On Sunday, Jay Glazer of FOX Sports reported that the Vikings would listen to trade offers for defensive end Jared Allen.
On Sunday night, Allen tried to avoid questions on the topic.
“Honestly, I’m not even going to address it,” Allen said after the 44-31 loss to the Packers, via Tim Yotter of VikingUpdate.com. “I’m not going to speculate on something that I haven’t had a conversation about and I’m not going to speculate on something that hasn’t happened. I cross all bridges when I get to them and right now I’m trying figure out a way to make this defense better.”
While Allen didn’t say he wants to be traded, he also didn’t say he doesn’t.
“You know what? It’s not even something I’ve got to worry about right now,” Allen said. “I got no control over that stuff. It is what it is. I understand the league. I understand how it works. I’m not an idiot. But my goal is to play football. My goal is to go out and play and win. I go out every Sunday and I just give it everything I’ve got. Sometimes it’s spectacular, sometimes you get double-teamed and sometimes you just can’t get there on time. And then sometimes you lose. But losing in this kind of fashion, I don’t know how to explain it.”
In the final year of the contract signed when the Vikings traded for him in 2008, Allen remains owed $7.5 million over the next nine weeks. With the Vikings circling the drain at 1-6, a trade could give them draft-pick compensation that would help them improve in 2014. Allen, destined to be gone via free agency, would do nothing to make the team better next year.
While the remaining base salary could make it hard for a team to fit him under the cap, the money could be converted to part of a signing bonus for a new contract with a new team, reducing the cap hit for the balance of the current season.
With the Broncos still trying to pump up their defense after the loss of Elvis Dumervil in the offseason, it would make sense to offer Allen whatever they were willing to pay Dumervil -- and to offer the Vikings a second-round pick that, if this trade goes down, quite possibly would be one pick before the start of round three.
