"Winds from the East...mist coming in....like something is brewin'...bout to begin. Can't put my finger/on what lies in store...but I feel what's to happen...has all happened before..."
In what, at first, looked like one of the most shocking trades to happen mid-season in quite some time, the Hawks let Percy Harvin go to the Jets for what's known as a conditional 6th round pick.
On the surface, the trade was shocking because in football, mid-season trades feel rare. Football is a game of timing and relationships between players. A lot of time goes into determining, prior to the first snap of the regular season who is going to fit for exactly that reason. Once you think you've got the best people, I've noticed that the roster is really only messed around with when you have injuries or nothing else to lose, really.
The other thing that made it shocking is what they traded him FOR. We picked up Harvin for a 1st round pick, a 3rd round pick and a 7th round pick AND we paid him $20 million for him. That one little conditional pick we got for him might as well have been a sack of potatoes and a song.
As my Female Football Guru said to me "Something else has to be going on, here...they gave him away for too little. It feels like a slap in the face to him."
Somewhere in a Lions locker room, Golden Tate is smiling a knowing smile and giving Harvin the sympathetic nod of support...you know...from one guy who tried to be bigger than the system to another.
Tate didn't get traded from Seattle. And his departure wasn't as sudden...wasn't mid season....
But if you're paying attention to what Pete Carroll's cooking in the kitchen we call the VMac, I bet you've noticed a variation of this recipe before.
In the VMac controlled by Pete Caroll "The Play is the thing" to quote the Bard. What matters is the team...what happens on the field. And there is no room in the organization for someone who's going to put his stats above the good of the team. It's not that we don't have a place for Prima Donnas. We do. Sherman's mouth is legendary...a Stanford shaped opinion on everything. Wilson is a brand on all on his own and, at the other end of the spectrum, we have the mystic of Lynch. Each of them attention grabbers, even when they don't want to be.
There is room for Divas on the press junket and commercial sets, in blogs and on social platforms. But there is no room for them on the field. On the field, you buy in or you head out.
That's a hard decision to make, to be honest, when you're not in the spotlight. Especially if you feel like you have talent that could be better utilized and has a short shelf life. I'm not a football player but I have a job. I'm a competitive person...it doesn't take much of a stretch to be able to understand how I'd feel if I thought my opportunities were slipping by.
Which makes the Tate and Harvin departures nothing to be upset about, on the whole....in both cases. Carroll and his front office ended up getting rid of players who felt that their stats were more important than team harmony (both football stats and apparently, in Tate's case, bedroom ones as well...) while both of those players ended up going on to teams that are better suited to support an old fashioned Star Football Player mindset that Wide Receivers seem to have in spades.
Not everyone fits in every situation and not every goodbye is something to be sad about. I watched bandwagon 12s wring their hands over Harvin's departure and wonder what we'd ever do. And even with the loss, today, my mind is still set.
Caroll did the right thing in proving, again, that there is no I in team.
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