Vikings Rumors Put Spotlight on Justin Fields, the 2026 1st Round Pick, Trent Sherfield
It’s Week 12 of the Minnesota Vikings’ 2025 campaign, and just like every weekend, we have rumors for the masses. We call it the Purple Rumor Mill, and the chamber is always buzzing.
Vikings rumors are now putting a spotlight on Justin Fields, the 2026 first-round pick, and Trent Sherfield as roster questions start to heat up.
Minnesota has about a month and a half to turn the current season around, and if it does not, some of this week’s rumors will present themselves in living color when the offseason arrives.
Vikings Rumors for November 22, 2025
The Purple Rumor Mill after Week 11.
Rumor: The Vikings could trade for Justin Fields during the offseason.
Minnesota actually topped CBS Sports‘ Bryan DeArdo’s list of Justin Fields destinations in 2026 — the first team he mentioned.
“Minnesota makes sense on multiple fronts. In addition to the likelihood of being in the market for a backup quarterback, the Vikings may be looking for competition to help push starter J.J. McCarthy, who has struggled to live up to his early season promise since coming back from his ankle injury,” DeArdo wrote.
“The Vikings also make sense given the history Kevin O’Connell has had with former first-round picks. Sam Darnold, for example, parlayed his one season with O’Connell into a long-term opportunity with the Seahawks. It’s possible that he could have a similar impact on Fields, who has shown flashes of his potential throughout his five-year career.”
Most fans assumed drafting J.J. McCarthy would move Minnesota out of the retread-quarterback cycle. No such luck in November 2025.
A trade for Fields is tough to picture — the Jets would eat more than $20 million if they cut him before June 1, 2026 — but the Vikings still need a legitimate QB2 next season. Even if McCarthy settles in and starts looking like a long-term answer, the quarterback depth chart will need love.
O’Connell doesn’t appear sold on Max Brosmer as his backup. If he were, Brosmer would’ve played against the Chargers when Carson Wentz tried to gut through an injury.
So the most realistic outcome remains simple: Minnesota probably brings in another veteran in the Wentz mold. Someone like Gardner Minshew or Jimmy Garoppolo is likely walking through the door next March.
DeArdo wants you to remember Fields as a Vikings option.
Rumor: The early darling for Minnesota in the 2026 NFL Draft? Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love.
Pro Football Network’s Jacob Infante mock-drafted Love to Minnesota at pick No. 15 and laid out the logic clearly: “Kevin O’Connell is one of the brightest offensive coaching minds in the NFL, but the Minnesota Vikings could use some additional firepower to help bring J.J. McCarthy up to speed. In particular, they currently lack a long-term solution at running back.”
“Jeremiyah Love isn’t far from the Ashton Jeanty comparisons you’ll hear in this class. He’s a dynamic, three-down runner with impressive burst, vision, balance, and fluid cuts. He drops out of the top ten of our 2026 NFL Mock Draft due to positional value, but he’s a top-10 overall prospect in this class.”
If that scenario hits, Minnesota would roll into 2025 with Love, Aaron Jones, and Jordan Mason under contract — not a bad trio and far younger, because of Love, than what the team has leaned on recently.
The truth is the same every fall since the start of 2022: fans watch Minnesota’s offense and eventually reach the same conclusion. This team needs a young, productive running back.
Over the last four seasons, the Vikings have cycled through the tail end of Dalvin Cook’s prime, a full year of Alexander Mattison, and the sometimes-available version of Aaron Jones. They haven’t had an Omarion Hampton, Ashton Jeanty, or DeVon Achane type to change the math on Sundays.
O’Connell’s offense could finally open up with a runner who takes real pressure off the passing game. It might even be the one thing that forces O’Connell to call runs at an NFL-average rate. He prefers to throw. A legitimate RB1 might give him no choice.
Rumor: The Broncos kicked Trent Sherfield out of town, and a Vikings reunion makes sense.
Sherfield’s run in Denver is over for now.
BroncosWire’s Jon Heath summed it up this weekend, writing, “The headliner among those moves was placing running back J.K. Dobbins on injured reserve with a foot injury that could end his season. Dobbins underwent surgery and could only return in a best-case scenario for a potential Super Bowl, should the Broncos advance that far. Overshadowed by the Dobbins news, it flew a bit under the radar that Denver also waived wide receiver Trent Sherfield.”
The former Viking made it about eight months with the Broncos before getting cut loose.
And while his release didn’t draw much attention, Minnesota had its own problems on Sunday. Right after J.J. McCarthy hit Jordan Addison for an out-of-nowhere touchdown to take the lead, the special teams unit collapsed. The assignment was simple: don’t let the Bears’ return man flip the field.
The Bears’ return man flipped the field.
Chicago marched into range, Cairo Santos drilled the kick, and the Vikings fell to 4-6 — another reminder that even when something goes right, the margins for this team are razor thin.
A Sherfield return to the Vikings’ special teams makes a lot of sense, but after a week, no such deal has materialized.
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