Yes, it is the point.
No, it really isn't. Trading for trading sake is stupidity. Its in-de-finsable.
Whether Rick came out on the short end of the deal for Feeley or Gordon isn't set in stone at all. He did what he could in a situation that had failure written all over it and instead of finding used up talent and trading draft picks for that, he found young talent with possible upside.
We were 4-12 last year in case you missed that. Yeah, the jury is still out on Feeley a little bit but its pretty much a given that RS gave up too much for both he and Gordon. Who was RS bidding against for Feeley? Was a #2 really necessary to land a third stringer? Or a #3 pick for a third string running back. Face it, he spit the bit as a GM, did a horrible job.
No matter how you want to argue what you think the point may be, the real point is that there were very few options in a year when he needed all the options he could get because he only had ONE shot to get it right.
We didn't have ANY shot after Flaky Williams took off. NONE. I'm not saying you tank the season but mortgaging the future for marginal and unproven players isn't going to save the season or help in the long run either. What RS did was short sighted and selfish.
It was either go after young talent that could hopefully develop into semi-replacements for those lost draft picks and hope the HC could use them and nurture them properly or sit back and watch everything crumble, have a couple cups of coffee and log on to monster.com daily.
He could either try and salvage his job in an impossible situation or he could have just given up.
What would you do?
I would have held out for better deals or better players. He choked.