Trades Ten Years Later - Terrelle Pryor (QB) from Oakland to Seattle
A football career that (thankfully) will never be replicated.
The Names: Seattle Seahawks receive: Terrelle Pryor. Oakland Raiders receive: 2014 7th round pick (#247, Jonathan Dowling).
The Team Context: In our post from one month ago about the Raiders’ acquisition of Matt Schaub, we laid out the dire circumstances that had defined their quarterback position over the last decade. Since that point, they had made a trade for Matt Schaub, who was firmly penciled in as their starting QB for Week 1 2014, so things had improved on that front.
Things could not feel more different in Seattle, which had won the first Super Bowl championship in franchise history a couple of months beforehand. In the least competitive Super Bowl of my lifetime, the Seahawks and their oppressive “Legion of Boom” defense obliterated Peyton Manning’s Denver Broncos by a score of 43-8. Their quarterback, Russell Wilson, looked like a brilliant 3rd round draft pick after following his Rookie of the Year campaign with a Super Bowl championship. He was still only 26 and on a rookie contract – certainly not the kind of guy Seattle would be looking to replace.
The Player Context: And yet, here the Seahawks were, trading for a guy who had opened the 2013 season as starting quarterback for the Raiders. What gives? We certainly won’t find any answers to what made Terrelle Pryor desirable by looking at his 2013 performance, so let’s step back to a time that’s going to feel like it was 50 years ago.
Pryor’s athletic renown began when he excelled in football and basketball at Jeannette High School, roughly 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Within the town of Jeannette, it actually happened much sooner. When Pryor was going into fifth grade, “some prominent businessmen recognized that he had enormous talent, but lacked money, support and a father figure.” The city linked Pryor with local glass factory owner Teddy Sarniak (a more common job than you’d expect in Jeannette, which once boasted seven glass factories). Pryor grew from 5’10” to 6’3” in eighth grade and suddenly he was famous outside of southwestern Pennsylvania. He was almost immediately identified as one of the top football (and basketball) recruits in the Class of 2008 and was even named “Junior of the Year” by Rivals in 2007.
Pryor chose to attend (the) Ohio State University at a pivotal point in the school’s history. In each of the 2006 and 2007 seasons, the Buckeyes had followed strong regular seasons with lopsided losses in the National Championship game. Pryor showed up to be the savior and, in his own words, “a lot of stuff came out as cocky and arrogant.” In the words of Tyler Moeller, an Ohio State teammate who had come around to have “the utmost respect” for Pryor, “when he first got here I don’t think too many people liked him. He was kind of a punk.” And in the words of Alex Boone, an Ohio State teammate who evidently never came around, “I could not stand any minute with him. The kid was so arrogant at the time. I mean, I hated everything about him.”
Despite these misgivings from his teammates, Pryor was generally effective from the launch of his college career, going 8-1 as a starter and winning Big Ten Freshman of the Year. In his sophomore year, Pryor improved as a passer as he led Ohio State to a Big Ten championship and a victory in the 2010 Rose Bowl over Oregon. For reasons that are absolutely insane to write about in 2024, that was technically Terrelle Pryor’s last college victory.
On the field, Pryor led the Buckeyes to another great season in 2010. A loss to Penn State meant they couldn’t play for a conference championship or participate in the Rose Bowl, but they were still selected as an at-large participant for the Sugar Bowl with an 11-1 record. But before the game could begin, scandal unfolded in Columbus. An NCAA investigation revealed that Pryor and five teammates would be suspended for the unforgivable crimes of “selling items and accepting improper benefits” and “receiving discounted services.” In factual terms, each player was accused of offering their autographs in exchange for discounts on tattoos from a Columbus tattoo parlor. Additionally, most players were found to have sold Ohio State memorabilia – in Pryor’s case, his punishment included a mandatory repayment of $2,500 for selling his 2008 Big Ten Championship ring, 2009 Fiesta Bowl sportsmanship award, and his 2008 Gold Pants (evidently an Ohio State tradition I’m not going to bother understanding).
This doesn’t make any sense in today’s climate of college sports, so we’ll need to take several steps back to conjure some rationality. Eons ago, college sports were designed as amateur athletic competitions between institutions of higher learning. As the sports became more important than the learning for pretty much everybody involved, more guidelines cropped up to ensure that the “amateurism” in these athletic competitions was protected. After all, college sports were meant to be played by students rather than professionals. Once this line was drawn in the sandcastle, the number of slippery slopes that could collapse the structure showed up as quickly as they could be found by wealthy college football fans. College athletes couldn’t even work jobs – what would stop a booster from paying players exorbitant salaries for jobs they didn’t actually perform?
