As NFL trades slip into hibernation until March, it’s important to remember something the next time players can be sent from one team to another.
Teams push plenty of BS to the media — and the media often passes it along without scrutiny.
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Case in point: The internally inconsistent claim made by ESPN on Saturday, undoubtedly based on information straight from the Raiders.
“As of this weekend,” Adam Schefter of ESPN tweeted, “the Raiders had not received any trade inquiries regarding their starting quarterback Kirk Cousins, nor are they interested in dealing him, per league sources. They plan to keep sticking with him until they believe their No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza is ready.”
So the Raiders hadn’t received any trade inquiries, but they weren’t interested in the trade inquiries they hadn’t received? Right.
In a press conference with reporters on Tuesday, Raiders G.M. John Spytek addressed how it all came to be.
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“I never made one call on Kirk Cousins,” Spytek said. “And I got a few phone calls. But one real one this morning.”
The “real one” ultimately entailed getting a third-round pick for Cousins. Which further highlights how silly it is for a team to claim — and for the media to share — the idea that “WE’RE NOT INTERESTED.”
Everyone is interested in a trade offer for all but a small handful of players in the entire league. Anything else is posturing. And, as is often the case when it comes to NFL reporting, the insiders allow themselves to become extensions of the team’s P.R. department in an effort to send a given message.
The Raiders weren’t interested, until they were. And it didn’t take all that much to make them interested in giving up their starting quarterback.
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It was easier to make the decision because they were surely thinking about when to bench him for rookie Fernando Mendoza. And it surely was easier for Cousins to embrace the trade, given that he’s now in a position to keep playing for a team that has a chance to get to the postseason and to make some noise in January.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
