Just because you can spell GM...
December 04, 2004
Sit down. I have to tell you something, something important. And this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me. I didn't want to tell you all this but I have no choice, you've given me no option. It's time for an intervention: You are not a real GM.
I’m sorry to have to tell you like this. It's truly painful. But it is significantly less painful than having to read another single trade offer from you.
You're just a fantasy general manager. The reason you are only a fantasy general manager and not a real one is that you are just a/an (insert actual occupation here). And heck, you are good at your real job. You're great. But just because you can program a database or process a request for a new driver's license, doesn't mean you're the Theo Epstein of the NFL. In fact, if the question was "What do Theo Epstein, Butch Davis and you all have in common? The answer would be, "None of you are NFL GM's." I'm sorry.
Three of my leagues just had their trade deadline pass and without anyone telling me, they apparently renamed the trade deadline Vulture Time, or more appropriately, Ignorant Vulture O’Clock. I received an enormous pile of the most pathetically lopsided Here's-hoping-you’re-a-moron trade offers in the last forty-seven years.
What's more impressive is the way these guys tried to justify these offers. In one league, I was offered Brandon Lloyd and Jonathan Wells for Terrell Owens. Yup, I was offered a rookie and a backup for Donovan McNabb's personal touchdown machine. There was no note attached, no email sent telling me why I should consider this. I guess there was no note because the trade's benefits to me were supposed to be obvious. Maybe our league has a cash reward for the person on the stupid end of the worst trade of the year. Maybe I had a lobotomy scheduled for next week and he thought it had already happened.
But no, no note.
So I respond by clicking the "reject" button and drop him a little note saying, This offer is so bad, I don’t even know how to counter-offer.
Now I get an email: "Well, what would you want for Owens? I didn’t expect you to take that one as it was, I was just trying to get talks started."
Apparently his idea was that by offering me a ridiculous trade, I would be so smitten by the opportunity to trade Owens away I would get right on the wire and start figuring out a way to make this one work. I mean, come on, if you want to get talks started, add a note saying so. Don't ask me to pretend that you weren't hoping I'd just fallen and hit my head after I call you out on the trade. Start with that, start with, "What would it take to get Owens?"
And what's with the two-for-one? Am I supposed to say, "Hey, I get two guys. I can use Jonathan Wells to bench that pathetic Edgerrin James that’s been dragging down my running backs"?
I also got an equally bad three-for-two offer on Thursday where I would have the privilege of giving him Randy Moss. (I got four offers for Moss this week. Four! Not one of them worth seeing.) This is in this enormous league of 16 teams that uses a gazillion running backs and receivers--that will help to explain the quality of the other players involved. And this guy's been trying to lowball me all season. In this case, it's partly my fault because I am actually sitting dead last. (Hey, it happens, Travis Henry was a bust, McNair was a bust. I'm not making excuses but...well, yeah, I am making excuses.)
His offer was Joe Horn, Eddie George and Anthony Thomas for Randy Moss and Amos Zereoue. If we break it down, I get a good receiver, the third stringer in Dallas, and the grumpy backup in Chicago and I only have to give up Randy Moss just as he's getting back to playing full games and the guy who is starting (albeit sharing carries) in Oakland.
I have to assume that somehow the extra guy is supposed to make the offer attractive. It's not just that I downgrade at receiver and running back, I also get the privilege of adding the unnecessary baggage of Eddie George by dropping another person on my roster.
I sent him an email asking who he thought I should drop. I know it was mean of me. But sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
Sarcasm doesn't travel electronically so the poor guy actually responded. I was hoping he'd tell me Tiki Barber, that would have been perfect. But instead he said, "That’s up to you, whoever you think you can spare."
I started feeling kind of guilty about making fun of him even though it was all to myself. Then I realized that it probably wouldn't be all to myself, I'd probably write about it and make fun of him right here.
I felt better.
I responded on Friday, which was the final bell marking the end of Vulture O'Clock, telling him that I just couldn't figure out who to drop and so I'm pulling the plug on it. He must've really had his hopes up because he wrote back.
"I was counting on that and passed up another offer on Joe Horn, man, you screwed my playoffs."
I haven't responded yet. I thought I could tell him the truth--it was a really stupid offer and I had been playing him with my email. Or I could continue the ruse, telling him if he'd just offered me the injured Tyrone Wheatley instead of Eddie George I could have done it.
I couldn’t decide.
So I want to dedicate this article to him. This is his intervention.
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I'd love to hear some suggestions on what my email to this guy should be. What’s the worst trade deadline offer you had to deal with? What’d you say?
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