The NFL landscape makes patience impossible

Justin Jefferson rumors and overreactions to JJ McCarthy practice reports are a product of the NFL always feeding interest

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By Matthew Coller

In early August 2016, I got a call from 1500ESPN Twin Cities telling me that I was being hired to cover the Minnesota Vikings. There were a lot of things swimming around my head upon hearing the words, “you’re hired.” When do I start? Where am I going to live? What is Minnesota like? One of the prevailing thoughts that I kept having in the days after landing the gig was that I was lucky to land a gig covering a team that was on the rise.

At that point, which turned out to be just days before Teddy Bridgewater suffered a franchise-altering injury, everything looked like it was lining up for the Vikings to be a serious contender for a long time to come. They had the young quarterback, elite defense, great coaching and Adrian Peterson. The possibilities for the next few years of Vikings football seemed very promising — and while I would have covered any NFL team at that point after years of grinding away in the Buffalo radio scene covering losing clubs — the opportunity to cover a contender was pretty exciting.

Over the last seven seasons the Vikings have provided a lot of excitement. The crazy ‘16 season was a heck of a welcome to Vikings football and the Minneapolis Miracle will probably forever sit at the top of the list of games I’ve ever covered. Even through the ups and downs of the Kirk Cousins era, which included a pandemic that took my job and our ability to fully cover the team, there were plenty of highs. The playoff win in New Orleans, the wild Mike Zimmer press conferences, the win in Buffalo. But the Vikings never got back to that team-on-the-rise feeling. Every year after 2018 came along with super high expectations as they tried to justify the Cousins contract and the reality that they weren’t likely to reach that 2017 pinnacle again.

Now that feeling is back. With Cousins landing in Atlanta and the Vikings moving onto JJ McCarthy, there is a *KG voice* anything-is-possible feeling to the team that has brought about a different type of fervor within the fans. A malaise had set in following a six-year span that resulted in the Vikings posting the 14th most wins and 15th best point differential. It feels like a house that got a paint job and opened up all the windows to let in the fresh air.

That doesn’t mean that the house is finished or that anyone is setting the bar at the Super Bowl this year, just that the next couple years will be fresh and fascinating. That’s a good place to be for a fan base. You might even argue that it’s the best place to be because once Super Bowl-or-bust comes your way then things get much more tense.

Despite the vibes being the best they have been in a long time, the nature of the NFL beast seems to be causing consternation in Viking land.

When I started covering the Vikings, the NFL was already in full year-round mode but social media was different. It wasn’t so central to everyone’s existence. It wasn’t so wrought with desperate attempts to draw engagement by any means necessary.

The NFL itself has blown up since then. Franchises have jumped 10 fold in value, TV deals have poured gold onto the owners and players and Roger Goodell has done his darndest to keep everybody watching even when there’s nothing to watch. I don’t remember the NFL Draft drawing millions of people to a city or anyone giving a darn to read my OTA reports. Now every transaction is followed by wild over analysis and every practice is treated as a game.

That’s great for everybody who loves football but there are unintended consequences.

If you would prefer that every whispered rumor becomes fact in the public eye, then today’s NFL landscape is for you. If you don’t mind draft season being filled with bogus reports that almost never come true on draft night, today’s NFL landscape is for you. If a player unfollows his team on social media, it’s a story. You into that? And if JJ McCarthy fumbles a snap during an OTA practice, 5,000 Twitter/X accounts will turn it into BALL SECURITY PROBLEMS FOR THE ROOKIE??!!?!?!?!

In particular, Justin Jefferson’s contract situation and McCarthy’s first two — count them, two — practices that have been open to the media have come along with oozing sewage from the internet. The latest example being a local report of “buzz” that the Vikings attempted to trade up for receiver Malik Nabers and trade Jefferson away. Forget how implausible that is for a second and consider that “buzz” passes for something that gets published and then republished by a website hosted by an NFL partner that has 1.9 million followers on Twitter.

Is buzz or more less true than the “steam” that Jefferson was going to be traded months ago?

I feel like Allen Iverson. We’re not talking about sources that are passed through an editing process, we’re talking about buzz? Buzz? Steam?

The Vikings have made it clear for several years that they intend to keep Jefferson. General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah recently talked about waiting to rekindle negotiations until after the draft so Jefferson could have an entire week to himself rather than having the draft take over the headlines.

