There’s no such thing as an off-season in the NFL, even if they still use the term. There’s a brief downtime between the end of the SuperBowl and the start of free agency, but that’s about it. In the case of the Minnesota Vikings, the big drama so far this year is around Percy Harvin:
The Percy Harvin saga continues with another report of his discontent. Nothing has really changed, however, as Harvin’s status has been precarious for quite some time.
A local Twin Cities media columnist, Sid Hartman, is reporting the Vikings are planning to cut ties with Percy Harvin. The short and the long of it is that Harvin wants to be traded and doesn’t want to remain with the Vikings.
Before your Harvin jerseys become de facto lighter fluid to get a bonfire flame kicking up, let’s climb in the Wayback Machine and go where people implore, “Never mind the man behind the curtain.”
[. . .]
The source of this “breaking news” is an anomaly unto itself in that it could have legitimately been intentionally “leaked” by either side. If the leak came from the Harvin side, it’s directed at the bottom half of the first round – teams convinced they’re “one player” away from being a Super Bowl team. If the “leak” came from the Vikings, it’s putting those in the Sweet 16 on notice – Percy comes with a price.
The future of the Vikings and Harvin is no different today than it was Friday – before the window for free agent chatter was opened or not. Harvin is available for the taking. Still. Again. But now it’s only for the right price – whether a mutually leaked story has surfaced or not. Serious bidders only.
Does Percy stay? Does Percy go? Nothing has changed. It has only served to put 31 teams on notice … as if that hadn’t already been going on.
Update, March 11: The Star Tribune is reporting that Harvin has been traded to the Seattle Seahawks:
Percy Harvin’s time as a Viking has come to end. According to an NFL source, the Vikings have agreed in principle to a trade with Seattle, formally ending a rocky relationship with their ultra-talented yet mercurial receiver.
The NFL’s free agency period will open at 3 p.m. Tuesday, which is also the opening of the new league year. That’s the earliest a trade could be rubber-stamped and completed. But as of right now, the deal has been finalized and Harvin will simply have to pass a team physical in Seattle.
[. . .]
If the trade to Seattle doesn’t hit any unforeseen snags and is indeed finalized, Harvin would reunite with Darrell Bevell, the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator who held the same position with the Vikings during Harvin’s first two seasons. Harvin would also join forced with Pete Carroll, who in his previous post at the University of Southern Cal, had recruited Harvin out of Landstown High School in Virginia.
If this is confirmed (as it appears likely to be), I’ll be sorry to see Percy leave, but it might be the best of a bad situation for both the team and the player. Harvin is a great talent, but the long list of troubling signs indicated he wasn’t happy as a Viking. If he prefers playing in Seattle (where several Vikings receivers have gone in recent years: Nate Burleson and Sidney Rice also became Seahawks), I hope he does well. If the Vikings get good value for the trade — talk right now says they get Seattle’s first round pick (at #25), a 7th rounder, and a mid-round pick in 2014 — then I’m happy. (Just a few weeks back, the wiser heads “in the know” were talking about Harvin only being worth a second- or even a third-round pick.)
#Vikings GM Rick Spielman deserves a lot of credit for keeping this under wraps until it was done and creating a market to get a haul.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 11, 2013
In turn, #Seahawks take a calculated risk both in picks and money to bring in one of the NFL’s unique playmakers. Potential win-win here.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 11, 2013
