And Now Holmgren Is An Open Book?

This is without a first in all of my years covering the NFL Draft, but Cleveland Browns team president Mike Holmgren is sharing with ESPN the details of a blockbuster draftday trade he is trying to get done: http://espn.go.com/blog/afcnorth/post/_/id/12212/holmgren-plans-one-last-push-for-bradford

Never before have I seen or heard of a front office person, much less the top dog in charge of making the final decision, come out of the war room and literally minutes later admit that he is trying to trade all of his team's picks in this year's draft and some picks in 2011 to the St. Louis Rams in exchange for the No. 1 overall pick so they can take Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford.

In the same breath Holmgren said the Rams shouldn't do it because they need a quarterback badly, but that's a very tempting offer. The last time a team was willing to give up that many picks for one player was in 1999 when the New Orleans Saints under Mike Ditka traded away all of their picks and two in the 2000 draft to the Washington Redskins for Ricky Williams.

If you are the Rams, how do you turn down that offer? It'll be interesting to see if Holmgren indeed does make that phone call or if this was yet another smoke screen.

AK