NFL World Reacts to Cardinals Trade for Hollywood Brown
It's been quite awhile since the Arizona Cardinals hadn't picked in the first round of the NFL draft.
All Cardinals Howard Balzer pointed out that 1995 was the last instance where Arizona didn't select a player in the first slew of picks. The Cardinals traded for then-Jets receiver Rob Moore.
History tends to repeat itself, and Thursday night again saw the Cardinals forego their top selection in the NFL draft in a trade that welcomed Baltimore Ravens receiver Marquise Brown and a third-round pick to Arizona.
The move was quite surprising on both fronts, as the deal was virtually kept a secret until it was announced during the draft.
"He is a guy that makes sense for a number of reasons," general manager Steve Keim told reporters. "Two years of control costs, getting a dynamic receiver who's played inside, outside, obviously the chemistry with our quarterback and a guy who can be a dynamic vertical threat, which is something we were looking for."
Festivities kicked off with Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, who wasn't exactly thrilled to see his favorite receiver depart.
Brown's new quarterback (and former college teammate at Oklahoma) Kyler Murray was a tad happier to receive the news.
Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury appeared on the Pat McAfee Show shortly following the trade and gave his initial reaction.
"It's been in the works a little while," said Kingsbury. "We kind of knew there'd be a run on those wideouts. We really liked some of those guys early, but six went in the top 18 and so we wanted to be prepared to get a weapon. It just worked out perfectly for us."
Kingsbury admitted keeping the trade under wraps was q challenge, as only four people knew about the trade while it was being worked on.
He said, "It wasn't easy. It's one of those deals where you really want to protect because Baltimore is still drafting at 14 and you didn't want to give anybody a strategic advantage to know that maybe they were going after wideouts. So we just made everybody guarantee that they would keep it under lock and key. There's only about four people that knew and we were able to pull it off."
Brown is already in Arizona, as he was greeted by fans at the Cardinals' draft party Thursday night shortly after the trade was announced.
Brown himself had some interesting words about the deal.
Cardinals fans all appeared to enjoy the pick.
On the outside, however, the national front did not.
There's plenty of time for the Cardinals to reverse the ruling in the court of public opinion.
Yet, as of now, critics are quite loud on the trade that sent Hollywood across the country. We'll see what's in the script for Arizona this season.
