Pats-49ers trade revisited

EXQUISITE.

I love and cherish ANY reference to this Trade and its antecedents, as this Series BEAUTIFULLY illustrates the Magic that Coach Bill continues to spin, year after year after year.

Frankly, in Football, where there's a Salary Cap, I think it's VERY difficult to accurately come up with a Team A VERSUS Team B assessment: For instance, the Chiefs just got Matt Cassel and Mike Vrable from us for Patrick Chung...But because of the VAST liberation of Salary Cap dollars, the Patriots, in the very same trade, acquire not only Patrick Chung, but the services of Leigh Bodden, Shawn Springs, Chris Baker, Alex Smith, Fred Taylor, James Sanders, Russ Hochstein, Mike Wright, Tank Williams, Al Johnson, Pierre Woods, Vinny Ciurciu, Pierre Woods, and to that long list, you can, arguably, add the dozen or so Roster Bubble types we've put to contract, and, more notably, any vet we sign between now and Week 17.

That makes it, in a very real way, a 12 for 1, or thereabouts, from our perspective, because it was the Chiefs doing US a solid by TAKING Vrabel's contract on, for which we gladly ~ and shrewdly, my deep admiration and appreciation for Mike Vrable notwithstanding ~ took a slightly LESSER value for Cassel than that offered by the Falcons, who would've traded their 2nd to us, but weren't willing to take on Vrabel's salary as part of the deal.

Having said all that...

What an AMAZING trade. I like Joe Staley a GREAT deal, I love what the Miners are building over there, and I hope he has a great and long career...and that the Miners are, ultimately, happy they made the trade...

But to reap Randy Moss, Jerrod Mayo, and Shawn Crable for that pick and the 5th we threw in??? PRAISE COACH BILL!!!

The way you put it makes it sound like the best trade in decades, but I see it a little differently.

1st We were getting Moss either way, whether it was that 4th rounder or our other 4th rounder and possibly a later pick. That year we were 18-1 and if we had selected another 1st round pick, that may have been the differnce between 19-0, as we were only one play away on several occations. I think it would have been a 50/50 chance we would have won it all, but who knows. I would Mayo for a 50/50 chance.

Hi Rob. Out of curiosity, which player would you have picked at 28 that would have made that difference for the Patriots?
--Mike

Hindsight being 20/20, I think passing on Staley in the 2007 draft was a mistake. Pick him instead of Meriweather and the Pats probably go 19-0. I think he would have made the difference at right tackle against the Giants in the SB instead of the human turnstile, Nick Kaczur.

Mike, I was hoping they would have taken Paul Posluszny with that pick at 28. Hard to say how that would have turned out. He'd be cheaper than Mayo and he's been pretty good so far. He got hurt in 2007. Who knows if he would have been hurt if he were in NE? Hard to go back in time.

At linebacker, Vrabel was dominant the first half of 2007 but had a big fade as the Pats struggled to win them all down the stretch. Hard to revisit that season.

greatest trade this decade. What they say staley could of help us win the sb i doubt it and mayo helped our D a great deal he is the next future star at the positon. It was get a tackle who is boom or bust or wait one year see how the 49ers do and get mayo. I would get mayo on any day, seeing what he has done is amazing. GO PATSSSS oh and did i forget this also got us crable hopefully a booom and Randy Moss who i dont need to say what he did so biggest trade this decade

The Boston.com commentors never fail to disappoint. Any praise of the Patriots is immediately countered by pink-hat bandwagoners like "Rob" and "Tony" in whose eyes anything the team does will never be good enough.

This was a ridiculously good trade, by any standards. It works out to Joe Staley for Jerod Mayo, Randy Moss and Shawn Crable.

But Rob would rather not have Mayo if he could've had a 50-50 chance of winning a Super Bowl two seasons ago, and Tony thinks Joe Staley would have been the difference in that same Super Bowl.

A Super Bowl in which the Patriots took the lead in the final three minutes, only to have their defense give up the lead.

I just don't get people.

Too bad the Pats couldn't have spent a draft pick on a referee that could actually call a holding penalty in the Superbowl, they really would have gone 19-0 then.

Good Lord.

Please tell me y'all're kidding.

Any team that comes that close can come up, literally, with about 300 different things that would've made that little difference.

Coach Bill is not forging a team built to win the Super Bowl, folks.

He is forging a team built to win MULTIPLE Super Bowls.

And in order to do that, you must focus on the Value AND the Salary Cap implications of every...single...move.

Don't you realize that if we'd drafted the venerable Staley, we would've had to drop somebody ~ or several somebodies ~ from the roster, to make room for his salary?

And we wouldn't currently have the ascending explosiveness of either Mayo OR Crable in our LineBacking crew, who will in all likelihood make a DRAMATIC impact on our fortunes, over the next several years.