Ironically, this barely even seems like an instance where a booster wanted to disguise paying a player. Pryor practically got ripped off on the memorabilia (his ring had sold for 5 figures as of 2013) and, in his words on Twitter after the suspension was announced, “I paid for my tattoos. Go Bucks.” While the tattoos proved to be the more salacious and enduring aspect of the story, Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith cited the cash as the “bigger violation” while also pointing out that the decisions were made “with the right intent, to help their families.” With this in mind, it seems particularly brutal that the NCAA required the punished players to pay back an amount equivalent to the funds they had received from selling their memorabilia. How exactly were they allowed to make that money?
It’s unfortunate timing for the NCAA that the Sugar Bowl selection had taken place before Ohio State would have to suspend all these players. But don’t worry! Kevin Lennon, the NCAA’s vice president of academic and membership affairs, decided that the suspended players would be allowed to play in the Sugar Bowl after all. The primary justification given was an NCAA policy that allowed suspensions to be withheld for bowl games “if it was reasonable at the time the student-athletes were not aware they were committing violations.” According to Gene Smith, the university just hadn’t been very clear in telling players “you are not allowed to sell your items” until November 2009, after the violations had been committed. I’m a couple hundred words into discussing this while trying to maintain some attempt at neutrality and this is what broke me; the justification for suspending these guys for the 2011 regular season but not the Sugar Bowl is so unbelievably stupid that I’m not sure how society let it happen. The Associated Press noted that “there are seven full-time staffers and two interns in Ohio State’s compliance department,” who Smith identified as “complicit in the violations because they didn’t make it ‘explicit’ to players that they weren’t permitted to receive such benefits.” That would be valid if the facts could conceivably have been true, but what else would the seven full-time staffers have been doing?
In a bizarre Sugar Bowl featuring the walking dead, the Buckeyes defeated the Arkansas Razorbacks 31-26 to claim the school’s first bowl victory over an SEC opponent. A few months later, Ohio State coach Jim Tressel had resigned under duress and Ohio State vacated all 12 of its wins from the 2010 season, leaving them once again without a victory against the SEC in bowl games. With Tressel gone, Pryor opted to leave Ohio State and ultimately ended up declaring for the supplemental draft (after some delay induced by the fact that he made his declaration during 2011’s NFL lockout).
If you’re not familiar with “declaring for the supplemental draft,” it’s probably because Pryor is still the 6th-most recent person to have done it and he did so 13 years ago. The supplemental draft is designed for players whose college eligibility has been impacted after the deadline to declare for the spring NFL draft, typically due to academics or (like Pryor) some sort of NCAA discipline. To use fantasy parlance, the supplemental draft is more similar to an auction draft than the spring draft’s straight format. If a team wants to select a player in the supplemental draft pool, they submit a bid to the Commissioner of what round pick they’d be willing to use on the player. The winning team gets the player and surrenders a pick from that round in the next NFL draft.
For the player, the supplemental draft is both less and more attention. On one hand, you’re missing out on the NFL Draft Hype Cycle, where subsets of the media spend February through April overanalyzing any relevant college prospect. Millions of people watch the NFL Draft each year, but the supplemental draft isn’t really something you “watch.” But on the other hand, the spotlight centers more firmly on you – Pryor was the only player in the supplemental draft pool in 2011, so the whole event is really just to decide what team you’ll be on. There are almost no events in the NFL calendar that focus on one specific guy, so at least you have that.
But on the other other hand, you’re in the supplemental draft because you’ve been kicked out of school, so your pro day workouts are less glamorous than they could be. Terrelle Pryor worked out for 17 NFL teams that made the trip to Hempfield, Pennsylvania to watch him run around on turf that scouts viewed as softer than NFL standards. Soft turf notwithstanding, Pryor put up a 40-yard-dash time of 4.31 that would surely enable scouts to look past the middling throwing performance. In particular, one team was identified: the Oakland Raiders, who had an “all-consuming obsession” for speed under owner Al Davis. The Raiders would be hamstrung in the supplemental draft format, since they were already missing their 2nd and 4th round picks in 2012. The Raiders would certainly want to take a flier on Pryor, but would the 5th round pick be enough to get ahead of the 16 other NFL teams that attended his Pro Day?
The team wasn’t going to risk it – the Raiders selected Pryor in the 3rd round of the supplemental draft. Al Davis died a few weeks later; Pryor was the last draft pick he made for the Raiders.
There’s another wrinkle that I’ve sacrificed some chronology to save until now for dramatic effect – due to his tattoo discount and $2,500 in memorabilia sales in 2008 while he was a student at Ohio State, Pryor was only allowed to enter the supplemental draft under the condition that he would be suspended for the first five games of his rookie season. Five games! NFL commissioner Roger Goodell justified the suspension by saying “this smacks of a calculated effort to manipulate our eligibility rules in a way that undermines the integrity of, and public confidence in, those rules.” The language got loftier and more nonsensical as Goodell continued: “In my judgment, allowing players to secure their own ineligibility for college play in order to avoid previously determined disciplinary consequences for admitted conduct reflects poorly not on college football – which acted to discipline the transgressor – but on the NFL, by making it into a sanctuary where a player cannot only avoid the consequences of his conduct, but be paid for doing so.” I reiterate that the “conduct” that the NFL prevented Terrelle Pryor from fleeing the consequences of was “accepting a discount” and “selling his own possessions.”
