The NFL picks about six weeks out of the year to allow sports fans to avoid the league’s magnetizing, soul-sucking vacuum that dominates the American sports consciousness. This was supposed to be one of those weeks. I could turn my football brain off.
The Sabres – Lightning game was on. My hockey brain was on and I actually cared about a Sabres game for the first time since trading Enroth was supposed to tank the season. Then my son looked over to me and told me to check out Twitter. Apparently, the NFL decided my soul remained for sale, and my twitter feed had 8,472 tweets from NFL “insiders” letting the world know that the Bills and Eagles swapped Kiko Alonso for LeSean McCoy. 8,471 of the “insiders” also put in their tweet “per Adam Schefter.”
At that point, I blacked out. My son said he could see my soul rise to the sky into the hands of the Football Gods – Vince Lombardi and Satan. After that, he said I started repeating “football” the same way Danny said “Redrum” in The Shining, except I was holding a foam finger instead of a carving knife. Shortly thereafter, my brain imploded. Clearly, this was the work of the Pegulas. All I wanted to do was ease my mind that the post-apocalypse Sabres would be terrible, and instead, the Bills made a trade that my Madden video game would reject, but it happened in real life, with my team.
After the implosion, my eyes glazed over, and I began refreshing my twitter feed for the next few hours. I was annoyed by anyone with an opinion. I didn’t care what the opinion was, it was annoying. The first hour declared that the Bills won the trade. During the second hour, the rhetoric changed from “Bills Win” to “Chip Kelly is an ‘evil genius’ with a plan and vision.” Chip Kelly wants to show everyone how much power he was given in the offseason. Bill Belichick is an evil genius. The two are incomparable.
Somehow, the channel turned from NBCSN to the NFL network (I blame Lombardi), where people talked logically and were actually doing some rather good analysis of the trade (LaDanian Tomlinson asked why people weren’t talking about Rex Ryan’s plan, CJ Spiller added himself to the most-hated list, some other guy said something smart). Then the channel turned to ESPN (I blame Satan), where Stephen A. Smith yelled a lot, Sal Pal was looking over his back for Eagles fans with weapons, Skip Bayless turned it into something about Tony Romo, Mark Schlereth talked about how he is currently a better lineman than any the Bills have, John Clayton talked about Marshawn Lynch, John Kruk didn’t like the deal because Kiko isn’t afraid of Randy Johnson, Ray Lewis didn’t like the trade because it sets McCoy a few years back from getting away with murder at a SuperBowl party, Tim Tebow just popped in to let the Bills know he’s available, Jeff Van Gundy didn’t like it because it doesn’t help Philly at Center where they need a bigger body who can grab rebounds and help take some minutes from Joel Embiid and it would allow Nerlens Noel to permanently shift to Power Forward, Dick Vitale though it was awesome…baby, Jeremy Schaap ran a three hour documentary on ESPN2 about the struggle of LeSean McCoy dealing with his future in Buffalo after learning of the trade an hour ago, Patrick McEnroe commented how McCoy and Freddie will make a formidable doubles team, and Keyshawn Johnson said “C’mon Man!” Then he left.
I was tired. It all just processed in my brain as “blah blah blah blah,” so I went to bed.
I’ve had the morning to collect my thoughts, watch ESPN some more, read more tweets, and eat breakfast. Simply put, it doesn’t matter
• how much cap space this opens for the Eagles
• how RB’s are allegedly less-relevant and replaceable in the league (separate argument for another time)
• how unexcited McCoy is to come to Buffalo (because our weather is so much worse that in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia)
• how many players from the same college get reunited in the NFL (is Kelly such an evil genius that he can’t teach his offense to
NFL players that didn’t go to Oregon?)
• how good Kelly feels now that he’s measured parts of his anatomy and feels he’s shown the league his length and girth
• how trading a superstar somehow sets your team up better to make a move at the draft for Mariota (the savior, and oddly, another
Duck!)
• how upset it made CJ Spiller
• how much upside Kiko might have (didn’t he get into disciplinary problems at Oregon while being coached by Kelly?)
• or how it is the anniversary of the Portis-Champ Bailey trade (Alonso is suddenly Champ Bailey?)
There is no logical football justification for trading McCoy.
Since the trade, the overarching sentiment I’ve put together this morning is, “The Bills won the trade, but…what are they without a Quarterback?” Unless they were secretly teaching Kiko how to play Quarterback, they’re the same team they were on Monday, except now they have LeSean McCoy.
NOTE/UPDATE: and now they have Matt Cassel, so, there’s that.
As a side note, the Sabres looked exactly how I needed them to look. Tim Murray is an evil genius.
