Vikings: When would Minnesota trade Justin Jefferson, if ever?

The Minnesota Vikings will need to make some tough choices with their roster. Will they trade Justin Jefferson to build for the future?

As the Minnesota Vikings break things down and figure out how they want to rebuild for the future, they need to examine just about the entirety of their roster and decide who they’ll keep and who they’ll move to help rebuild.

That includes the young, brilliant wide receiver that is Justin Jefferson.

Jefferson is young and valuable. In his first two seasons in the NFL, he’s caught 196 passes for 3,016 yards and 17 touchdowns. He’s likely to be a dominant receiver for years to come. He could be a great piece to build an offense around or he would be someone a team might trade some interesting draft picks for.

So, will the Vikings really look to move Jefferson?

Minnesota Vikings: Should the Vikings really consider trading Justin Jefferson?

The 22-year-old receiver is phenomenally talented. He’s someone the Vikings should focus their rebuild around. While a trade might yield some great draft picks, there is absolutely no guarantee that the draft would produce a player that is as good as, or better than, Jefferson currently is.

It’s a dangerous gamble to assume that Jefferson could be easily replaced by someone in the draft.

The only way a trade would even remotely make sense for the folks in Minnesota is if the Vikings could get multiple draft picks and an already solid player in return.

But there’s no guarantee that will happen.

Instead, if Minnesota is focused on building for its future, the Vikings would be wise to dump off some of the heftier contracts they have to work around. After they do that, Minnesota should focus on assembling an offense that features a young quarterback tossing touchdowns to the star receiver they’ve got in Jefferson.