When the Oakland Raiders traded a first-round pick for Richard Seymour back in September 2009, the Raider-hating national media dismissed the trade as one-season rental of a declining player who was reportedly unwilling to even join the team.
That one rental season is long over, and Seymour is still with the Raiders. He's still playing at a Pro Bowl level, or at least a Pro Bowl alternate level. And he's taunting the New England Patriots from afar for getting, in his humble view, taken to the cleaners by Al Davis in that 2009 trade.
"I think he whiffed the Patriots on that trade," Seymour told Comcast's Paul Gutierrez, shortly after the win over the Chiefs, in which Seymour had a critical fourth quarter tackle for a loss to snuff a late Chiefs drive.
The main criticism of the Seymour trade was that Seymour was in the final year of his contract, and the Raiders would have him only for the 2009 season.
It is now the 2010 season, and Seymour is still here on a one-year franchise tender. The 2011 season is up in the air with a potential labor-related work stoppage, so Richard Seymour's contract is a comparatively minor detail.
The other pervasive criticism of the Seymour trade was that the Raiders were surely so awful that it would be a top 10 pick, if not a top five.
But with the Raiders now in the playoff hunt, it is more likely that the Patriots will get a bottom-ten or bottom-five pick in return for Seymour.
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Or even lower, if the Raiders keep whiffing teams like they did the Broncos, Seahawks and Chiefs.
Joe Kukura is a freelance writer who won't know who got the best of the Richard Seymour trade until the computers are finished counting provisional ballots.
