THE TIMING of Monday's trade of Byron Maxwell was remarkably fortuitous if you happened to be a sports writer who already had spent much of his day searching for an anecdote to lead into a column about the fool's gold that is NFL free agency.
(Clears throat).
And so it was that the Byron Maxwell era was relegated to the same historical waste bucket as virtually every cornerback era since Sheldon Brown, Lito Sheppard and, arguably, Asante Samuel. Nnamdi Asomugha to Cary Williams to Maxwell. That's what money buys these days at premium positions on the free-agent market.