Though team president Joe Banner carefully avoided ruling out a trade for Boldin in a conversation with reporters last Sunday, the trade for Buffalo left offensive tackle Jason Peters last week took away the Eagles' other first-round pick, 28th overall. That gave them less flexibility to address draft needs while also bidding for Boldin. Could you get Boldin for a package that wouldn't include a first-round pick? It's starting to look that way, with Cardinals general manager Rod Graves saying there have been no offers yet. So, maybe there is hope there.

The Eagles were praised across the league for nabbing Peters, a 27-year-old Pro Bowl player at a position football people consider absolutely crucial to success. Local reaction was also positive, but there were dissenting voices. Here is an excerpt from the Rob Q. Ink blog:

"The Eagles are like the stodgy parents that never give the kids what they want. 'No, you can't have the shiny toy, we're going to put the money towards college.' Problem is, it just doesn't work in the NFL . . . and the Eagles' Super Bowl trophies total proves it.

"This team needs to go get a stud receiver, and, once again, they're not going to do it. It's just their typical, we-know-better-than-everybody-else mentality at work. It really does seem like they go out of their way not to make the popular move."

If you polled NFL GMs, you might not find any who would consider a dominant receiver more necessary to winning the Super Bowl than a top-notch left offensive tackle, who guards the quarterback's blind side. But to some Eagles fans, who see the world in shades of midnight green, the math is simple. Their 1 full year with T.O., the Eagles went to the Super Bowl. Four years since then, no Super Bowl.

This might seem like a very odd equation to a fan in, say, New England or Pittsburgh, but those fans didn't have to sit through the crushing misery of the NFC Championship loss to the Carolina Panthers on Jan. 18, 2004, the day Ricky Manning Jr. terrorized Todd Pinkston, and the receiving corps became the focus of Eagles Nation, maybe forever.

So, other than the outside shot at Boldin, what hope can we offer the traumatized masses?

It's not inconceivable the Eagles could target a wideout 21st overall on Saturday. They have shown interest in Maryland's Darrius Heyward-Bey and North Carolina's Hakeem Nicks. Both guys boast size and strength; Heyward-Bey is said to be more of a speedster, Nicks might have better hands. Good chance either or both is there at 21.

Eagles GM Tom Heckert said last week he would not rule out taking a wideout in the first round. (Of course, he probably wouldn't rule out taking a punter, either - these guys don't exactly like to hint about what they might do.)

Heckert said he sees three or four wideouts going in the first round, with the group stronger than last year's "up top."

Again, though, what Jackson did last year was extraordinary. Just drafting a wideout in the first round is no guarantee of anything. Peter King wrote this week on SI.com that teams such as the Eagles (and the Giants) would be smarter to trade for proven talents such as Boldin and the Browns' Braylon Edwards than to gamble on getting immediate wideout help from the draft. King writes that 48 wide receivers have been among the top 40 players selected since 2000. (That group would not include Jackson, drafted 49th last year. It would, alas, include Freddie Mitchell, 25th overall in 2001, and Pinkston, 36th the previous year.) King counts five surefire, immediate standouts among those 48.

Adding an impact tight end would not play to the public as well as a wideout, but tight ends catch passes, as well, especially in the red zone, an Eagles bugaboo the past two seasons. Some observers feel first-round tight end is a more likely route for the Eagles, in the wake of L.J. Smith's departure. The guy slated to start at tight end, Brent Celek, isn't one of those people - Celek did a mock draft for The Sporting News, and like many pundits, he had the Eagles getting Georgia running back Knowshon Moreno at 21. Celek also noted: "We don't need a tight end."

Before the trade deadline last season, the Birds were involved in trade talks with Kansas City over tight end Tony Gonzalez, a 12-year veteran who nonetheless caught 96 passes in 2008. SI.com's Don Banks posited yesterday that Gonzalez is again on the block and that the Eagles might be leading contenders to acquire him, for a third-round pick.

If that doesn't happen, the Birds are expected to draft a tight end, probably somewhere in the first three rounds. Oklahoma State's Brandon Pettigrew is the only prospect widely considered a true first-rounder, and the only real proven blocking and catching tight end available. The other top prospects all will probably be available when the Eagles pick in the second round, 53rd overall. That group includes Florida's Cornelius Ingram, South Carolina's Jared Cook, North Carolina's Richard Quinn and Missouri's Chase Coffman. Quinn is the only one in the bunch who has shown he can block.

"It's a very interesting group," Heckert said. "Now in college football, with all the spread stuff, there's a couple guys that are going to go fairly early that you never see on the line of scrimmage, ever. When you talk to some of the [college] coaches, they tell you that they only get these guys for 17 hours a week and they don't have enough time to teach 'em all the stuff in an offense, so they go to a spread offense where they only have a limited amount of plays . . . you're seeing a lot of big receivers [at tight end], is what you're looking at. You don't see 'em block . . . you're just guessing on that part of it. But there are a lot of skilled athletes at tight end in this draft."

Of course, he isn't a wideout or a tight end, but Knowshon Moreno caught 53 passes over the past two seasons. Just sayin'. *