Quinn goes to Cleveland, but Dallas gets a 2nd and a 1st next year

I don't see this trade as being anything overly significant, Dallas gave up a #1 and recieved a #1 next year, along with a #2 this past draft, essentially all is equal other than an extra #2 pick, both teams were able to get thier guys, if Spencer turns out to be the real deal at DE then it's a great deal for Dallas, if he's a typical DE then it's an ok deal, I am not a big Quinn guy but if he turns out to be a top 5 to 7 QB then it's a great deal for the Browns.

Better the "Saints" than us

WALTER THOMAS TREADS TOWARD TURD TERRITORY

Much has been written over the past week or so about Walter Thomas, a 370-pound defensive tackle who can run the 40 in 4.9 seconds and do a backflip. (But not while running the 40 in 4.9 seasons.)

But much has also been ignored (or, more accurately, glossed over), especially in the post-Pacman era.

Thomas has a pending charge of conspiracy to commit robbery. In Mississippi, that's a felony. Per the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the indictment is still on file but no court date has been set.

The incident, which a league source tells us involved ski masks in the parking lot of a Sonic restaurant, got him kicked off of a junior college team for which he was playing because he had flunked out of Oklahoma State.

By the way, flunking out of Oklahoma State is pretty hard to do, given that Dexter Manley maintained academic eligibility there -- and couldn't read.

Then there's the apparent Walter Thomas MySpace page, which is troubling to the point of amusing. As a couple of readers have pointed out to us, one of the messages posted on the page reads as follows: "I heard you entered the draft. Is that right? Well its a good thing I got you to sign a whole bunch of sh-t so I can say 'yea, I used to get high with him and eat 5 cheeseburgers every wednesday!'"

So what the hell are the Saints thinking?

"It's a look-see," Saints coach Sean Payton told the T-P. "Normally, a player who's only played in two junior college football games would never come close to having an opportunity. To say he's got an uphill battle would be correct. Because of some of those characteristics, though, you take a look at him in a rookie camp and see where he's at."

As to the pending criminal charges, G.M. Mickey Loomis said: "We're aware of the incident and talked to a lot of people about it. What we understand is that it's going to get resolved. We're just going to give him a look and see for ourselves."

The message, then, is that character only counts when a team doesn't want a guy, and when the team is looking for a reason not to take him. If the team is intrigued, the team is more inclined to look the other way.

And that's the attitude that most teams seem to be applying. If the organization decides that they like the guy as a player, the team will talk its way around the character issues. If the organization decides that it doesn't like the guy as a player, then it's easy to point to the character issues as one of the reasons for taking a pass.

We predict that NFL franchises will continue to approach character issues in this manner until the Commish smacks one of them hard for harboring a guy whom they should have known had the potential to cause embarrassment to the team and the league by getting busted. Only then will teams attempt to make real assessments about whether a guy is going to be a problem, and not come up with lame-ass excuses like Sean Salisbury's explanation of safety Brandon Meriweather's history of head stomping and gun shooting. On Saturday, Salisbury called the Meriweather events "both one-time incidents."

Finally, the fact that the Saints signed Thomas while a felony charge was pending against him earns the franchise six points in the Turd Watch game.