Though he was the subject of trade rumors leading up to yesterday’s deadline, and though he was willing to leave, veteran defensive end Jared Allen said Wednesday he was happy to remain in Minnesota.
“As a matter of fact, I take it as a sign of respect that they still think I have value,” Allen said, via Tom Pelissero of USA Today. “But I’m excited to be a Viking. I really am. I’m excited to try to right this ship, and I’m all in.”
Of course, he has $7.56 million reasons to be invested in the Vikings, the balance of his contract which expires at the end of the season. That might have complicated any potential trades, keeping the 31-year-old with a 1-6 team which just allowed the Packers to score 44 and never forced a single punt.
He said he was eager to fix that this week against the Cowboys, and downplayed talk about his future with the Vikings beyond March, when he’ll become an unrestricted free agent in a market that hasn’t been kind to his kind lately.
“The end of the year will take care of itself, and I’m sure at the end of the year when it’s all said and done, I’ll sit down with [General Manager] Rick [Spielman] and Rob [Brzezinski, the Vikings’ vice president of football operations] and we’ll all have an honest conversation of where we’re at, what we want to plan on doing, and whatever happens will happen then.
“Right now, it’s about winning football games. We have nine games left and a lot can happen in nine games, and we’ve made runs here before.”
For a guy who may or may not have been close to the door a day ago, that’s about the only thing he can say.