Our family has recently discovered the benefits of buying specific items secondhand on Facebook Marketplace. Specifically: sports equipment for our three kids who have both rapidly growing bodies and tastes.
After snagging a pair of soccer cleats ($8) for my 5-year-old recently, he had an idea: He, too, wanted to sell things on the site. He gathered up a handful of his least appealing toys and asked if we could try to sell them.
I gently informed him that if he didn’t want his junky plastic heaps, it was unlikely that others would want them. In order to make a transaction, he would have to part with something of actual value.
Let us now bring the same logic to a much larger scale: The Vikings’ recent shopping for a wide receiver. They could have gone simply for a bargain and someone who was cut by another team. Instead, they paid a price for old friend Adam Thielen.
The deal: The Vikings get a conditional seventh-round pick and a fifth-round pick from Carolina plus Thielen, while the Panthers get a sixth and a fourth.
In taking on all of Thielen’s $6.25 million base salary (something they are reportedly working to restructure) and including a fourth-round pick in the deal, you wouldn’t be wrong in saying the Vikings overpaid for a 35-year-old receiver.
But if you need something more specific than a pair of soccer cleats, sometimes you have to pay a premium.
Thielen was exactly what the Vikings needed, and we shouldn’t be hung up on the margins of the deal. Let’s examine why he was the perfect fit at the outset of today’s 10 things to know:
