Sports Time Radio

So we’ve had a couple of trades this week that involve bigger name players in two different leagues. Let’s take a look and see how they breakdown.

Oddly this trade can’t be made official for six weeks according to NFL rules and I’m not even sure if the teams can discuss the deal. When the trade is finally official the Washington Redskins will have acquired Alex Smith from the Kansas City Chiefs for cornerback Kendall Fuller and a 2018 3rd round draft pick.

It appears as though this is a deal that should help both teams. By acquiring Smith the Redskins will no longer have to overpay Kurt Cousins and they’ll have a little stability at the quarterback position. As part of the deal the Redskins agreed to give Smith a four year extension. According to reports Smith’s deal is worth $94 million dollars with $71 million dollars being guaranteed.

Smith is coming off the best season of his career which saw him throw for 4042 yards with 26 touchdowns and just 5 interceptions. Smith had always been looked at as a checkdown type of quarterback, but last season he started to throw the football down the field and it helped him have that best season. Can Smith lead the Redskins to the playoffs like he did for the Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers before that?

Now Kansas City got a solid 3rd round pick, but what might be more important is that they picked up a starting cornerback in Fuller. The Chiefs have also freed up $17 million dollars in salary cap space as well.

Fuller is about to turn 23 years old and will be headed into his 3rd professional season. Fuller played in all 16 games for the Redskins last season, starting 6 of them. Fuller had 4 interceptions and 10 passes defended last season. The Chiefs should be able to plug Fuller in opposite of Marcus Peters at cornerback and be set coming into next season.

This deal will end Kirk Cousins 6 years with the Redskins. Cousins has played under the franchise tag the last two seasons as he and the team could never come to terms on a deal. Cousins enters free agency with quite a resume as he’s put up over 4000 yards the last three seasons as the Redskins starter. There should be plenty of teams looking to sign Cousins as their starting quarterback.

You’d have to think teams like the Denver Broncos, New York Jets and the Arizona Cardinals should be front and center looking to bring Cousins in. You also have to figure that a team like the Buffalo Bills might be interested and there is always the Cleveland Browns.

With Alex Smith headed to Washington the Chiefs will turn to Patrick Mahomes as their quarterback. The Chiefs traded up to get the 10th overall pick to take Mahomes. He made one start for Kansas City last season throwing for 284 yards with an interception in that start. There was some talk at the end of the season if the Chiefs should make the switch and start Mahomes. Now they’ll go into the 2018 season knowing that Mahomes will be their starter.

The other trade I mentioned earlier was in the NBA. That trade saw the Los Angeles Clippers send Blake Griffin along with Brice Johnson and Willie Reed to the Detroit Pistons for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Boban Marjanovic and two draft picks a 1st and 2nd round pick in next years draft.

Griffin was the #1 overall pick in the 2009 draft. Griffin was the 2010-11 Rookie of the Year, he also made the All-Rookie team that season. He’s been a 5-time All-Star and has been named All-NBA 4 times. For his career Griffin averages 21.6 points per game and 9.3 rebounds per game. The difficult thing for Griffin has been staying healthy. Griffin has played in 33 games this season, but is healthy and should make his Pistons debut tomorrow night against the Memphis Grizzlies.

In return for Griffin the Clippers got solid players in return. Harris is in his 7th NBA season and is averaging a career high in points at 18.1 per game this season. The Pistons had just acquired Bradley in the off season from the Boston Celtics. Bradley played in 40 games for Detroit and was averaging 15 points per game. Marjanovic is a 7″3 center who was playing just 9 minutes a game for Detroit. On the plus side he was averaging a career high 6.2 points per game, but you have to wonder how many  minutes there will be for him with the Clippers behind DeAndre Jordan.

There was talk that the Clippers made this deal to open up some salary cap room to try and sign LeBron James this coming off season. There was also some talk that this might not be the only deal the Clippers make. Jordan’s name has been brought up as a possible trade candidate as well as guard Lou Williams. If the Clippers do move both Jordan and Williams it would open up quite a bit of salary cap space not only for a run at James, but possible someone else he might be interested in playing with.

It seems pretty obvious that James will be playing in another uniform next season, but which uniform will it be? We’ve heard some talk about the Los Angeles Lakers, but the Clippers play in Los Angeles, as a matter of fact they play in the same building. Could they be an option for James? You have to wonder if will see other teams try to create some salary cap room to try and make a run at James this off season.

As you can tell there still isn’t much baseball news to report as we’re waiting for some type of major free agent signing. It’s getting closer and closer to pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training and all of the top pitchers are still on the market. You have to wonder which side is going to make that first move. Will a player actually take less money than he’s been asking for to get into camo or will a team finally panic and overpay to get a guy into camp? It could be an interesting couple of weeks.

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