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WR carousel keeps spinning
By Len Pasquarelli
ESPN.com
Since he moved into the starting lineup in 1998, his third season in the NFL, Buffalo Bills wide receiver Eric Moulds has averaged 78.3 receptions, 1,065.4 yards and 5.8 touchdown catches per year. A first-round choice in the 1996 draft, Moulds never caught fewer than 64 passes and never had fewer than 780 yards in that eight-year stretch, and scored at least five touchdowns in six of the eight seasons.
Having bolstered their defense already, the Falcons may soon turn their attention finding help for their offensive line. Read what else Len Pasquarelli addresses Inside Tip Sheet.
But not even those gaudy statistics can reconcile these equally large numbers: Moulds will enter his 11th season in 2006 and will turn 33 two weeks before training camps open this summer. His contract with the Bills calls for $7.1 million in total compensation and he has twice rejected team requests to adjust the deal. On a club that figures to rebuild around younger players, and likely won't contend for a playoff spot this season, Moulds' salary cap charge is an exorbitant $10.8 million.
The upshot of that second group of numbers? Moulds will be traded, and soon, probably by Monday.
When he is dealt away -- the Houston Texans, according to general manager Charley Casserly, have a verbal agreement in place but must still satisfy Buffalo's trade demands -- Moulds will join a long and impressive contingent of high-profile wide receivers who have been traded over the last two years.
AP Photo/Ron Heflin
Terrell Owens caught 47 passes in just seven games last season for the Eagles.
The list includes 10 wide receivers whose résumés include at least one Pro Bowl appearance. It features the man who was inarguably the premier receiver of all time and maybe the greatest player ever, Jerry Rice, who was actually traded twice. It includes Randy Moss and Terrell Owens, two players some personnel chiefs acknowledge as the NFL's most explosive offensive forces of the last decade. And the litany of wide receivers traded since the spring of 2004 also includes names such as Keyshawn Johnson, Joey Galloway, Keenan McCardell, David Boston, Antonio Bryant, Marty Booker and Santana Moss, among others.
It all began, innocuously enough, on March 5, 2004, when the Tennessee Titans shipped Justin McCareins to the New York Jets for a second-round draft choice. For some reason, that deal served as a sort of catalyst, bursting open the floodgates and signaling the commencement of a two-year period in which the stock at the wide receiver position has been relegated to junk-bond status.
Indeed, just in the trade market alone, 17 starting-caliber wide receivers have changed addresses in trades. And that doesn't count the dozens of pass catchers who have relocated in free agency. For all the attention the wide receiver spot has commanded, part of it precipitated by the collective ego that suddenly seems a prerequisite to the position, it's almost as if wideouts have become disposable.
"I don't know if disposable is the word, but some teams feel like it's a Band-Aid position," Baltimore Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome said. "There does seem to be some of that mentality. I mean, there are more wide receivers on teams' draft boards every year than any other position. You look at the lists of free agents every year, and the wide receiver list is always a pretty long one. So there's a feeling like, 'Well, if I trade this guy, I'll be able to find another [wide receiver] to replace him.' I hadn't thought that much about it, but yeah, there have been a lot of trades the last couple years."
The trade market has slowed some this spring, but it definitely isn't closed for business, even though many of the deals over the past few years haven't produced the anticipated results.
Emerging young wideout Brandon Lloyd was dealt from San Francisco to Washington just after the offseason trade moratorium was lifted. Moulds appears headed to Houston (on a four-year contract worth about $14 million) for a middle-round draft pick. For a second straight year, Javon Walker of Green Bay has threatened to stay away from the Packers if he isn't traded. Donte' Stallworth of New Orleans and Charles Rogers of Detroit have been discussed in trade talks.
In many of the trades made since 2004, and some of the ones that will be consummated before the start of training camp, there have been mitigating circumstances, of course.
The relationship between McCardell and Tampa Bay officials in 2004 had become so toxic that a change had to be made. Owens had basically talked his way out of San Francisco. The Keyshawn-Galloway swap in '04, and to a lesser extent the Bryant-Quincy Morgan deal later that year were essentially trades of convenience involving a quartet of guys who desperately wanted to change addresses. Miami dealt for Boston and then, when he blew out his knee in training camp, was forced to acquire Booker. Randy Moss had become a distraction in Minnesota and Santana Moss a non-producer for the New York Jets. For all his promise, Lloyd was a player his 49ers teammates could not embrace.
"It is a position," said Vikings first-year coach Brad Childress, who often felt the wrath of Owens, "that seems to have a lot of high-strung guys, isn't it? There's some ego there. Guys want the football and they want it all the time, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it can spill over into something negative, and in some circumstances involving wide receivers, it has. It's a position with a lot of squeaky wheels."
There's no denying that some wide receivers have talked themselves off teams and forced trades. But at the same time, the sheer quantity of wide receiver trades in the last two years seems to signal this basic change in philosophy at the position: Even with the high-profile nature of the position, and its importance at a time when passing games are so prolific, wide receivers have become as easy to discard as cheap pens, plastic cigarette lighters and yesterday's newspaper.
Of the 64 wide receivers around the league who started the majority of the games for their respective teams in 2005, just 36 (56.3 percent) were playing with their original franchises. The wide receiver spot has become, in some ways, a carousel position. And that philosophy has been reinforced not only by trades but also in free agency and the domino effect inherent to the process.
Johnson is released by Dallas, which then signs Owens. Johnson moves on to Carolina, where the Panthers no longer have an interest now in re-signing Ricky Proehl.
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Said one NFC head coach: "It's becoming a plug-in position. You lose a guy, you plug another one in, and move on. You can always get somebody in free agency or the draft."
The uneven history and lackluster production of first-round receivers, at least during their rookie seasons, would suggest such a mind-set is a bit flawed. But teams keep selecting wide receivers in the first round, quickly move them into the lineup, and eventually find they aren't ready. That reality, however, doesn't seem to have affected the swap-fest involving older wide receivers. And that, at least in part, is due to the fact the position has diminished in importance for some franchises. And that has led to the unparalleled portability the NFL has witnessed the last two years.
Add to that the belief in many quarters that some offensive systems can enhance a wide receiver's overall productivity, that new players can come in and perform well enough, and the itinerancy at the position becomes even more understandable.
"When you do a list of positions that are most important -- quarterback, left [offensive tackle], cornerback, defensive end -- wide receiver doesn't rate as high, in comparison to some other positions," first-year New Orleans coach Sean Payton said. "That doesn't mean it isn't important, but relative to other positions … well, there's a reason you see so much turnover [at wide receiver]."
The Arizona Cardinals, emphasized coach Dennis Green, have two of the most talented young wideouts in the game in Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald, and both have long-term contracts. But Fitzgerald and Boldin each caught more than 100 passes in 2005 and both went over 1,000 yards. Yet the Cardinals still finished just 5-11, and went out and signed Indianapolis tailback Edgerrin James to be the new centerpiece of their offense.
"As great as they are, we don't want Larry or Anquan being Option 1 in our offense," Green said. "If they're more like Options 2A and 2B, that's better. The first option in any offense has to be the run. As great as some wide receivers might be, some teams just see them as replaceable."
Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com
