no guarantee that VZW will get the prime.
Verizon is a Droid house, keep in mind. They don't like premium phones that deviate from that branding. Especially Nexus phones that take away VZWs ability to put their own tweaks onto the device. (who do you think really wants the bootloader locked and free tethering squashed - the manufacturer or the carrier?)
The only exception was the Thunderbolt, and that was because Bionic was late to the party and VZW was left with an LTE gap.
This is no longer the case.