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A Final Bow On The Percy Harvin Trade

By Christopher Gates
Game. Set. Match. Vikings.
Game. Set. Match. Vikings.
Wesley Hitt

A little less than a year ago, I made the declaration that the Minnesota Vikings had already won the trade that sent Percy Harvin to the Seattle Seahawks for three draft picks. . .picks that turned into cornerback Xavier Rhodes, linebacker Michael Mauti, and running back Jerick McKinnon. At the time I made that post, Harvin had appeared in exactly one game for the Seahawks, recorded exactly one catch and one kick return (against the Vikings. . .boy, he sure showed them), and had already collected $11 million from the Seahawks courtesy of them signing him to a new contract.

With Harvin having been traded overnight by the Seahawks to the New York Jets for a "conditional mid-round draft choice," their final return for their investment came out to 23 receptions for 150 yards, 11 rushes for 92 yards, 13 kick returns for 341 yards, and exactly one regular season touchdown. Yes, he got a kick return touchdown in the Super Bowl. . .which made the score 29-0 in a game the Seahawks went on to win 43-8. In other words, it basically meant nothing. The Seahawks were going to win that game regardless.

And now that Harvin is gone, the stories are starting to come out in Seattle, much the way they did when he left Minnesota.

BUT. . .BUT. . .I THOUGHT THAT CHRISTIAN PONDER WAS THE SOURCE OF ALL OF PERCY HARVIN'S PROBLEMS AND THAT PLAYING WITH RUSSELL WILSON WOULD BE SUPER HAPPY FUN TIME!

(By the way, nobody's figured out yet how Harvin getting traded to the Jets can be blamed on Christian Ponder, Leslie Frazier, or Rick Spielman, but if the past couple of years have taught me anything, it's that somebody will figure it out eventually.)

Gee, punching a teammate in the face. That's relatively normal behavior, right? No worse than throwing a weight at your head coach, surely. And he did it last year? You mean the year he largely spent sitting on his butt and not contributing to his team?

There are lots of other tidbits in the link from our friends at Field Gulls above there.

When the initial Harvin trade was made. . .and, given what John Schneider got in return for Harvin, how much of a genius does Rick Spielman look like right now. . .there were many people that tried to frame it as the Vikings "choosing" Ponder and Frazier over Harvin. But, as the Seahawks found out, that's not the case. The Vikings "chose" the Minnesota Vikings over a whining, pouting malcontent that thought he was bigger than the Minnesota Vikings, just the way he's thought he was bigger and more important than every team he's played on going back to high school. The Seahawks belatedly, and expensively, wound up choosing the same thing.

Honestly, let's face it. . .if Percy Harvin isn't going to be happy as a part of the defending world champions, a team with one of the league's better young quarterbacks and a team that could position themselves for a significant long-term run, then that guy is never going to be happy in the National Football League. And I highly doubt that going to the Jets. . .a team sitting a 1-6 with a coach that's a dead man walking at this point and getting bad quarterback play from two different guys. . .is going to brighten his attitude any. But hey, he gets another shot at the Vikings when the Jets come to TCF Bank Stadium on 7 December. You know, if he feels like it.

Oh, and a guy with Percy Harvin's attitude in the biggest market in America under the eye of a media contingent that will scrutinize his every move? Yeah, there's no way that ends badly.

Yes, Percy Harvin got a Super Bowl ring. You know something? So did Heath Farwell, Tarvaris Jackson, and Sidney Rice. You know what those three guys have in common, other than being former Vikings? They all contributed significantly more to the Seahawks' championship run than Harvin did. (Yes, even T-Jack.) And they did it without being jerks. And they did it for a whole lot less money. I'm not sure if those three guys combined made as much as Harvin did.

The Seahawks are a good team, to be sure. I think we should all be happy that, given their recent record on player development, that they didn't just keep their three draft picks and their millions of dollars and simply draft Cordarrelle Patterson in 2013 instead. He's already everything that Percy Harvin is on the field, and nowhere near the diva off of it.

The Minnesota Vikings "won" the Percy Harvin trade as soon as the ink was dry on the deal that sent him to Seattle. The gap could have been closed a little bit, but with Harvin's departure from the Seahawks, it's now an absolute landslide in favor of the purple. Maybe this whole "Vikings West" thing isn't as big a deal as we might think. . .but that's another discussion for another time.

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