The Minnesota Vikings made a trade with the Denver Broncos that sent a defensive end to the Denver Broncos in exchange for a late-round draft pick.
Of all the teams in the NFL, the Minnesota Vikings aren’t a team known for making many trades near the deadline. They are usually still a competitive team with a strong roster that doesn’t need to make a lot of adjustments to their personnel.
This season, the team has already made a transaction on Saturday, Oct. 23 that sent a defensive end to a team that could use a little help in exchange for swapping late picks in the next two drafts.
Here is the announcement of the trade from NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero from his official account on Twitter:
Trade! The #Vikings are sending DE/OLB Stephen Weatherly and a 2023 seventh-round pick to the #Broncos for a 2022 seventh-round pick, pending a physical, per sources.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) October 23, 2021
What does this trade mean for the Minnesota Vikings?
There are plenty of great reasons the Minnesota Vikings made the trade to send Stephen Weatherly out of town. The most notable is that he hasn’t been impressive as part of the team’s defense (nine combined tackles and zero sacks) and Everson Griffen has stepped up in a big way. Those two factors alone made him a trade candidate.
Sadly, with Weatherly’s contract only being a 1-year deal worth $2.5M, they won’t get a lot of salary cap relief from the move, but it should help with a little wiggle room. More importantly, his roster spot will allow Minnesota to attempt to develop some of their younger pass rushers.
As for the draft picks, those can almost be considered a wash. Even though Minnesota will get their new pick in the upcoming draft, Denver will have to wait a year to use their freshly acquired selection in 2023. It must be mentioned that Minnesota should be a better team than Denver over the next two years. For that reason, Minnesota will likely move up a bit thanks to this move.
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We at The Viking Age would like to wish the best of luck to Stephen Weatherly in Denver. Even though things didn’t work out with the Minnesota Vikings, hopefully he can thrive with his new team.