It’s actually pretty easy to put a 5-game suspension from the NFL in context because there has only been one other 5-game suspension in NFL history. Albert Haynesworth received a 5-game suspension for an in-game incident where he knocked off the helmet of Cowboys center Andre Gurode and then kicked and stomped Gurode’s face, ultimately necessitating 30 stitches and leading to questions about whether a civil suit or criminal charges would be appropriate. This is the only event that the NFL has deemed equivalent to Pryor’s white collar NCAA violations. A close relative can be seen in Ben Roethlisberger’s 2010 suspension that stemmed from nightclub sexual assault allegations made against him by a 20-year-old – that suspension was originally for six games, but reduced to four after Roethlisberger appealed. Pryor’s appeal, by contrast, was not successful.
I promise I’m about to move on, but let’s bring things home with a story about the 2024 College Football Playoff and how all four teams involved have highly-compensated players through new and highly permissive name image and likeness compensation schemes. The publicly-advertised, entry-level salary to be a University of Texas offensive lineman is $50,000 per year. Terrelle Pryor was suspended for the first five games of his NFL career because he traded autographs for discounts on tattoos and sold his own memorabilia for $2,500.
Don’t let my screed fool you – it would be difficult for this suspension to have mattered less. In his first game post-suspension (home against the Chiefs), the Raiders didn’t hesitate to put the ball in Pryor’s hands. On their third offensive play of the game, they were facing 3rd and 1 from Kansas City’s 43. Pryor lined up at wide receiver, went in motion to the quarterback position, and then attempted a quarterback sneak. Or, rather, he attempted to attempt a quarterback sneak – Pryor was called for a false start and taken off the field for the ensuing 3rd and 6. That was the last play he was involved in that week and he didn’t play in another game for the rest of the season, then he didn’t play for the first 14 weeks of the 2012 season. If Roger Goodell had suspended Terrelle Pryor for the first 30 games of his NFL career instead of the already-egregious 5, he would’ve saved the Raiders five yards.
In Week 15 of 2012 (also at home against the Chiefs), Pryor finally got back onto the field for three snaps and attempted his first NFL pass. He played three more snaps in Week 16 against the Panthers but they were substantially more exciting, featuring a 22-yard reception from Carson Palmer in the 1st quarter (Pryor’s first NFL reception), a 2-yard rush in the 2nd quarter (Pryor’s first NFL rush), and a 5-yard pass to Marcel Reese in the 4th quarter (Pryor’s first NFL completion). He started his first game in relief of an injured Palmer in Week 17 and didn’t play great, but did manage to throw for two touchdowns and rush for another in a narrow defeat to the Chargers.
Pryor had momentum going into 2013 as the likely starting quarterback. He was even allowed to switch back to his preferred #2 from #7 – when Pryor was drafted, coach Hue Jackson had forbidden him from wearing the number most recently associated with notorious draft bust JaMarcus Russell. Pryor started for the Raiders in the first three games that season and picked up his first win as starting quarterback (over the 2013 Jaguars, barely counts), but left the third game and was forced to miss Week 4 after suffering a concussion. Pryor was sharp in a Week 5 return against the Chargers (which would ultimately be the best game of his quarterbacking career), but his performance after that was up and down. A fitting example comes from Week 8’s victory over the Steelers, where Pryor led off the game with a 93-yard touchdown rush that simultaneously set the records for longest touchdown in Raiders history and longest rushing touchdown by any quarterback in NFL history. After putting up 93 yards on the first offensive play and getting the ball back with 13:32 left in the 1st quarter and a 7-0 lead, Pryor managed just 88 passing yards and 13 rushing yards over the remainder of the game. After he suffered an MCL sprain in Week 10, Pryor returned as a backup to Matt McGloin, who was really not good enough to be starting either. Presumably out of desperation, Pryor was tossed back in to make one final start in a Week 17 loss to the same Denver Broncos that would be blown out in the Super Bowl a few weeks later.
Terrelle Pryor’s tryout at starter had not gone well – the team finished 4-12, he hadn’t stayed healthy, and he wasn’t all that great while healthy anyways, throwing for 7 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. There was still potential from the athletic pride of Jeannette, but in three years on the roster Pryor had done very little to demonstrate he could be a serviceable NFL quarterback. One can’t blame the Raiders for seeking an upgrade – they did so when they brought in Matt Schaub, which finally takes us back to where we started.
