Lions should trade Kevin Smith for A.J. Hawk

[Q00]

According to this article, the Packers aren't using Hawk very much anymore and he would be excited to play for another team where he could play more snaps.

Also mentioned is that the Packers might look to trade him for a RB to replace injured Grant. I see a perfect scenario where the Lions trade Kevin Smith for Hawk.

The Lions need help at LB, and the Packers need a RB. With Best, we don't need Smith anymore. I'm not sure if either team would trade within the division, but it happens sometimes.

http://packersnews.greenbaypressgazette ... agent-says

[ajaX82]

I was pretty surprised at how far Hawk has fallen. Wasn't he really good just a few years ago?

I'd definitely try and grab him though. Not sure they would want Kevin Smith, but for a reasonable price i get him for sure

[Bartender]

The guy is best used as a 4-3 OLB.... and what do ya know!! We need one of those.

[Icness]

It might cost the Lions a 4th-6th round pick as insurance for Smith getting hurt but it does make sense for both sides. Hawk might not be great but he's better than Zack Follett and they're the same type of player.

Tough to pull off trades in the same division though.

[TSE]

Indeed tricky to sometimes pull off trades since a lot of teams are such chickens to deal with a rival.

But since we are talking to the Packers anyhow, let's just put Clay Mathews up there instead, and give them Jahvid+. That's a much more fun trade and then the Pack can solve their Hawk problem cause then he would fill a need for them!

[ajaX82]

Indeed tricky to sometimes pull off trades since a lot of teams are such chickens to deal with a rival.

But since we are talking to the Packers anyhow, let's just put Clay Mathews up there instead, and give them Jahvid+. That's a much more fun trade and then the Pack can solve their Hawk problem cause then he would fill a need for them!

Why in gods name would we trade Jahvid? Did you see last game??...he tore people up!

[TSE]

We wouldn't trade Jahvid, the people who run the Lions would never think of something like that don't worry about it. It's supposed to be an idea for fun and not to freak you out like as if it's a likely possibility. But on a side note are you for real in saying you would rather have Jahvid than Clay Mathews who could end up going down as the best defensive player in NFL history? Again that's something that is very unlikely to happen, but I would give Clay a better shot of being the best defensive player in history than I would Jahvid of being the best offensive player in history. The Packers would laugh at us for offering Best straight up for him that's why I'm totally in the clear to only tease with the idea of trading him. It's just wishful thinking. How about we trade a 5 dollar bill for Clay? You can reply back by making fun of how poor my trade offer is, but you have no right to give me a hard time about being willing to give up 5 dollars in theory for something that is CLEARLY more valuable than a 5 dollar bill.

Or another way to look at it, if we did a complete NFL redraft of all players, do you think that some team is going to select Jahvid before some team selects Clay? I'd bet my house and my life and my eternal soul that Clay would be picked first. And yes I'm being sarcastic, I figure I better say that before getting called out for being willing to gamble so much on a silly proposition.

[ajaX82]

You wrote a lot, so i will try and break it down piece by piece if you don't mind.

We wouldn't trade Jahvid, the people who run the Lions would never think of something like that don't worry about it.

Yup. This isn't Madden and trading players like this really doesn't happn

It's supposed to be an idea for fun and not to freak you out like as if it's a likely possibility.

I understand that. I was just surprised that anyone would want to consider trading Best. I guess my post looks more "freaked" than what was intended. My bad

But on a side note are you for real in saying you would rather have Jahvid than Clay Mathews who could end up going down as the best defensive player in NFL history?

Yes, with this team, right now, i would rather have Jahvid. We don't run a 3-4 (which is what Clay is obviously suited for) and Best is going to be our RB for the future. Its why we wouldn't trade for DeMarcus Ware, another 3-4 OLB who is at his best coming off the end. So yeah, on the 2010 Lions, i would rather have Best

As for best defensive player in history...

Again that's something that is very unlikely to happen,

Uh huh

but I would give Clay a better shot of being the best defensive player in history than I would Jahvid of being the best offensive player in history.

OK....i get what you are saying but its kind of comparing apples to oranges. Not too mention subjective. Who is the best offensive player in league history? The best defensive? Which of those two is better?

These questions are completely subjective

The Packers would laugh at us for offering Best straight up for him that's why I'm totally in the clear to only tease with the idea of trading him.

Well im not sure they would laugh but they probably would not take it, right. It doesn't make sense for either team, especially considering where each is at

It's just wishful thinking. How about we trade a 5 dollar bill for Clay? You can reply back by making fun of how poor my trade offer is, but you have no right to give me a hard time about being willing to give up 5 dollars in theory for something that is CLEARLY more valuable than a 5 dollar bill.

...

Or another way to look at it, if we did a complete NFL redraft of all players, do you think that some team is going to select Jahvid before some team selects Clay?

Maybe

I'd bet my house and my life and my eternal soul that Clay would be picked first. And yes I'm being sarcastic, I figure I better say that before getting called out for being willing to gamble so much on a silly proposition.

I caught the sarcasm, no worries. Clay certainly might be picked first in your fantasy draft idea, I have no idea.

