Freed from the salary cap (at least for one year), NFL teams continued to trade until their dialing fingers practically fell off during the final day of the draft yesterday.
By the time all the smoke had cleared, five prominent veterans changed hands along with a slew of picks as the draft concluded with the final four rounds.
The Raiders created the biggest splash, officially labeling 2007 No. 1 overall pick JaMarcus Russell the biggest bust in draft history by acquiring serviceable quarterback Jason Campbell from the Redskins.
Campbell, who was the odd man out in Washington with Donovan McNabb’s arrival, is on the flip side of that equation in Oakland now that the Raiders are ready to jettison Russell after three horrific seasons.
League sources say Russell will be released if he doesn’t agree to a cut in the $9.5 million scheduled to come to him this season. In fact, the LSU product could be an ex-Raider as soon as tomorrow.
Whether he stays or goes, Russell already is the top case study in why the NFL is seriously pushing a rookie wage scale with just seven wins in 25 career starts after landing $31.5 million in guaranteed money as a rookie.
Russell was benched in Oakland after going 2-7 in nine starts last season — with just three touchdowns and 11 interceptions — and arguably pushes aside Ryan Leaf atop the annals of NFL draft busts.
“I feel like I’m going to be the starter [in Oakland],” Campbell told reporters after learning of the trade. “I expect to be the starter.”
The Seahawks were the busiest wheelers and dealers yesterday, remaking their backfield in the span of just a few hours by landing third-down back Leon Washington from the Jets and character problem LenDale White from the Titans.
New Seattle coach Pete Carroll also found himself in the middle of an ugly tiff with one of his former USC players, safety Taylor Mays, who blasted Carroll for taking Texas safety Earl Thomas instead. Mays said Carroll had made a vague promise to draft him.
The Raiders, meanwhile, also threw a wrench into one of the avenues the Giants considered to fill their middle-linebacker hole by trading capable veteran Kirk Morrison to the Jaguars.
The flurry of trades involving veteran players yesterday was just the latest in an offseason shockingly full of them. The about-face is easy to explain: no salary cap, at least for the 2010 season.
Trading veterans, particularly with expensive contracts heavy on guaranteed bonuses, was a rarity under the previous system because teams had to count that “dead money” on their cap while the receiving club also had to make room for it.
Thanks to the lifting of the cap for this season as part of the ongoing labor dispute, that isn’t the case anymore. And teams are making hay with the newfound freedom, especially top playoff clubs from 2009 like the Jets who are bound this offseason by complicated rules on signing free agents.
In addition to Campbell, White, Washington and Morrison, vet eran defensive back Bryant McFadden also was dealt yesterday as he returned to the Steelers after one year with the Cardinals.
And that doesn’t include all of the draft-choice swap ping that has become in creasingly common in re cent years. An eye- popping 10 trades yesterday involved just the swapping of picks this year, and 34 trades were made since the draft opened Thursday night.
The Patriots once again at the heart of the pick- swapping, making seven trades during the draft for the second year in a row while signing veteran free-agent tackle Gerard Warren. This also marked the second consecutive year that New England ended up drafting 12 players.