The last thing Trent Richardson had to be expecting on Wednesday was that he was no longer going to be a part of the Cleveland Browns future plans. Richardson was the third overall pick in the draft just a season ago and he was just two games into his sophomore season with the team. It had to be even more difficult to take when he learned of his trade to the Indianapolis Colts - not from the Browns, Colts or his agent - but from turning on the radio.
According to Mark Schwab of CBS-19 and 92.3 The Fan in Cleveland, Richardson said a friend called him asking if he’d been traded. He told his friend to “shut up” and hung up the phone, but when he turned on his radio he learned that he had, in fact, been dealt to the Colts.
Information moves fast in this day and age but it seems a little callous for Richardson to have to find out about the trade in such a fashion. Colts owner Jim Irsay had been going crazy on Twitter over the acquisition for nearly an hour before the team announced the trade. It seems as though someone from the Browns could have relayed the team’s plans on to Richardson before the deal became public.
It would have come as a shock to Richardson either way that the team that had selected him just one year ago was already moving on but it still would have been better to hear the news from someone representing the teams involved in the deal first than from the radio.