So yeah, im feel free to respond. Im interested in your takes on a couple things

[TSE]

Well for one, we could always switch our defense to accommodate Clay, and for 2 if we didn't want him we could trade him to somebody else and get a better player than Best that way. We are too short of having a dominant team and RBs are one of the easiest positions to find and also one of the shortest length careers, so to swap an RB premium chip to help us get on track to create a stable awesome team would help us tremendously and it would be much easier to top off with a RB as the final piece in the future than it would be to get that final stud LB, which Best might as well be our first piece with how far off we are of having a logical foundation for a powerful dynasty that is the best sports dynasty of all-time which SHOULD be our ultimate goal, it's lofty but surprisingly easier to achieve theoretically in my mind with all 31 other GMs being incapable of performing at an ULTRA ELITE performance level even if some of the GMs are relatively good football decision makers.

And not sure what's with the Madden references, a player for player trade is pretty straightforward. One of the most annoying things I find in football chat is the incessant comparison to trades being called "Madden trades", I totally don't understand that line of thinking 90% of the time that something is labeled that way. I get the concept behind the label, but it is just way too often misused. The only reason trades don't happen is because GMs in the NFL, all 32 of them are poorly qualified for the job based upon my standards. There is not one GM that is good enough for his team as I have clearly disqualified all of them as being worthy for a job like that, not to say that some don't come close to meeting my minimum standards of excellence. So to say that you haven't seen many trades as support for an argument against why one wouldnt make sense or shouldn't happen is highly illogical to me and fairly irrelevant to the theoretical justification and sensibility of said trades that I may be referencing.

Weird analogy for that, let's say that on day 1 that football was created, for some weird reason every single GM that ever existed caught fear of a voodoo curse that says it's bad to have any college QB play in the NFL, so every team picks the best non-QB on their team to play that position and thus no college QB ever makes it to the NFL. So now let's say next year the Lions draft Jake Locker. Well a fan might say what the heck are the Lion's doing? They are going to use a college QB to play QB in the NFL?!??! That's never been done before! Just because nobody ever tried it doesn't mean its not in actuality the best way to get a QB!

Demarcus Ware is a great player, and I would trade for him too, but I wouldn't pay the same price for him as Clay as Clay is younger and better and has more upside seemingly at this moment in time.

And any player is going to be a longshot to be the best of all-time, but if you were to assign a probability to all players today and every player in history at this juncture, Clay could possibly be the #1 guy with the highest odds if you had to pick one guy, and so the field is always going to cripple the very best from achieving that goal, but to me I am not expecting or banking on players to automatically be better than their present value, thus the winner is the guy who has the best odds to fulfill such a destiny even if it doesn't come to fruition, and like any gamble you judge the gamble on what it's worth BEFORE you have ANY clue as to what the result ultimately ends up being.

Look at it this way, say that we knew Clay today has a 1% chance to be the best D player of all time and Lawrence Taylor at the same moment for him is say 0.9%. Well maybe both careers play out and Clay comes up short and LT wins 15 years from now. But in spirit to me Clay is still the better player, because he had the highest odds and fortune and fate just didn't hit for him, but that's not a justification for saying LT is the best. If you play poker and you have 2 hands where one hand has a 10% chance to win on the last card and another has an 11%, well after the card is dealt and that one shot is done and that specific hand can never be produced again forever, well the 11% is and was always the best hand, even after it played out and the other hand PROVED it on the table. LT PROVING it on the table isn't sufficient, cause his proof is partially made up of stats, and his stats could have been higher because of say a couple bad calls that stole sacks from Clay or what not, or say Clay was about to hit a guy for an epic highlight but some rookie RB drops the ball and steals the potential moment from Clay. It becomes tricky to think about it that way, but nevertheless Clay is still the best of the 2 because he was projected to be the best and if we ran the Universe over and over again 1 million times, well we see Clay winning now 1% for 10,000 wins and LT only gets 9,000. So the fact that our reality happened to be one that LT hit instead of Clay doesn't matter to me if you have confidence that your evaluation of the odds are correct in conjunction with what that player is truly capable of.

The best O player of all-time I would take over the best D player. Now I wouldn't say any QB could be considered the best "football" player of all-time, as to me that honor would best fit for an RB, however the best QB ever is the most valuable O player of all-time or the most valuable single player of all-time, and although a QB isn't the best "footballer" per se, I don't care about that distinction so much as which guy contributes the most to accomplishing my goal to win, and that's going to be done with a QB more than any other single player at any other position hands down. RBs can't play enough years to equate to a QB so they would have a disadvantage from that perspective despite winning my best "footballer" award. I presently believe that Barry Sanders is the best football player of all-time. It's tricky to compare position to position as you say, but my vote is for Barry as the true best football talent, nobody could do what Barry quite did, a lot of guys can do similar but you can say that even more so for other positions than you can for RBs and in comparison to Barry. He's the most special talent I have ever seen on a football field.

In an NFL redraft I don't think Clay would be #1 though, because he's still a LB and the best LB who is also the best defensive player of all-time would still not be WORTH the same as say the 10th best QB or top few of maybe some other positions perhaps. I'd go down a few spots for the best LT than the best LB for example.