Before this weekend, if you asked me how many rebuilding franchises in the NFL would trade away a first-round draft choice for a defensive lineman who has missed a quarter of the last two seasons of his careeer, turns 30 in a month, and is under contract for this season only, my answer would’ve been “none”.
Dear God did I overestimate Al Davis and the Oakland Raiders, who traded their 2011 first round draft pick to the New England Patriots for defensive lineman Richard Seymour, in what I am thoroughly convinced will turn out to be the most lopsided deal in recent memory.
Seymour is a solid player, of course. He may very well have another three or four seasons of productivity in him. But few talent evaluators would bet the farm on it, fewer would bet 2nd or 3rd round draft pick on it, and even fewer – to the tune of one – would bet a (likely very high) first round pick on it.
Trades in the NFL are strange animals. They don’t happen anywhere near as frequently as in baseball, and rarely do they involve top-tier players – the previously-discussed Jay Cutler deal notwithstanding. It’s hard to match the right player with the right system, and it is often times very difficult to determine whether or not a player’s success can be atttributed more to his own skillset and abilities, or to the system in which he plays and the talent he is surrounded by. It’s even harder to know exactly how healthy another team’s player is, and get a truly accurate gauge as to how much more NFL life that player has in him. As a result, NFL teams tend to build via the college draft. It is for that reason – among others – that draft picks are the second-most prized commodity in the NFL, behind franchise quarterbacks.
And that’s where the shock sets in. As inept as the Raiders have been run for the better part of the last ten years by a well-past-his-mental-prime Davis, and for all the colossal personnel and public relations failures endured by that franchise, this one could well take the cake as the centerpiece miscue of the most poorly run operation in professional sports.
Not being a Raiders fan continues to pay dividends.
Tags: Al Davis, Oakland Raiders, Richard Seymour