Bill Belichick trades best defensive player for draft pick in 2011

In a strange move on NFL cutdown weekend, BB has traded Richard Seymour for Oakland's first round pick in 2011. For a team with super bowl aspirations it's not common to trade a 29 year old 5-time Pro Bowl DE when the weakness of your team is defense/pass-rush, weakness being relative to their tight offense. It's equally a weird trade for Oakland giving up their first round draft pick in 2011 which may end up being a high pick.

Lets look at New England's side of the trade first. Seymour led the team with eight sacks last year and had a bounce back year after a couple of subpar injury riddled seasons. He turns thirty during the season and had some serious knee problems in 2006 and 2007. He was also in the last year of his contract and was unlikely to be resigned with Pro Bowl NT/DT Vince Wilfork and Pro Bowl G Logan Mankins also up for new contracts next summer, as well as all-world QB Tom Brady up for an extension. This also gives the team a chance to sign these players to extensions now with the ~$3.7 million that comes off the cap with this trade. Patriot fans will tell you that eventhough he led the team in sacks last year he is not the same dominant player that he was earlier in his career (pre-knee injury) and that Wilfork and Ty Warren are just as good along the DL. DL was also one of the deeper positions on the team with Wilfork, Warren, Mike Wright, Jarvis Green, Derrick Burgess, and two draft picks from this year who have looked great Ron Brace and Myron Pryor. So it seems the team saw a value that they couldn't say no to in a 2011 #1 from the bottom feeding Raiders. Interesting that it is a pick in 2 years. Most people are speculating the reason for this is that it could be the first year with a rookie wage scale, therefor making high first round picks exponentially increase in value because you wont be tied in to hella $$$$ for a unproven rookie. So from the Pats view, it seems to make sense from a value/asset point of view it's a tough pill to swallow for a team that is favored by many to make it to and win the Super Bowl.

From the Raiders point of view this trade is odd. They are banking that an improved defense with Seymour and the development of their young offense (Russell, McFadden, et al) will lead to improvement in wins over the next two years. But it also may be a 5-month rental of Seymour given that he can be a free-agent next year, although there is always the franchise tag. It's important to note that the AFC west, other than San Diego, is pretty terrible this year with Denver and Kansas City rebuilding. So a Raiders improvement may be in the cards, but they looked incredibly terrible in the preseason and the coaching staff is beating the hell out of each other. It's not like Oakland is a team that is one player away from contending. In the last six years they have drafted... #2,#7,#7,#1,#4,#7. So, it seems a bit odd that they would make this move until you realize that Al Davis is calling the shots there, and then nothing seems odd/impossible.

An aspect of the Patriots decision that I wonder about is what exactly Seymour had done to his knee at the beginning of the 2007 season. We all know that the Pats are very secretive when it comes to injuries and no one really knows what he had done to his knee as it was just called "a clean up." But its possible that the Pats see the injury that hampered him for a few years caused enough damage that they feel as though he will never recapture his All-Pro level of play that he displayed early in his career and therefor it was best to move him while he still had value and before he left as a free agent.

It will be interesting how this turns out for both teams as it seems as though New England is looking at the long-term, while Oakland is looking at this season, which is just weird. But being a Pats fan they have made similar tough decisions in the past, like trading super bowl MVP Deion Branch for a Seahawks #1, which has seen them stay at the top of the league for close to a decade now. They look at players as assets and always turn over those assets to keep them competitive in the long-term.

In Bill Belichick we trust...