There’s a kinda-sorta report from PFW that the Giants and the Saints might have already worked out a deal that would send tight end Jeremy Shockey to New Orleans.

The Giants would receive the Saints’ second-round pick (No. 40 overall) and other draft picks.

So why would the move be kept under wraps?  Because the Giants don’t want to stand in the shoes of the Saints at No. 40 until the Saints are on the clock.  If the deal would be done now, then the teams at No. 41 and beyond would be able to consider their options for trading up, in order to get in front of the Giants and pluck a guy whom the Giants might be targeting.

Generally speaking, the best approach to draft-pick trades is to do the deal when one of the teams is on the clock.  Indeed, it would have been ideal for the Vikings and the Chiefs to finalize the Jared Allen trade while the Vikings were on the clock with the No. 17 selection in round one.

Unfortunately for the Chiefs, however, there’s too much that needs to happen when a franchise player is traded to a new team.  The player needs to sign his tender, then he gets traded and signs a long-term contract (or vice-versa).  It’s simply too hard to make all that happen in ten minutes.

In all other cases, however, it’s far wiser to do the deal so that the team acquiring a pick from another team gets that pick at a time when that pick is the next pick to be, um, picked.