Trade Rumor: Donovan McNabb to the Raiders?

On the surface it seems to make sense. The Oakland Raiders need a veteran quarterback to take over for the injured Jason Campbell and keep their hopes of a playoff run alive. The Vikings seem ready to begin the Christian Ponder era and might be looking to move Donovan McNabb on. Why shouldn’t the Raiders and Viking hook up in a trade?

It makes sense on the surface. However, outside of completely speculative blog reports like these, there’s seemingly nothing to this rumor whatsoever. The only solid report so far on the Raiders’ QB search involves Todd Bouman who is reportedly being brought in for a work out. There’s also a story floating around that the Raiders are interested in Carson Palmer who is currently in self-imposed exile from the Bengals. McNabb’s name hasn’t been mentioned by a single legitimate inside source as far as I know.

So as logical as the McNabb-to-Raiders idea might seem, don’t get your hopes up that a trade will actually come to pass. As of now we don’t even know if Leslie Frazier has made up his mind about the QB situation. For all we know McNabb could end up starting this weekend. And even if the Vikings did swing that trade, they would likely only receive a low draft pick in compensation.

The motivation for trading McNabb would not be to get back high value in return anyway, it would be to head off any possible unpleasantness a disgruntled McNabb might bring to the locker room after a benching. But maybe that’s selling McNabb short. Maybe McNabb is ready at this point in his career to put pride aside and take on the role of mentor.

Maybe.

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