With quarterback Sage Rosenfels being frozen out in the offseason and showcased in the preseason, the message to the other 31 NFL teams was clear: Sage is available.
And now that the Vikings have traded the guy who was brought in last year to compete with Tarvaris Jackson before Brett Favre showed up and sent both of them to the bench, we need to ask one question.
What the hell are the Vikings thinking?
Favre has a bull’s-eye painted on every body part, and if (when) something on Favre shatters, the Vikings will need a veteran backup to Tarvaris Jackson. They won’t have one.
Instead, the guy one snap away from becoming the quarterback will be Joe Webb, a rookie who was drafted to be a receiver and converted back to the position he played in college. We love the guy; he’s got the vertical burst of Mike Vick but Webb is tall enough to see his receivers without rolling out of the pocket. But he isn’t ready to play, and he most likely won’t be ready in 2010.
By sending Sage (and, as it turns out, running back Darius Reynaud, per Vikings.com) to the Giants for an undisclosed 2011 draft pick and a conditional pick in 2012, the Vikings are continuing to push whatever chips they have left into the center of the table for one final Favre-fueled run at a Super Bowl.
Meanwhile, the Vikings will see Sage again. He’ll return with his new team to the Metrodome on December 12. And we’ve got a feeling that he’ll be spilling his guts about everything he knows regarding the team with which he spent more than a year -- but for which he never played.