Peter King of The MMQB spoke with Vikings GM Rick Spielman about the Sam Bradford trade and how it unfolded. As Spielman explained, teams all around the league were asking for a fortune to part with their veteran quarterbacks.

“I made a bunch of calls. I am not gonna mention teams. But there was blood in the water and teams knew it. The price was too high,” the Vikings GM said. “I didn’t want to mortgage our future. Some teams asked for a first-round pick and a core young player. I can understand the pick. But we worked too hard over the past three years to put all that time and energy into drafting and developing a solid core of this team. I was taken aback who they were asking for. Players who’d been in the Pro Bowl. I mean, in the off-season you’ve got time. There’s not blood in the water in the off-season. But now there was.”

The Vikings paid a big price to land Bradford, but they didn’t part with anyone currently on their roster. While some observers have said that the Vikings gave up too much to get the former No. 1 overall pick, it sounds like the Vikes would have had to give up as much or more for any other established QB.

Here’s more from the NFC:

• Not only is Tre Mason not on the Rams roster, but the team has not spoken directly with the troubled quarterback in some time, as Mike Florio of PFT writes. “Tre Mason is on our Reserve/Did Not Report list, that’s where he stands,” coach Jeff Fisher told reporters this weekend. “We’ve been in communication with the family, not Tre, but with the family. The organization’s position, including the league and the [NFL] Players Association, is to take care of him and help him to get the help that he needs to get through this life crisis that he’s having.” Mason can return to the team at any time until the Tuesday after Week 10 and he will be unpaid until he does. If/when he reports, the Rams will have to decide how to handle him from a roster perspective. Of course, Mason has demons to deal with before he can even consider returning to football.
• Carson Wentz ran a pro-style offense at North Dakota State, and the Eagles believe that has prepared him well to start right away in the NFL, as Lorenzo Reyes of USA Today writes. With the Bison, Wentz used a lot of play-action passes, shotgun plays, zone-reads, and power sweeps. “Some guys don’t even do half those things,” Wentz said in April. “A lot of the stuff we did (at NDSU) was similar to what you see in the NFL. We just called it something different..“Any time we were in two-minute, I called it. Unless it was a huddle play and I would get it from the sidelines. But even some of those calls, I could change at the line.” Last week, the Eagles’ faith in Wentz allowed them to trade Bradford to Minnesota for substantial draft pick compensation.
• Former Bears kicker says he’s Robbie Gould definitely not retiring, Adam Jahns of the Chicago Tribune tweets. Gould still plans to kick this year and beyond, Jahns adds, and he has a few teams vying for his services. The Bears cut Gould earlier this week.