When a player is negotiating a deal, teams call. There was a report last year that five teams contacted the 49ers about Nick Bosa. Things can get ugly during negotiations as well. Deebo Samuel and Jaylon Johnson both requested trades and then later signed extensions. How about the time Kyle Rudolph told reporters that lots of teams were interested in him if the Vikings didn’t give him an extension? Danielle Hunter didn’t show up on the field for the first few days of camp last year. TJ Hockenson had mysterious inner ear aches and back problems until he signed and then he was magically healed.

If there was backing to a report regarding Jefferson, that would be a different story. If Adam Schefter or one of the NFL Network insiders or Albert Breer had even the slightest shred of reporting that the Vikings were interested in moving Jefferson, then it wouldn’t be a problem. Instead we get “buzz” and then that becomes fact.

Imagine being Jefferson and having a very normal negotiation up until this point, including attending mandatory minicamp and every training camp practice last year, and spending the entire offseason watching people on the internet try to get you traded.

Imagine being Vikings fans who just want Jefferson to play for their team for a long time and every few weeks someone is telling you that your team is going to get rid of the best receiver of the last decade. I keep seeing the word “diva” thrown around regarding Jefferson, which is insane considering he’s said nothing and we haven’t even reached the point in the offseason where these contracts usually get done. Remember Xavier Rhodes and Stefon Diggs getting extended early in camp?

I don’t even want to talk about how access to salary cap information and a DVD of “Moneyball” seems to have convinced people that paying the greatest player in the league is somehow worse than draft picks. That’s for another article.

Anyway, the point is that it’s not possible in this world anymore to give the Vikings and Jefferson time to work out the contract. During that process, opportunists are going to get their piece of the rumor click pie, regardless of whether there actually is truth to all rumors. If you write that fans just need to let it play out, you’re boring. If your opinion on TV/radio/podcast is that nothing unusual is going on, you’re a snooze fest.

But what else am I supposed to tell you when that’s really the case? Everything the Vikings have said they were going to do in three years has come to fruition. Whether it was the competitive rebuild or setting a price for Cousins or drafting a quarterback this year. They are suddenly running misdirection when it comes to signing the best receiver in the league?

And then there’s the McCarthy stuff.

Everyone is trying their best to provide information about his OTA practices because that’s what fans want to know. How does JJ look? We can do that with some details of the types of reps he’s taking, how he’s throwing the ball and what happened in the open practices but somehow that turns into folks wanting every practice report to be a referendum on whether he’s going to be the next Mahomes or Ponder.

I’m going to tell you the truth: I have no idea. Nobody else does either. It shouldn’t be that hard to live in both worlds where we can talk about what’s happening and avoid going completely batty about it.

McCarthy is talented, super young and has a lot of potential. In fact, if I was giving you the hottest thing that I could come up with, I’d lean toward the idea of his “ceiling” being limited based on his Michigan numbers being unfair. The talent is easy to see. Whether it comes to fruition, we’ll see.

Similar to Jefferson’s contract, we are going to need to be patient and see how it goes during minicamp and training camp. If he doesn’t start Week 1 or Week 6, we still won’t have a good grasp of whether he’s going to be “the guy” or not. Heck, there are NFL QBs in their fourth year that people still debate. We’re supposed to know in OTAs? That’s not what the NFL monster wants.

How is anyone supposed to navigate this madness?

Well, we can have some levity about it. Maybe when Jefferson signs an extension he can walk out with a bunch of different team hats and pick the Vikings one like he’s committing to a college. By the way, did anyone catch the rumor that he was “seen near the Jets facility?” Do players do team visits before they get traded? Honestly, this stuff can be pretty funny.

As far as McCarthy goes, rationality never rules the day with quarterbacks. The model for the Vikings’ young quarterback should be Brock Purdy. Last year the entire football universe seemed dead set on creating a debate over whether Purdy was actually good or not. He never appeared to notice. You can bet if McCarthy has success that there will be questions about whether he is a product of Justin Jefferson.

Or wait, is Jefferson traded to the Giants or Jets or Cardinals or Chargers or Panthers or Birmingham Stallions by then? Now I’m not sure.

Snark aside, there are so many interesting storylines regarding the Vikings. We can afford to avoid freakout over “buzz” or OTA practices and dive deeper into a team that is trying to bring Adofo-Mensah’s vision to life over the next two years.

And if Jefferson gets traded and McCarthy is a clear cut bust by the end of training camp, then I guess that I will have missed out on a lot of opportunities to stir the pot along the way. I’m comfortable taking the risk of waiting until there is actual evidence of these things.

Until then, who’s playing left guard?

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