To no one’s surprise, the Minnesota Vikings are one of the teams at the center of the Deshaun Watson trade rumors, even though they still have Kirk Cousins locked in for the 2022 season.
NFL Insider and former ESPN analyst Jordan Schultz is pegging the Vikings as the “biggest sleeper” to land the Houston Texans star quarterback.
“Sources tell me the biggest sleeper in the Deshaun Watson sweepstakes—the Minnesota Vikings,” said Schultz on Take The Points. “The key element here, No. 1, is that Deshaun, who has a no-trade clause, I’m told, would at least consider waiving it to play in Minnesota. Secondly, the Vikings, even without a GM and head coach right now, believe internally that Kirk Cousins is not a Super Bowl-caliber quarterback.”
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We’ve reached the time of the year where everything should be taken with a grain of salt.
Sure, Watson playing for the Vikings sounds good on the surface. He has the sort of elite talent that could set the team up to contend for years to come.
But he’s also facing serious accusations with 22 civil lawsuits for sexual misconduct.
Also, the actual parameters surrounding a trade are hard to envision. Minnesota isn’t just going to outright cut Cousins and leave $45 million in dead cap money on the table. So any trade with the Texans would likely include some form of a player swap with draft picks embedded in the deal.
At one point, the Texans were believed to want as many as three first-round draft picks for Watson, who missed the entire 2021 season. Engineering a trade of this magnitude would be quite a way to rock the boat for the incoming GM.
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