Give It A Rest

My goodness, these media-driven NFL draft rumors are getting tiresome. Rarely did a day pass during the 2015 offseason without some mention of an all-but-certain Adrian Peterson trade. What happened with that? Peterson stayed in Minnesota and led the NFL in rushing. For the past couple of weeks a day hasn't passed without some mention of an all-but-certain Colin Kaepernick trade. It's ridiculous. Robert Griffin III starting offseason workouts with the Cleveland Browns is more interesting. Reggie Nelson finally finding a new home in Oakland is more interesting. A 7th-round mock draft is more interesting. Trade rumors are only interesting if they are rumors for only a day or two and then lead to something actually happening. Forcing a potential trade into the headlines for weeks is ridiculous. I may lose my mind if I have to hear Rich Eisen say to another guest on his show "I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about the situation with Colin Kaepernick." Asking a guest about the weather is more interesting than asking about a potential trade that's kept alive by the media. It sure would be nice if every NFL trade transpired like the one last year that landed tight end Jimmy Graham in Seattle and center Max Unger in New Orleans. It surprised everyone. No nauseating media debate. No notice. Just a trade out of the blue. One of the best trades ever. Too often we have to beat these possible trades to death. Nearly as often these possible trades end up being nothing. Like the all-but-certain Peterson trade last year. It's mind-numbing.

The rumor receptacle website Pro Football Talk on Saturday ran the following headline:

Report: 49ers, Broncos have Kaepernick trade parameters in place

A few hours later they followed with this:

Source: 49ers, Broncos do not have Kaepernick trade parameters in place

Why even bother?

When you have this sort of idiocy running wild what's the point of reporting anything until there's actually something to report. Social media and the never-ending news cycle has turned sports reporting into a crazy race to break stories. As a result the media has become more interested in creating stories than reporting them. It's better to be first than to be accurate.

The Minnesota Vikings completed a trade with the Kansas City Chiefs for defensive end Jared Allen in 2008. That was only eight years ago but a lot has changed in those eight years. Social media wasn't the wildfire that it is now. The trade went down about a week before the draft. Rumors started rumbling a day or two before the trade was completed. The Vikings and Chiefs had been working on this deal off and on since the early days of that offseason. It started with probing talks at the usual meeting spots of the college all-star games and the Scouting Combine. Would such talks stay secret these days? It doesn't seem so as nothing ever stays a secret for long in the NFL. The league probably no longer allows secrecy because everything about the NFL, no matter how ridiculous or repetitive, is clickbait. When that Allen trade finally hit the news it was a surprise. It was a really great surprise. Well, for Vikings fans it was great. The Chiefs ended up turning the draft picks that they received from the Vikings into Jamaal Charles and Branden Albert. So Chiefs fans were eventually pretty happy about the trade as well. But, the best thing about this trade was that we weren't beaten over the head with it for months.

One of the parameters that may or may not be in place for a trade of Colin Kaepernick to the Denver Broncos involves the quarterback taking a pay cut of $4.9 million. The fact that everyone has an opinion on whether Kaepernick should take this pay cut is a major reason for this story being a daily story while there really is no story. Former quarterbacks Warren Moon and Ron Jaworski have chimed in with their opinion that Kaepernick should bottle his pride and accept the pay cut. The funny thing about former players saying that a current player should take a pay cut is that they are usually the ones saying that players should get as much as they can while they can. The only opinion that really matters concerning the pay cut is that of Kaepernick himself. His base salary for 2016 is $11.9 million. That isn't much money for a starting NFL quarterback these days. The Broncos were planning on giving Brock Osweiler a lot more than that and it still wasn't enough to sign him. The Houston Texans offered more and the Broncos were forced to go bargain shopping. $11.9 millions for Kaepernick is that bargain but the Broncos want him at an even greater bargain of $7 million. They went low on Osweiler and lost and now want to go much lower on Kaepernick. That's it. That's the story. Or non-story. It's going nowhere and it's dominated the daily football news cycle for weeks. Asking anyone with a connection to the NFL what Kaepernick should do it doesn't make it more interesting. Hopefully this bad dream doesn't approach the multi-month Peterson nightmare that poisoned the 2015 offseason.