On the bright side, the San Francisco 49ers didn't put Taylor Mays(notes) on eBay. That's the only bright side.
Adam Schefter reports that the 49ers offered second-year player Taylor Mays to all other 31 NFL teams via a mass email. The 2010 second-round pick was drafted out of USC and gained attention for blasting former Trojans coach Pete Carroll for passing him over in the draft.
One NFL team official told the ESPN reporter he had never heard of anything like that in the NFL. It's assumed that the 49ers hurt the trade market for the talented, yet raw, young safety because of their technological shortcut.
That's probably true. There are dozens of better ways to get out the word that Mays is on the trade block rather than going to the "NFL GM" tab in the address book. Call one team and the news will trickle down. Talk him up in a press conference and then leak that you're not happy with him. Heck, why not just call Schefter himself and have him post that tweet instead of the one about the email?
It may be a pain to call up all interested teams but that's the way it works. Have you ever tried to unload a player in fantasy and tried the "Hey everybody, this guy's on the trade block" tactic? Never works.
Did the 49ers list a "buy it now" price on Mays or are they hoping the bidding progresses properly from the opening bid of $0.01? What are the odds Dan Snyder responded, hit "reply all" instead of "reply" and offered Laron Landry(notes), Brian Orakpo(notes) and two first-round choices for Mays? How many of those emails bounced back because someone had recently changed their email address? And if nobody bites on the mass email, are they going to cut Mays and tell him via his SkyTel pager?
WTF?!?!?!