The Trade: But one can’t blame Pryor for subsequently requesting a trade out of Oakland, as he did on March 24. In fact, the request was reported to originate well in advance of Schaub’s arrival, as being benched for Matt McGloin was sufficient to indicate to Pryor that he didn’t have a starting future in Oakland. But three weeks after the trade request was made public, there was still no trade and Oakland set an effective deadline at the start of their offseason program on April 22. If the Raiders weren’t able to get some kind of compensation for him by then, they’d plan to release him.
They were able to get “some kind” of compensation, even if the 7th round pick from the defending Super Bowl champion is the worst compensation you can possibly trade for. Nobody was all that sure what the Seahawks were going to do with Terrelle Pryor, but everyone was concerned about how the game of Madden would be broken with Pryor’s speed on the already talented Seahawks.
Shortly after the trade, an interesting report came out that the Seahawks currently viewed Pryor only as a QB. Although there was some idle speculation as to whether the former basketball star could succeed as a receiver or tight end, this report was uncontroversial – in the words of Reddit user jwishbone, “excuse the probably dumb question, but how else would the[y] view him.”
The Results: The Raiders selected Jonathan Dowling out of Western Kentucky University with the 247th pick of the 2014 NFL Draft. He got into 7 games for the Raiders and recorded four tackles. According to an uncited claim on his Wikipedia page, the Raiders released him on August 29, 2015 “for reasons that had to do with ‘maturity’ rather than his field play.”
That’s not exactly a great career, but (a) it’s not bad for the 247th pick and (b) it’s better than what Pryor gave the Seahawks. Pryor got into preseason games but was essentially in competition with Tarvaris Jackson for the backup QB spot behind Russ Wilson. Jackson had already beaten Brady Quinn in competition for the spot the previous year and similarly dispatched Pryor, who was cut from the Seahawks on August 29, 2014.
The Raiders won this trade by a full year.
The Aftermath: We can get Jonathan Dowling out of the way quickly, as he had no further NFL game action after leaving Oakland. He spent time on the practice squads of Miami and Buffalo through the 2016 season and then joined the Toronto Argonauts in 2018. Across two seasons in Toronto, Dowling had 28 tackles while playing defense for the Argonauts (I am using my imagination as to what “DT” stands for, so correct me if I’m wrong).
Pryor failed to catch on with a team during the 2014 season and was signed and released from the Kansas City and Cincinnati rosters during the following offseason (the Bengals cut was in June, so all of this took place well in advance of any game action). Perhaps realizing that nobody was going to ask him to play quarterback for their team, Pryor officially switched to wide receiver after his release from the Bengals despite saying a few weeks earlier that “if I can’t play quarterback, I can’t play football.” Pryor as a receiver was much more attractive than Pryor as a quarterback, and the Browns put in a waiver claim to add him to their roster ahead of the 2015 season. He only caught one pass that year on eight targets as he transitioned to the position, but broke out in 2016 when he had 77 catches for 1,007 yards on a 1-15 Browns team. He was the team’s WR1 and it’s not remotely close, with Corey Coleman’s 413 yards good for second among receivers. Pryor even got to play a bit of quarterback as one of the six(!) Browns to complete a pass in 2016 (along with Cody Kessler, Josh McCown, Robert Griffin III, Kevin Hogan, and Charlie Whitehurst).
Pryor’s success in Cleveland led to an $8 million contract with Washington for the 2017 season, but things went downhill from there. Pryor was limited with an ankle injury starting from Week 2 and ultimately required season-ending surgery, resulting in just 20 receptions for Washington. The injury problems never really went away as he closed out his career with stints on the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills in 2018, then tried to catch on to the Jacksonville Jaguars roster for the 2019 season. Pryor was placed on injured reserve just before the season began and waived thereafter.
Pryor’s post-NFL career has had some tumult, but this post is already too long, so I will spare you the details and instead offer the text of a tweet from Robert Littal of BSO that probably downplays Pryor’s culpability in the situation: “Ex-NFL WR Terrelle Pryor flatlined twice after Shalaya Briston stabbed him in the chest. He took her back, got her charges reduced & she served no jail time. Now he is going to jail for throwing pumpkins at her for not wanting to leave club.”
Miscellaneous: A guy very confidently calling Mel Kiper Jr. “blatantly wrong” for a (correct) mock draft where the Texans end up one pick away from drafting Teddy Bridgewater. Tarvaris Jackson’s contract with the Seahawks expired on March 11, 2016, and then on May 11, 2016 there’s a separate note that he was “not asked to re-sign.” Pryor sold a house in Penn Township for $412,500 earlier this year after buying it for $330,000 in December 2020. During Pryor’s breakout year, he was crushed in the media by former teammate Brian Hartline, which sounds way different in 2024 when Hartline is an elite college recruiter than in 2016 when Hartline’s Cleveland roster spot had been given to Pryor.