BYE-BYE #10

OK so I wake up this morning to my wife telling me that Holmes has been traded to the Jets.  There are 2 things wrong with that statement....

1. The Steelers traded Holmes to the Jets...NO FRIGGIN WAY...they must have gotten a arm and both legs from New York for that!!
2. I really hate when my wife knows sports related news before me....DARN iPHONE!!

So I immediately start looking for news on the topic to try and discover when the Brinks truck will be arriving at Heinz field to deliver our vast fortune of players and draft picks that we must have gotten from the Jets.  Hang on ESPN must be mistaken...a fifth round pick?  NFL.com must have gotten the same typo as they are reporting only a fifth round pick as well.  I finally determined that this must be true only after hearing about it on NFL radio (channel 124 SIRIUS) and 93.7 The FAN.  I just can't believe it to be true....A FIFTH ROUND PICK FOR A PLAYER WITH THE FOLLOWING CREDENTIALS.....

1. SuperBowl champion
2. SuperBowl MVP
3. Over 1200 receiving yards last year
4. 15.9 Yards per catch
The list goes on but I will stop there!!

I decide to make extra stops on my drive to work this morning to get a feel of what other normal..non-sports folks think about the situation and here are my findings:

PEOPLE ARE STUPID!!!!

You all know how much I like to make lists so here is one of the explanations from normal folk:

• He was traded to take the heat off of Ben
• He was over-rated and needed to leave
• Being the scapegoat for all of the Steelers wrong doings
• The Rooney just don't like WR's (Please see the Cedric Benson / James Harrison domestic dispute issues where James was kept on and Ced was released)
• He is black and the Steelers are raciest.

Now that I have had some time to recover from the initial shock of the trade, there was good reason for the Steelers to cut ties.  First of all he is in the last year of his contract which will put him in the Randel El category at the end of the season.  The Steelers would love to keep him but he will command a lot of cash on the open market.  Second, Holmes will be suspended for the first 4 games of the season due to a violation of the leagues substance abuse policy. Finally, the guy just has proven convicted issues (so keep your Big Ben comments to yourself).  The Rooney's simply do not put up with these types of players unless you are a 100 Million dollar player under a 6 year contract with 2 SuperBowl rings.

I still have big issues with only getting a fifth round pick for Holmes.  Understand this...if the Steelers kept Holmes for this year and then  lost them after the season to free-agency they would have gotten a HIGHER DRAFT CHOICE for losing him.

As of this moment they got a bad deal for this guy.  It could be that no other team really were ready to take on a troubled guy like Holmes and all we could get was a late round 5th.

Right now, I am going to have to hold final judgment on this move until after the draft.  If this pick is somehow leveraged to move up and get a quality player it may have been worth it.

On a side note, the message came down to Tomlin at the end of last year that the Steelers were going back to a run first mentality.  I guess ownership wasn't kidding!!!