There it is, spelled out above. Safety Taylor Mays was traded to the Cincinnati Bengals in the same way a dude trades you three Snickers bar for one. Geoff Hobson of the Cincinnati Bengals team website Bengals.com snuck this into their latest news release.
That means the Bengals can now keep 10 in the secondary. Could it shake down with five corners (Trent, Jennings, Clements, Leon Hall and
Jonathan Wade ) and five safeties (Chris Crocker ,Reggie Nelson ,Gibril Wilson ,Robert Sands ,Taylor Mays )?They exchanged a seventh-round pick in 2013 with the 49ers for Mays last week. Jennings becomes the fourth Bengals first-rounder in the secondary, joining Hall, Clements and Nelson.
Oh boy. If the Mays disaster didn't look bad before, it really does now. Mays was once considered a promising athlete with the typical NFL speed to play at safety. But apparently he lacked other qualities, and now he got sent away for a distant draft pick in a distant round that the Niners might never even use.
New 49ers defensive coordinator Vic Fangio was never a big fan of Mays, but his voicing displeasure over his performance probably lowered his trade value a thousand times over. Perhaps next time, the 49ers would be best served keeping quiet about their players before they decide to shop them on the market. If you're going to throw someone under the bus, better make sure he's still not on the bus. Because that's a Schrodinger's Cat-type scenario there, and you can never be sure if you actually traded him or if you didn't.
Anyway, the 49ers have a seventh round draft pick in 2013. That could be really useful for trading for other seventh round draft picks.
For more on the 49ers and the Mays trade, discuss it at Niners Nation.