Archive for August, 2009

Percy Harvin‘s five-year contract with the Vikings will have to be redone after the league rejected it, but the wide receiver will not have to miss any time on the practice field as a result. No one’s quite sure what exactly the league objected to in Harvin’s contract, which will pay the receiver $8.5 million in guaranteed money, but speculation is that there are some fancy clauses built into the deal that didn’t pass muster with the NFL suits.  Some kind of bonus for every drug test Percy passes, maybe.  Or a clause guaranteeing him more money if he goes [...]

Today’s useless training camp tweet comes to us courtesy of the Star-Trib’s Chip Scoggins, who moments ago tweeted the following: Berrian collides with madieu williams on catch. Ripped his shirt in the process. Who ripped their shirt?  Berrian?  Williams?  Not only does the tweet refer to an utterly meaningless training camp play, it doesn’t even give us all the information we need.  We only know that some poor schmo is going to have to sew up someone’s uniform while that someone is off watching Shark Week or playing poker.

Drew Rosenhaus has used his Twitter account to inform us that his client Aundrae Allison will no longer be a member of the Minnesota Vikings.  The team is seeking to trade the little-used wide receiver, a 2007 fifth-round pick out of East Carolina, and will release him if there are no takers by 5 pm this evening. So the receiver depth chart now looks like this: Bernard Berrian Percy Harvin Bobby Wade Sidney Rice Darius Reynaud Jaymar Johnson Glenn Holt Allison, Reynaud, Johnson and Holt are all basically the same guy, so the Vikings have reduced some of their redundancy.  [...]

Are the Vikings more worried about Tarvaris Jackson‘s MCL sprain than they’re letting on?  Kevin Seifert thinks there’s something at least a little fishy, as he expressed in this tweet: Suspicious amount of secrecy for what is a supposed to be a mild injury, but no evidence T-Jack is hurt worse than original report. The injury is said to be a grade 1 sprain, which is the least serious. According to Access Vikings, Tarvaris spent Monday working on a stationary bike and doing some running, then stood around watching practice.  With a brace on.  And no word yet from the [...]

This is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy.  Tarvaris Jackson gets hurt, so ESPN rolls out the, “When Will the Vikings Call Michael Vick?” bit.  How about never?  Not even if all three of their quarterbacks went down and had to be euthanized on the field like race horses.  Vick will not be a Viking.  He isn’t a West Coast QB.  They already have their Wildcat guy in Percy Harvin.  They don’t want controversy.  What parts of these sentences do the ESPN drones not understand?

The Percy Harvin Watch is officially over.  On Sunday Harvin and the Vikings hammered out a five-year contract, and Harvin got his butt into Mankato to begin practicing – without puking or having to be rushed to the hospital with dehydration. The terms of the contract have not been disclosed, so we don’t know yet what exactly Harvin and his agent Joel Segal got for their two day mini-hold-out.  It has been assumed that Segal was trying to leverage more money out of the Vikes, in the form of incentive clauses, on the basis that Harvin was drafted well below [...]

That was fast. Per Mike Florio, league sources are saying Tarvaris Jackson has already had an MRI on the knee he hurt in practice today, and the injury is being characterized as an MCL sprain.  Severity yet to be determined. Do I need to say it?

Tarvaris Jackson evidently hurt himself tripping over defensive lineman Letroy Guion’s leg today in practice.  Breathless tweets informed a concerned public that Tarvaris limped off to the medical tent, but was seen later jumping around and acting uninjured.  And of course…the Favre cracks began rolling in. “Uh-oh. T-Jack down at camp,” tweeted KFAN’s Dan Barreiro.  “Will whatshisname be on the next plane from Miss.?” I don’t know Dan.  Will your hair be on the next plane from Hairville? And from that agitator Greg Bedard of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, this gem: Uh, Brett, Mankato is on line 1. Oh, my sides. [...]