Grade The Trade: Draft Pick Edition!

The details of the Hefty-Melvin draft pick trade have been cemented. Let's take a look and see who got the better of the deal in hindsight.

HEFTY GETS: The #11 pick (Roddy White) and the #59 pick (Brandon Marshall).

MELVIN GETS: The #22 pick (Phillip Rivers) and the #46 pick (Jeremy Maclin).

Roddy White does his best Owen Hart impression for the pre-game introductions.

This is obviously a strange trade to grade because we didn't actually trade those players for each other. But I think we can honestly say the trade was beneficial to both teams. Had I stayed put with my picks, the best available receiver duo I could have taken with my 2nd and 4th picks would have been Vincent Jackson and of course, Jeremy Maclin. It's probably a close enough call with those two duos from a talent perspective that I can just say I "like" my guys better and feel okay about the trade. Maclin's health worries me longterm, I'm not sure how a guy who drops 20 pounds in the offseason can be anywhere near football shape at this point. One added benefit is that picking up an extra first rounder made me much more comfortable with the gamble of taking Vick at #3.

I'll take absolutely any excuse to run this picture on this blog.

From Melvin's perspective, trading out of the first round seems to have worked out for him just fine. He picked up the free-falling Chris Johnson and Phillip Rivers in the second. You could make the argument that those two second round players are better than my haul in the first round (Vick and White), and I can't say you'd definitely be wrong. As I mentioned before, Maclin scares me, but picking up an extra 4th rounder meant that Melvin could grab him as a WR3, which is awfully low risk for a guy who finished 13th in WR scoring last year.

FINAL GRADE: I would definitely make this trade again if I had a re-do, but I think it ended up boosting Melvin's overall roster slightly more. To have Phillip Rivers, Chris Johnson, and 3 WRs by the end of the 4th round is a hell of a luxury. Advantage: MELVIN.