oakland ups ante for howard
 

aaahhhhhhh, but with trades we don\'t take the hit at all, do we? who can we get or how much do we have to give to say bye bye to brooks?

oakland ups ante for howard
 

Actually, in a trade there is still a cap hit for the value of the signing bonus (though there is some special rule that I don\'t quite understand). However, you are correct in your assessment that we would deal away his contract amount (that would help us about 3-4 mil, which would allow us to sign our rookies).

However, if this falls under the \"we will find away to accomodate Howard\'s contract\", I think it is misguided. We\'re not going to be trading Brooks so we can keep Howard. Unless it is a pretty damn good trade for us, I don\'t see trading our starting QB so we can keep a 3rd DE - you think people are laughing at us now?

If you can come up with a trade where we get a starting QB of roughly equal value (in terms of quality on the field) and whose contract is only 1-2.5 mil (and whom we\'re not going to give a signing bonus), then a trade is perfectly acceptable to me. Otherwise, I don\'t think that trading Brooks is an option with respect to keeping Howard.

oakland ups ante for howard
 

If you trade a player, you still take the hit for their bonus, just like cutting them. If they have no bonus, as in the case of Howard, no worries. That\'s also why there is a timeline for a player agreeing to a deal for a new team, and being traded as we were trying to do with Dallas. We could have signed him to the deal for Dallas, and traded him within 24 hours without the bonus hit. But that deadline has passed. so any team that trades for him now has to hope he lives up to signing a long term deal, or he is their 7.8 mil headache. Not as simple as we\'d like to say just trade so and so. But getting something in return usually makes it more attractive.

oakland ups ante for howard
 

who said anything about getting rid of brooks to keep howard? (just get rid of him) now, had howard not signed the franchise agreement, we would have been entitled to two first round picks by a team that wanted him or compensation agreed on by both teams, is that correct?

oakland ups ante for howard
 

We are still entitled to compensation agreed upon by both teams, regardless to if Howard has signed or not. John Abraham has not signed with the Jets for his franchise offer and they are still shopping him. No player in the NFL outside of Peyton Manning would bring two firsts in a trade, but any compensation for trading Howard still has to be agreed upon by us. That\'s why we haven\'t traded him yet.

oakland ups ante for howard
 

My bad ssmitty.

I thought you were making proposals that might help our cap space to make plausible your claim that we could \"make keeping Howard\" possible.

I don\'t see much value in discussing trading Brooks for several reasons:
1. It\'s been hashed out a dozen times already.
2. It won\'t happen with Haz and Loomis in charge (at least not this year)
3. Given Brooks signing bonus, moving him will merely create a cap monstrosity.

oakland ups ante for howard
 

you may have come up with the solution jk...........
trade brooks back to g.b. for jt...........smitty

oakland ups ante for howard
 

:hallucine:

oakland ups ante for howard
 

Keep in mind that some \"pundits\" are questioning whether that \"sure-thing strong playmaker\" is even a first round talent....after realizing that the one game he played against NFL-size and -caliber blocking (Michigan), he tallyed 1 1/2 tackles for the game.

oakland ups ante for howard
 

that is so very true and another reason that I think we wil move up--to make ourselves look smarter but instead we look dumber.