Peter
King on SI.com wrote, “I have to hand
it to Snyder and Cerrato. This was a very good trade for
them.”
King,
a noted Skins basher, raved on:
The
reason the Washington trade makes so much sense is that even if Taylor
gives the 'Skins just two years, dealing the 51st pick (that was their
second-rounder this year) for two seasons of a top-five pass-rusher
would be worth it to any thinking football person.
The
King article also goes into the timeline of the trade. From initial
phone call to final paperwork, the process took a little over three
hours.
On
ESPN.com,
John Clayton said:
For
the Redskins, the price -- second- and sixth-round draft picks -- was
worth it. Defensive end was their thinnest position. The first-day
practice losses of Phillip Daniels and Alex Buzbee on Sunday left them with only nine
healthy defensive linemen. Erasmus
James
is the 10th defensive lineman left on the roster, but he's on the
physically unable to perform list recovering from years of knee
problems.
I’m
not sure from where Clayton got the number of nine for the healthy
defensive linemen. After Sunday’s injuries and before the
Taylor trade
there were 12 of them on the roster. Subtract James and that makes 11.
Perhaps he’s not counting Lorenzo Alexander, who worked
mostly on
offense last year but has been assigned to be a defensive tackle for
the time being.
Locally,
Mike
Wise had this take:
This
was big and bold -- back to the proactive days when rebuilding through
the draft could not hold a candle to rebuilding on the fly, when Daniel
Snyder saw a player he liked and promptly bought
him.
And
before anyone compares acquiring Taylor to throwing money away on Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith or Brandon Lloyd,
let's be clear: After watching Daniels go down and out for the season
-- and maybe his career -- and after watching a backup like Buzbee
crumple to the ground in agony, this was a move the Redskins needed to
make.
It
was a move the Redskins needed to make, said Wise, because of the way
they have handled the acquisition of talent on the D-line in the past:
If
Taylor fizzles, the Redskins have to bite the bullet and realize they
put themselves in this position long before Daniels went down.
By
their own doing, they neglected real upgrades to the defensive line.
Andre Carter was the only bona fide change the past
five years. Demetric Evans and Anthony Montgomery have yet to realize their potential.
I
disagree about Montgomery—I think that he took great leaps
and bounds forward last year—but his overall point is valid.
To
be clear, I don’t necessarily think that they should have
taken Calais Campbell or Quentin Groves in the second round of the draft. I stand by
my point that the biggest problem this team has had this decade is
scoring points, not preventing the other team from scoring.
Still,
if one injury to a starter at one position forces you to make a trade
that burns a second and a sixth and over $8 million in cap space you
haven’t done a very good job in building depth at that
position. You
can nitpick over what player should have been taken over what draft
pick, but having depth means that you have someone who can step in as a
starter in the event of an injury. The Redskins, by their own
admission, didn’t have that depth.
Even
David
Elfin at the Times, who never has been accused
of being a homer, liked the deal:
Q:
Did the Redskins mortgage the future to make this move?
A:
Not unless you consider a second-round draft choice in 2009 and a
sixth-rounder in 2010 plus a lot of salary cap room consumed this year
and next mortgaging the future. If Taylor makes a smooth switch from
the right side to the left, it seems like a no-brainer.
I
don’t know about the characterization as a no-brainer, but
Vinny
Cerrato and company certainly acted as though it was one. No doubt,
however, it was a bold move and like most bold moves it’s
likely that
it will prove to be a master stroke or a colossal blunder.
Time
will tell.
Rich
Tandler blogs about the Skins at RealRedskins.com.