Hindsight, indeed.

I'm with Rob on this one. I can't see why anyone would think the trade with the 49ers had anything to do with the acquisition of Randy Moss. I really don't like this kind of analysis that confuses what was done after a trade with the trade itself.

The trade was a 2007 1st for a 2007 4th and a 2008 1st. That's a bad trade. I don't know if a team has ever gotten anything less for pushing a #1 pick back a year than the Pats got.

I think we can all agree that the Pats had a great 2007 offseason--I just think that trade was one of the low points not one of the high points.

Fanatical Yankee, go play in traffic.

Like a few others here, I disagree with the premise of MR's post. For example, if the Pats traded a very serviceable back-up player on their roster for a future 7th round pick, and struck good fortune with that 7th rounder a year or two later, does that mean the original trade was a "good trade?" Or did they make a questionable trade and luck out later? To be a "good trade" I say it has to make sense at the time (in terms of the value given up and received at the time, relative to other trades being made in the league) AND work out in the long run. This is why I think the Cassel/Vrabel trade made no sense. I don't care if Chung turms into an All-Pro, in terms of evaluating the trade. The fact is the Pats when they made the trade did not get equal value at the time of the trade (compared to other similar deals in the league at the time), and had no idea they would actually get Chung in Round 2 when they made the deal. So if Chung is a good player, that's smart drafting, but it doesn't mean the original trade was good value. Who's to say that the Pats wouldn't have done even better than Chung with a higher draft choice received in exchange for Cassel and Vrabel?

Appreciate the different points of view here. Patsfanbutnotblind, my counter to this comment would be that there wasn't a better deal for them in the time period they gave themselves to make the Cassel/Vrabel deal. If they were stuck with Cassel, they were cooked with no room to improve the rest of their team, and that was a gamble the team took by franchining him. So when I look at the Cassel deal, I see a team that decided instead of letting him walk and getting a 2010 compensatory pick (likely third round), they would try to do better. The market dictated how much better they could do. I think all these points have good merit. I happen to like these type of analysis/breakdowns of trades, although I understand they aren't black and white. I do believe they reflect the strategy of finding value and putting your team in position to capitalize on such opportunities.
--Mike

I agree with the others re: Moss. The 49ers trade didn't ALLOW them to get Moss. They could have pulled that one off quite easily without making the trade with the 49ers. It allowed them to draft Mayo, which would have been incredibly difficult to do without the trade.

As BB says, it is what it is. The trade (ultimately) netted them an additional 4th rounder. A 4th rounder is worth a 4th rounder. Had the 49ers not made the trade, they wouldn't have gone out and gotten Randy Moss, so it's unfair to group him into the deal.

HELLO!! I guess we need to explain to certain folks that if Reiss HADN'T mentioned Moss as part of this, we'd probably already see 100 posts calling him OUT for that gross negligence!

Nobody's trying to say that we wouldn't've got Moss with the other pick...But it sure adds nice juice to it, doesn't it?? :oP

Anyway: parlaying a late 1st Rounder and a 5th into Jerrod Mayo, Shawn Crable, and a 4th Rounder is RAKING it, ANY way you slice it, oui? OUI! :o)

*Vic, your bitter, impotent rage is evidently all you have ~ in lieu of, say, a POINT! Hah! ~ but don't think it isn't VERY amusing and GREATLY appreciated! ;o)

Re: Moss/SF trade -- the point is not that the 4th round pick made the trade possible -- the point is that it was the value they exchanged in the trade. However, the final chapter on this trade has not been written because of Crable's injury. If Crable turns out to be a valuable player at LB, then this is a phenomenally good deal for the patriots.

Re: Cassel trade. The argument that the patriots acquired Bodden and others by trading Cassel is not really accurate. The cap problem was created by the use of the franchise tag on Cassel. Trading Cassel only got the Patriots back to position to their original position.

The best way to evaluate the trade of Cassel is to consider what the trade would have been worth if it was for Vrabel only. Pick #34 for Vrabel would be unrealistic given his salary cap numbers, overall contract and long term value. I think that a Vrabel-only trade without Cassel would have been worth a pick at the beginning of round 3. By adding Cassel to the deal, they got pick #34 at the beginning of round 2, and about 4 million dollars to work on free agency.

That's a good deal but nothing like the SF trade in my view, especially if Crable contributes as a starter or for significant plays this year.

OY.

"Nothing like the SF trade in my view"???

Nobody was COMPARING it to the SF trade, bub. Next time, please do me the basic courtesy of getting my point straight in your head, before you refute something I'm not even coming close to asserting.

