2014 NFL Trade Deadline Bringing No Drama

nfl trade deadline 2014

nfl trade deadline 2014

If any of you were waiting for some blockbuster NFL trades to ignite your team for the second half of the NFL season, you were reaching. Your disappointment level is likely higher than fans of Nucky Thompson after the finale of Boardwalk Empire. The NFL just doesn’t do trades. Sure there are trades made, but involve no one of any consequence. I am not sure if teams just don’t want to be tricked into being the Vikings in a Herschel Walker type deal or they are just scared in general. Whatever the case may be, NFL blockbuster trades just do not happen very often.

The last big trade involved New England taking a seemingly washed up and disinterested Randy Moss off the hands of Oakland for a 4th round pick. Moss was rejuvenated after getting out of that black hole and went on to set records with Tom Brady and the Patriots. The Raiders got some guy named John Bowie who was last seen playing football in Canada and is probably an insurance agent currently. The Raiders basically got rid of a headache that was Randy Moss at the time. The Patriots got a Hall Of Famer who was reenergized by having a fellow Hall Of Famer to actually get him the ball.

These are the kind of trades that happen in the NFL now. A guy becomes a problem. Another team thinks they can work with him and a trade is made. At worst, the receiving team can cut the player if he doesn’t pan out. At best, they get a good player at no real cost in terms of high draft choices or key personal. The team that casts off the unneeded player may not get much in return but at least they shed themselves of a player that is either not producing or is a locker room nightmare.

NFL.com went as far as to have a mock trade list. They went overboard with mock drafts before the official draft last spring. But a mock trade list? That is really a reach. They know most of those trades were never going to happen. The NFL just wanted to create as much buzz as possible around the trade deadline. The biggest headline of a trade that actually happened…..safety Mark Barron to the Rams from Tampa! Don’t know who that is? No worries, no one else does either. But that is the top trade headline on NFL.com. They would have been better off to keep their mock trades up instead of the real “news”. It is most likely that Barron will not even be in the league come August 2015. This trade is irrelevant.

Would I have liked to have seen Johnny Manziel traded to the Jets or Jay Culter sent to Tampa Bay? Sure, why not. Those trades would have created some buzz, but they were never going to happen and they were brought up on the official NFL site as jokes basically. That is what the NFL trade deadline has become, a joke. There is no need for a deadline in truth. They could let teams trade all year long. It wouldn’t affect much. Teams are so scared to make moves and restricted by the salary cap, the deadline is the least of barriers to meaningful trades.

I don’t know if the NFL would be better off making more moves like we see in the NBA, where stars are moved more frequently. I don’t want big shake ups happening all the time. Every now and then it would be nice to see some changes made through trades. I remember the Herschel Walker trade like it was yesterday. People forget that Walker had a decent NFL career and led the league in rushing a couple of years in Dallas. I thought the Vikings would be on their way to the Super Bowl after getting the stud running back. It turns out that the trade did convert a team to a Super Bowl champion eventually. It was just the team that got rid of the star.

Trades can make a big difference in the NFL. It appears that big time moves won’t be happing much anymore though. We will have to stick with fantasy football for our addiction to blockbuster trades. Speaking of which, I need to make several fantasy moves, as I am on a six game losing streak of suck.