Pissing Away Draft Picks

Yesterday the Buccaneers traded an undisclosed draft pick to the Jets for linebacker Jerry Mackey. This was apparently done to shore up the depth at the position after putting Antoine Cash and Sam Olajubutu on injured reserve.

Correct me if I'm wrong about this, but this is about the time of year when the team has to remove people from their roster, right? Mackey entered the league with Tampa Bay as an undrafted free agent, and the Bucs cut him on June 19. I assume they cut him because he was the worst linebacker on the team. Now, with Mackey again, the linebacker roster is back up to eight players. And they're not keeping eight. Some linebacker is getting cut in the next couple weeks, and my wild and crazy guess is it will be the guy who the Bucs didn't like in the first place and who also missed all of the team's training camp.

The Bucs don't have a seventh round pick in 2008 because they sent it to Denver in the Jake Plummer experiment. Now they presumably gave away a sixth rounder for a linebacker that they're going to cut inside of two weeks. For a guy like Luke McCown, a sixth rounder is fine. That's the kind of player you want to get for that pick. I just can't wrap my head around making this trade so late in the offseason.