A Big Deal

As the regular season winds down, a quiet in-season trading block has suddenly resulted in a blockbuster deal. The Dirty Birds, walking into a first round bye at 10-3, was looking for a premier quarterback to lead their playoff charge. With depth everywhere else, GM Jon decided to offer some of his high quality bench players in order to get an upgrade over Ben Roethlisberger and Matt Ryan. He started by offering every owner with a QB higher ranked than Ryan the following deal: Dwayne Bowe, Matt Ryan, BenJarvus Green-Ellis.

As the trade offers went out, Jon's division competitor, Mike of the Inglorious Basterds jumped on the offer. With a slightly sketchy third WR and second RB situation, the trade made sense for Mike as he needed to shore up a bit of depth before heading off into the post-season. Even though he'll be sad to part with Michael Vick in the deal, insiders report that the entire Basterds organization was excited for this influx of talent.

The two GMs have done business before, with a draft day trade of picks that resulted in Andre Johnson and Roddy White for Adrian Peterson and Greg Jennings. Intriguingly, that trade netted almost the exact same number of points for each team, with Johnson and White combining for 406 points while Peterson and Jennings combined for 398 points. That's about as dead even of a trade as you could have asked for.

Vick has been twenty two points better than Ryan this season (193 to 171), and is the fifth overall QB compared to Ryan at eighth. However, Vick has had fewer games to accomplish his totals and is undoubtedly more explosive. His recent weeks of 25-49-19-23-28 points dwarf Ryan's 13-24-20-11-12 over the same span.

The key to this deal was clearly WR Dwayne Bowe, who has been a revelation this season, and the number two receiver and the fourth overall including QB/RB/WRs. Before his curious donut last weekend, Bowe had been in double digits for seven straight weeks, with 43-28-48 points in WK10-12. And the last component of the deal, RB BenJarvus Green-Ellis, has proved to be starter quality also, as he's been at 15-16-17-20 points the past four weeks and was clearly sucking up space on Jon's bench. Now he'll be free to play next to Adrian Peterson on Mike's team.

The Birds have had 158-147-156 points in recent weeks but the Basterds hit their season high of 150 points during their last regular season game, and have had five 100+ games in a row. The two behemoths are set for a playoff showdown, and the winner of this trade won't be determined until we see how they perform during a Birds versus Basterds matchup.

• For the season, the Birds have three of the top four players in Peyton Hillis, Roddy White, and Dwayne Bowe.