman, which has four million views:

And that’s how the NFL social media news cycle often works, particularly in the offseason. It’s important to remember to take things for what they are.

As for the Jefferson situation, there’s little reason to believe the Vikings are considering anything other than eventually signing the face of their franchise to a record-breaking contract extension. Nothing can ever be totally ruled out, of course. But as of now, the expectation should still be that something eventually gets worked out between Jefferson’s camp and the Vikings that keeps him in Minnesota for a long time.