The Joker's Deck

Apologies for the delay in commentary. It’s been a hell of a week in my non-football life.

First, receivers and the Draft. I suppose there’s no more fun position in the league to debate. But it’s uncanny how receivers always become hot fodder for trade talks in the lead-up to the Draft.

Déjà vu. Again, we dream potentially new and fabulous destinations for Chad Ocho Cinco née Johnson and Anquan Boldin. This year’s hot stove talk is percolating over Braylon Edwards as well.

Each situation has its points of departure. But it’s the similarity that puzzles me.

Anquan’s deal is over a lack of deal, a new one anyone that puts him close to pay parity with fellow wideout Larry Fitzgerald.

Braylon’s deal is a two parter: 1) another potential victim in Eric Mangini’s Cleveland campaign against talent, and 2) a foci for criticism after an inconsistent at best season during an awful Browns season.

Chad’s deal is, uh, as far as I can tell a function of Chad being Chad and ‘Nati being ‘Nati. Ocho Cinco’s transformation from brilliant court jester to raving lunatic happened so quickly and so completely. The constant however was the Bengals allowing their team to bleed through free agency and slide further into irrelevance.

Each of these three receivers is at a different point in his career. Each shoulders differing levels of responsibility for being on the trading block. Each comes with his own amount of baggage for a potential new destination.

The similarity? Each of their teams is stupid to trade these three receivers unless they receive a ridiculous offer.

That being the case, boredom aside, why do we annually talk up the potential blockbuster trades of wide receivers? Is it because Randy Moss pulled the receiver diva coup to get out of the Black Hole? If top flight receiving talent is a rarity, why can we conceive of it given up so easily?

The wide receiver diva archetype is so ingrained that we hardly question how an individual situation comes to pass. Receivers that reach an impasse with their teams over money or playing time or performance are instantly fit to that archetype.

Despite any characterizations to the contrary, I do believe in the primacy of team. Football is after all a team sport. It’s beauty comes when all these sundry parts are whirring at top speeds with clockwork precision.

I don’t know if the position naturally sets itself against the team, isolated on the wings yet in the spotlight. I don’t know if that spotlight attracts the more egomanical among athletes. I don’t know if a receiver’s isolation on field works against the interdependency a receiver’s success has on every other moving part in the machine, that final piece to push a play to completion.

But I do know that there’s an eerie intersection at work when we imagine jettisoning a receiver who fits the archetype in the lead up to the Draft.

The Draft is about renewing an idea of our team, with some exceptions, no matter the previous season’s record or current roster. The important word there is “team.” In over-simplified football psychology, the receiver is often the one that tugs at the team’s cohesion.

No matter the worth of a talented and realized receiver on the field, when our teams exist mostly as ideas, receivers fitted into the archetype become expendable or transferable. That realm of ideas is a dangerous place to map out reality.

How did that work out for Oakland?


Second, well, I don’t have a second. Just go to Throwing Into Traffic for more Draft talk. You’ve heard the name, but Zac goes beyond the skinny on what makes Darius Heyward-Bey the most intriguing receiving talent in this Draft. Listen up, people, this is the truth.