Vikings coach Leslie Frazier said Monday that receiver Percy Harvin will remain with the team in 2013. Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder has somewhat less optimism.
“I’m not sure, I don’t know,” Ponder told Paul Allen of KFAN on Tuesday. “We’ll see. I mean, we’ll see how everything shakes out. I’m not sure what Rick Spielman’s gonna be doing. Obviously, it’d be nice to have [Harvin]. He’s a heck of a player.”
That’s a stunningly vague assessment of the status of the 2009 NFL offensive rookie of the year and one of the short-list candidates for league MVP based on his performances early in the 2013 season, especially since Harvin remains under contract for one more season. But there always has been a quiet undercurrent of discontent when it comes to Percy Harvin. Though he rarely acts out publicly, he apparently has done plenty of acting out privately — and it could be enough to prompt the Vikings to trade an arguably tired act out of town.
Indeed, Ponder opted, consciously or not, for the past tense when talking about Harvin.
“You know, he busts his butt all the time when he was here,” Ponder said of Harvin. “When he was out on the field, no one worked harder than him. Obviously, everyone saw how tough he was physically and mentally. And he had a lot of leadership qualities. He was a good teammate.”
He was a good teammate.
Yep. Percy’s gone.