Braylon Edwards to Giants: The Great Browns Bailout Continues

It seems that at least one American business has figured out how to unburden itself of its troubled assets.  

According to Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports, the Cleveland Browns are set to trade Braylon Edwards to the New York Giants before the NFL Draft in return for second and fifth round picks and a receiver.  

Though the teams have, as of yet, been unable to agree on whether that receiver will be Steve Smith (whom the Browns have consistently asked for) or Domenik Hixon (whom the Giants have offered), sources say that the deal is likely to go through.  

On behalf of all the Clevelanders who have invested their fanaticism in the Browns only to watch the team's competitive stock plummet under Phil Savage's regime, allow me to extend a heartfelt thank you to the Giants and the Buccaneers.  

Not only have you taken two difficult-to-value commodities off the books, you have injected the team with some much-needed capital in the form of high draft picks. You're like hedge funds that don't hedge. The executives at A.I.G. would love you.

Now this is not to say that the Edwards trade is necessarily a bad one from the Giants' perspective; it just carries a lot of risk.

As everyone who follows football knows, Braylon Edwards, at his best, can be a show-stopper: He's big, he's strong, he's fast, he's singularly bright by wide receiver standards, and he's very tough. On paper, he should put up Terrell Owens stats every year.

Unfortunately, the only statistical category in which Edwards can match Owens year-to-year is number of dropped passes. The Giants obviously think that they can cure this, and in fact, that might be true.  

Fellow Michigan alum and former Brown Derrick Alexander had great success in his rookie season in 1994 and followed it up with a sophomore effort in which he couldn't have caught a soft-tossed tube sock with Velcro-covered gloves.  

Alexander went on to log two 1,000-yard, nine-touchdown seasons for Baltimore in 1996 and 1997 and a 1,391-yard, 10-touchdown effort for Kansas City in 2000. There is therefore precedent that Braylon's case of the "dropsies" can be fixed if only by a change in scenery.

I think Edwards' drops are merely symptomatic of a more difficult to fix mental and emotional fragility, though.

If you watch him, Edwards is a rhythm type of receiver. If he catches a touchdown in the first series of the game, he puffs up like Popeye after a spinach binge: He'll fight safeties for more yards, mow down cornerbacks on the edge to create big gains in the running game, and possibly end up with 170 yards and three touchdowns for the game.  

However, if he drops a key third-down toss in that first series, his body language changes: His shoulders slump, he looks at his feet, and he plays the rest of the game like he's running wind sprints uphill while carrying Shaun Rogers in a papoose. He'll drop three more passes, make no effort to block, stop reading the coverages, and run incorrect or imprecise routes.

If you don't believe me, watch the lazy routes and blown reads he made when Derek Anderson briefly returned to the starting lineup for the injured and ineffective Brady Quinn against the Texans. He faced a little adversity and simply stopped playing. This is a proclivity that no amount of practice and repetition can fix.

Ultimately, if the Giants simply wanted a replacement for Plaxico Burress, I think they got an upgrade, if for no other reason than Edwards will not go out at night strapped like he's ready for the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  

However, if the Giants are so convinced that Edwards is going to be a superstar that they are willing to throw Steve Smith into this trade, then they are likely pulling off the football equivalent of buying a $50/share stock option for Bank of America stock. They'll never recoup.

Regardless, assuming this trade happens, the Browns will have sold high on the New York Football Giants Exchange. Here's hoping that they reinvest it wisely.