MizzouHawkGal":2hgr8wpc said:
You could have that deal stunk of one brother doing another brother a solid. Basically if it were Wall Street it was the very definition of an inside trade.
This conspiracy theory about the Boldin trade has always struck me as pretty odd.
At the time everyone and their moms knew that the Ravens were on the verge of cutting him. That was the offseason they dumped money onto Cutler and cut all of their vets.
They asked Boldin to take a paycut and in the media he said that there's no way he'd take one.
The Vikings and 49ers both offered a 7th rounder for him, so the 9ers then offered a 6th, at which point the Vikings dropped out.
People forget that at the time he was a 31 year old WR with a 7.5 million dollar cap figure who had basically disappointed on his contract in his whole time in Baltimore (he never had over 65 receptions or a thousand yard year). Still a good player, but one who was thought to be way on the downside of his career, was being overpaid, and was about to be cut.
From the Baltimore Sun after it went down:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/rave ... story.html
When the Ravens traded Boldin in March, it followed a contract dispute where negotiations went nowhere on the Super Bowl champions' attempt to convince him to take a $2 million pay cut off of his $6 million base salary to lower his $7.531 million salary-cap figure. Following an impressive postseason, Boldin understandably saw no reason why he should accept a dollar less than $6 million.
And the Ravens were dealing with an extremely tight salary-cap situation that prompted them to address Boldin's contract.
Rather than cut him, which they were on the verge of doing days before the trade, the Ravens unloaded him to the 49ers for a sixth-round draft pick over a competing offer of a seventh-round pick from the Minnesota Vikings.
As a result of the trade, the Ravens picked up $6 million in salary-cap space that granted them the financial resources to obtain reinforcements for their defense, including outside linebacker Elvis Dumervil, defensive tackle Chris Canty, free safety Michael Huff, who struggled against Denver, and middle linebacker Daryl Smith.
At the time of the trade, the Ravens' thinking was that wide receiver Torrey Smith would emerge as the go-to outside receiver and that tight end Dennis Pitta would slide into Boldin's chain-moving role.
