Word this week out of Seattle is that the Seahawks are prepared to offer a first and third round pick to obtain quarterback Kevin Kolb from Philadelphia. This is the same Seahawks team that once traded a first rounder for Deion Branch and a third rounder for Charlie Whitehurst.
When the league resumes operations, the bidding war for Kolb is sure to also include quarterback-desperate Arizona (and possibly Cleveland or Miami).
The Buffalo Bills have remained absent from discussions about Kolb, and let's hope that it remains that way. I'm not the biggest supporter of Ryan Fitzpatrick, but the team just can't afford to take a huge gamble on a career backup that has only shown some flashes of being anything better than average.
In fact, the growing publicity around Kolb is eerily similar to a guy named Rob Johnson, who suckered the Bills just over a ten years ago. Originally a fourth round pick, Johnson sat the bench for two full seasons before one strong start in 1997 caught the eyes of teams around the league. Buffalo packaged a first and fourth round pick (along with a $25 million contract) for Johnson, who started a decade-long run of pathetic signal callers.
Similarly, coming out of college Kolb was considered by many to be only a mid-round prospect with sleeper potential. Despite his excellent production in the Houston Cougers spread offense, experts felt his numbers were system-inflated. Philadelphia believed he could be more, and snatched him up in the second round with the 36th pick in the 2007 draft.
For his first two seasons, Kolb played very sparingly behind Donovan McNabb, only coming off the bench and doing occasional mop-up duty.
The league first took notice of Kolb during Weeks 2 and 3 of the 2009 season. Replacing an injured McNabb, he threw for 718 yards, 4 touchdowns and 3 interceptions, while completing 65 percent of his passes. Amazingly, those two games were enough to prompt the Eagles into shipping McNabb out of town and naming Kolb the starter in 2010.
That status was very short-lived. Kolb was hurt during the Week 1 contest against Green Bay and eventually lost his job to Michael Vick. He's been a hot item on the trading block since the season ended.
As an NFL quarterback, Kolb has a quarterback rating of 73.2 in 7 starts, to go along with 11 touchdowns, 14 interceptions and a completion percentage of 60.8. His record as a starter is only 3-4. Those aren't exactly eye-popping statistics.
Now, I'm not saying that Kolb doesn't have the potential to be a good one. He really might be on the verge of finally breaking out - like some experts say. But after four seasons in the NFL, I haven't seen anything that makes him more attractive than the second-round pick the Eagles originally spent on him.
Like we often see from our rivals in New England, Philadelphia's front office has played this one excellently and it's about to pay off for them. Publicly, they have built up Kolb's value as a franchise quarterback, despite his limited on-field success.
Maybe the Bills can learn something. For now, I'll just be happy if they remain on the sidelines for the Kolb sweepstakes.
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