We have officially reached the peak of “Silly Season”

We know that this is the deadest of dead parts of the NFL offseason. Training Camp for the Minnesota Vikings is still about five weeks away and we’re all getting tired of lists and rankings and the like. But we’ve officially reached the peak of the “silly season” in the National Football League, at least in this writer’s opinion.

Skor North has posed a question about the future of the Minnesota Vikings and wide receiver Justin Jefferson that, thankfully, will likely be nothing more than a hypothetical. They asked “If it guaranteed the Vikings the first overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, would you trade Justin Jefferson?”

All three of the Skor North hosts. . .Declan Goff, Phil Mackey, and Judd Zulgad. . .said that they would unquestionably make that trade. I mean, I guess I understand it, but there’s also not a snowball’s chance in hell that I would make that deal.

First of all, I don’t care if it is the #1 overall pick. . .one draft choice is not enough for the undisputed top wide receiver in the game and the reigning and defending Offensive Player of the Year, particularly given the fact that he’s still just 24 years old. Frankly, one first-round pick isn’t enough. Remember when the Vikings traded Randy Moss and got a first, a seventh, and a third the next year? If you’re going to trade Justin Jefferson, you’d better get a whole lot more than that.

Second of all, let me make a long-winded pop culture reference to try to illustrate exactly what I’d equate trading Justin Jefferson to.

In one of the earlier episodes of Family Guy, the four main characters (Peter, Cleveland, Joe, and Quagmire) sit through a timeshare presentation, after which they’re each given a boat for participating. While the other three characters all take their boats and are quite happy with them, Peter is presented with a Let’s Make A Deal-esque choice. He can take his boat, or he can take a mystery box that one of the timeshare staff members has set in front of him.

Peter’s wife, Lois, of course thinks that taking the boat is the obvious choice, but Peter contemplates his choice and makes the following statement that has stuck with me for reasons I’m not completely sure of, although it fits here.

“Lois, a boat’s a boat, but the mystery box could be anything. It could even be a boat!”

I mean, hey, Justin Jefferson is Justin Jefferson, but a draft pick could be anything. It could even be Justin Jefferson!

(Ultimately, Peter wound up taking the box. Sufficient to say, it was the wrong choice.)

I know that people have a fascination with draft picks and having the #1 overall pick would mean getting to draft a “sure thing,” even though that’s not even true a lot of the time. I don’t get the logic of why on earth you’d trade your best player (by some distance) in the hopes that you might get something spectacular out of it. I mean, Justin Jefferson is awfully damn spectacular, and I can’t recall off the top of my head the last time an NFL team got better by trading their best player away.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve gotten to the point of the offseason where people are actually entertaining Justin Jefferson trade speculation. Can we just get to the start of the season or at least a preseason game or something before we all go insane?