It’s a shame that NFL teams can’t loan players out to other teams.
In soccer, clubs loan players to other clubs all the time, usually because those players are young prospects on the end of the bench that need some experience. So big club A and small club B have a chat, and small club B gets to put said prospect in their starting lineup for a set period of time. Villarreal loaned Jozy Altidore out to Hull City for this season. (Of course, why Phil Brown isn’t playing the young man remains a mystery to me.)
We need this policy in the NFL, and the first deal should be for the Pittsburgh Steelers to loan Limas Sweed to the New York Jets.
Why? Because apparently, the New York Jets actually teach their receivers how to catch the ball.
Seriously, you saw Braylon Edwards out there in Miami last night, right? It took him all of one game to go from being Ol’ Iron Hands in Cleveland to making one clutch catch after another in a Jets uniform. That performance must have had every Browns player thinking to himself, “Damn, who can I punch to get the hell out of this town?”
So how did Braylon Edwards suddenly become clutch? Was he suddenly free of staph? Does Mark Sanchez put some special mojo on the ball that Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson don’t? I doubt it. Clearly, Edwards got coached up in a few days in New York, and that might have been better coaching than he had gotten in several years in Cleveland.
What a shame that the Steelers can’t loan Limas Sweed out to the Jets to figure this out. Clearly, Ben Roethlisberger throws a decent ball. He’s neck-in-neck with Peyton Manning for the league lead in completion percentage. There must be some reason why can’t Sweed catch his passes. He wouldn’t have been a 2nd-round draft pick if he couldn’t catch, right?
Maybe this will be the purpose of the UFL in the long run. Maybe the Steelers will be able to loan Sweed out to the California Redwoods one day and let Dennis Green coach him up. Until then, though, we have to settle for watching the Jets work miracles, while we hope Hines Ward and Santonio Holmes don’t pick up an injuries — because, y’know, they can catch a football. That’s why the Steelers pay them.
