"Twelve years ago, Dorsey Levens went down in the second game of the Green Bay Packers' season with ankle-leg damage that closely resembled the injury another No. 25, Ryan Grant, suffered last Sunday in Philadelphia.

The team's brain trust at the time, Ron Wolf and Mike Holmgren, tried giving the ball to Raymont Harris. Having seen enough of the former Bear for two weeks, they traded a fourth-round draft choice to the Buffalo Bills for third-stringer Darick Holmes, and he helped them reach the playoffs.

In a delicious bit of irony, the Packers probably now would like to deal a pick in the same round to the same team for the same commodity: a good back mired behind two other good backs.

This is where the comparison stops. This Bills administration doesn't seem the least bit interested in trading Marshawn Lynch.

Sources say the Bills have heard from the Packers several times dating to before the draft, most recently about two weeks ago. But on each occasion the Bills have closed the door on the Packers' exploratory efforts, long before anything substantive might have taken place.

Through his assistants, Bills general manager Buddy Nix has informed the Packers he's keeping Lynch. The Packers can't even get to first base.

The trading deadline isn't until Oct. 19. Certainly, the dynamics could change by then.

Yet, given the track record of running backs, it's more than likely that one or both of the backs ahead of Lynch, C.J. Spiller and Fred Jackson, will have some kind of injury and Lynch will be playing more than the seven snaps he did on opening day.

Those who insist that Ted Thompson is afraid to trade for Lynch have misinterpreted the situation.

The Packers have always liked Lynch, one of the top players on their draft board in 2007. They know how much Grant will be missed. They can't be sure how their offense will function with Brandon Jackson as lead back.

But for now, at least, they're not going to trade a pick in the first three rounds for a player with substantial talent and also substantial risk.

In 1998, the Bills had first-round pick Antowain Smith, Thurman Thomas and Holmes, a five-year veteran. When the Packers called, the deal was completed quickly.

"You do what you've got to do," Reggie McKenzie, then the Packers' director of pro personnel, said at the time. "You don't do anything crazy, but we felt we could live with it, so we did it."

Holmes did his job in Green Bay, buying the organization time before Levens came back to take over in mid-December. That was the final year of Holmes' contract, and in April Wolf let him walk to Indianapolis as an unrestricted free agent.

In another parallel, A.J. Smith, then the top assistant to general manager John Butler, negotiated the Holmes trade for the Bills. Since 2003, Smith has been GM in San Diego, where none other than Nix was his top lieutenant for five years before going back to Buffalo.