I don't WISH to be harsh, Justin, to you, or to anyone. Indeed, I can tell by the way you put that together that you're an intelligent guy. But I can tell you that before I come on here and presume to put my words before y'all, I make DAMNED sure I show y'all the courtesy of researching what I'm about to write about. It is a mark of my respect for the time of those who might read my words. And when you don't show the rest of us that same courtesy ~ as you all too obviously have not, I'm sorry to say, Justin ~ the effect of your words is to muddy the waters, and to distort reality into a twisted version of itself.

First off, you estimated Vrabel's Market Value as an early 3rd Rounder. That is just flat out LUDICROUS. Vrabel has been a wonder and a joy, one we will never forget. But he had declined dramatically in a short time, and whatever he may have left, the simple fact remains that he has a bloated salary, and that the Patriots actually made the decision ~ one I've already spelled out for you, in my previous post ~ of turning down Atlanta's 33rd, and actually taking a lesser pick ~ KC's 34th ~ in return for them taking Vrabel's salary off our hands! That means that his Trade Value was ~ literally! ~ LESS than nothing! How is POSSIBLE for you to misinterpret or miss that???

To fantasize that Vrabel even HAD a Trade Value ~ much less an early 3rd Rounder!!! ~ is INSANE. If you're going to argue against my point, that's appreciated, as I have a curious mind, and hope to learn from you and the others, here. But please make SOME effort to know what's going on, before you do so.

And your assertion that our franchising of Cassel somehow invalidates my position that we reaped about a dozen players by trading him?? It's vapid, to put it kindly. If we don't franchise Cassel, we don't have Cassel to trade in the first place, so what's your point?? If we don't franchise him, then he leaves as a free agent, and this whole discussion is moot.

Like I said: 12 for 1, or thereabouts, for all effective intents and purposes.

PS > Trading Cassel and Vrabel liberated $18 Million, my friend ~ EIGHTEEN!! ~ not the FOUR that you came up with. Check your math, bub. ;o)

"The trade was a 2007 1st for a 2007 4th and a 2008 1st. That's a bad trade. I don't know if a team has ever gotten anything less for pushing a #1 pick back a year than the Pats got."

Perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever seen here. The Pats 2007 pick was late round. The 49ers 2008 pick ended up being the #7 overall pick, which the Patriots turned into the #10 to draft Jerod Mayo.

I know you guys are just going out of your way to try and find ways to bash the Patriots, but this just isn't an examplee you can use to push that agenda.

This whole discussion is incredibly confused. Reiss and everyone here is reading the present into the past. That's not how you evaluate a trade.

You cannot look at the situation in terms of the players drafted, because the teams swapped picks -- not players. Just because the Patriots ended up selecting (and trading for) really good players like Mayo and Moss doesn't make the original trade with San Francisco any "richer" for New England. The 49ers could pick the worst player in the world and it doesn't affect the original deal at all. If we look at the way Reiss does, the Patriots always make good trades because they have good players on their roster. Just because Belichick got good players doesn't mean he made a good deal.

What matters is the amount of equity in the NFL Draft that traded hands relative to the time that passed. The Patriots traded 660 points in 2007 (#28) for 47 points in 2007 (#110) and 1500 (#7) in 2008. On face value, turning 660 points into 1547 seems like a nice little bit of Belichick wizardy, and it is. But it isn't that simple. The trade has to undergo what investors call "discounting" because time elapsed between the two picks, namely the 2007 NFL season.

We'll simplify things by subtracting the #110 2007 pick from the #28 2007 pick because they both occurred in the same year.Therefore the ledger stands: Patriots 1500, 49ers 613. Seems like a landslide for the team from the East.

But how many *discounted* points do the Patriots get? In other words, what was the #7 2008 pick worth the day New England acquired it in 2007? We're going to be harsh in discounting the draft points here, but with good reason. Why? Because time is compressed in the world of the NFL. Everyone knows this! If ten years is a lifetime in professional football, what does that make one year? If you were an stock/bond investor, turning $613 into $1500 in one year would be a great return. But in the NFL that one year was more like two or three years. Do you follow my reasoning? The NFL is much more unstable and fluid than the real world.

For the sake of argument we'll punish the Patriots heavily with a 40% discount rate. That works out to approximately 900 points. That is, the #7 pick the Patriots recieved in 2008 was worth 900 points when they acquired it in 2007. Is 900 a bigger number than 660? Oh, yes. Even with the heavy penalty there is no way to deny that New England got the better end of the deal. But most of the mistake lies in the 49ers perception of how the 2007 season would unfold. If they had done slightly better and selected in the teens or low 20's, New England would be underwater on the deal.

Thus the real question: is it worth it to trade a present first rounder for a future first rounder with just a present fourth rounder as the kicker? Probably not. Good thing Belichick is a genius, because on paper the Patriots took a sizeable risk.