Despite being limited to only 10 games during the 2023 NFL season, Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson still surpassed the 1,000 yard mark for the fourth consecutive season. In just sixty career NFL games, Jefferson has already accumulated 5,899 receiving yards and 30 touchdowns. His 98.3 yards per game are most in NFL history, besting Calvin Johnson (2nd place) by over 12 yards per game. This is all to say that Jefferson, just 24-years-old, seems to have a pretty firm grasp on the title of best wide receiver in the NFL.
So how on earth have we arrived at a point where the possibility of Minnesota trading Justin Jefferson ahead of the 2024 season is even on the table?
The 2024 season will be the final year of Justin Jefferson's rookie contract. The league-wide expectation is that whenever Jefferson signs his next day, it will be one that makes him the highest paid wide receiver in the NFL, if not the highest paid non-Quarterback. The issue here seems to be guaranteed money, which Jefferson and his agency (WME Sports) are rightfully after. According to Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, an NFL insider AND Minnesota Vikings fan, the problem here is that the Minnesota Vikings have an unwritten rule that dictates they will only provide full guarantees in contracts only in the year in which the deal was signed (h/t Judd Zulgad of USA Today Sports).
This puts Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah in a proverbial pickle. There were expectations that a deal between Jefferson and the Vikes would be reached before the beginning of the 2023 season. That's not how things played out. And now the clock is ticking in Minnesota. If the Vikings and Jefferson don't reach a deal soon — and by soon, I mean before the 2024 NFL Draft — it's possible that Minnesota would at least have to entertain the idea of trading Jefferson, the 22nd overall pick in the 2020 Draft, and beginning a rebuild with whatever they could recoup in that deal.
My gut tells me that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and the Vikes will come to the table with a deal that is both richer than the one Tyreek Hill signed with the Miami Dolphins, and one that provides Jefferson at least some of the guaranteed money he's after. At that point, the ball will be in Justin Jefferson's court, and nobody should fault him no matter what he decides to do.
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