The Chicago Bears are certain to select a quarterback with the first pick in the NFL draft this April, but one of the best players in football could be within reach if they choose to trade it.
According to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, the Minnesota Vikings are looking for a franchise quarterback and believe that trading 2022 All-Pro wide receiver Justin Jefferson is the best route to get one.
“[The Vikings] want, I believe, a franchise quarterback, and trading Justin Jefferson could be the key toward getting the return to move up [in the draft], if that’s what they want to do,” Florio told The Viking Age’s X account on Monday, February 19.
If Chicago sticks with Justin Fields at quarterback, trading the top pick for Jefferson and Minnesota’s No. 11 overall pick would fill the team’s receiver needs while also giving the Bears picks at Nos. 9 and No. 11 to address offensive and defensive line concerns. To make a deal work, the Vikings would most likely have to trade their 2025 first-round pick or a package of equal value selections.
Justin Jefferson has the trade value of two first-round picks, plus more.
In October 2023, ESPN’s Bill Barnwell reported that Jefferson’s trade value is at least two first-round picks.
“I don’t think Jefferson would land three first-round picks in a trade, but the Vikings likely would be able to nab two first-rounders and a mid-round pick or a starting-caliber veteran if they decided to rebuild from the ground up and trade him,” Barnwell wrote, adding that it wasn’t a strategy he was in favour of.
However, the math varies when dealing Jefferson allows the Vikings to choose USC quarterback Caleb Williams, who has received more comparisons to three-time Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs than any other prospect in the seven years since Mahomes started pro.
On February 10, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network stated that it would take a “historic haul” to trade Chicago off the first pick in the draft. The Panthers sent the Bears the Nos. 9 and 61 overall picks in 2023, as well as the team’s first-round pick in 2024 (which became No. 1 overall), a 2025 second-rounder, and wideout DJ Moore in exchange for the first-round pick last season.
Simply put, the Bears received two first-round picks, two second-round picks, and Moore for the first overall pick in 2023. As a result, Jefferson (worth two firsts and a mid-round, via Barnwell) and two more firsts from Minnesota (2024, 2025) appear to have “historic” value, as Rapoport said before of the Super Bowl.
Justin Jefferson is about to become the most expensive WR in the NFL.
The other difficulty is that Jefferson is going to receive payment.
Moore’s three-year, $62 million contract was transferred to the Bears and will expire in 2025. Jefferson, on the other hand, is scheduled to play on a $19.7 million fifth-year team option on his rookie contract before entering free agency in March of next year.
If the Bears trade for the receiver, they will also trade for the right to apply the franchise tag to Jefferson and keep him in 2025. However, there is little possibility Chicago will make a trade involving Jefferson if the team isn’t confident it can extend him long-term.
Spotrac estimates Jefferson’s market value at 29.3 million over a new four-year contract. However, when healthy, he has been the best wide receiver in sports, breaking records left and right over his first three seasons, all of which finished in the Pro Bowl. As a result, Jefferson has a decent chance of breaking records at the bargaining table the moment he arrives.
Justin Jefferson: Top Wide Receiver in the NFL When Healthy
Jefferson has 1,074 yards and 5 touchdowns last season despite missing seven games due to a hamstring ailment. In 2023, he led the NFL in both receptions (128) and yards (1,809). Throughout his four-year NFL career, he had 392 catches for 5,899 yards and 30 touchdowns in 60 games played, according to Pro Football Reference.
All of this means that the soon-to-be 25-year-old should command considerably more than Spotrac’s estimated market value.
The most lucrative contract a receiver has ever received in the NFL is $30 million per year, which the Miami Dolphins handed Tyreek Hill on his extension a few offseasons ago. Around the same time, Davante Adams signed a five-year contract with the Las Vegas Raiders worth $140 million, the biggest total sum on a wide receiver contract in league history.
Jefferson will seek and most likely receive more than $30 million per year over the course of a five-year contract. The fact that the Bears would have to pay him that much money calls for a trade package with the Jefferson Vikings and at least two first-round picks.
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