2024 NFL trades: Why did Pickett, Ridder, Howell, Allen change teams?

NFL teams are suddenly and unexpectedly open for trading business. Across the legal tampering period and into the first few days of the new league year, phone lines have been lighting up for a sudden and stunning outburst of trades. There are still hundreds of free agents left unsigned, but for a brief moment, we need to take a step back and look at the impact of what has gone down on the trade market.

Let's break down the big trades of the past 48 hours and what does and doesn't make sense for each side. What's fun about these deals are the variety of styles in which they were made. One team moving up in the draft in a pick-for-pick swap? Sure. A veteran dumped for cap reasons? Absolutely. A "second draft" opportunity for a team that appears to be undergoing an identity crisis? You got it. A player-for-player trade? In 2024, it's all happening. What a time to be a football fan.

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Let's start with the most recent of these deals, in which the Steelers admitted failure on yet another first-round pick and sent their former quarterback of the future packing:

Jump to a trade:
Allen to CHI | Howell to SEA
Pickett to PHI | Ridder to ARI
MIN trades up in the draft with HOU

Steelers trade Kenny Pickett to the Eagles

Pittsburgh Steelers get: Pick No. 98 and a seventh-rounder in 2025
Philadelphia Eagles get: QB Kenny Pickett and pick No. 120

Using the Chase Stuart draft value chart, this rates out as the equivalent of the Steelers landing a pick in the middle of the sixth round. The more traditional Jimmy Johnson chart sees it like a late fourth-round selection. While teams use the latter chart to talk trade, most organizations have moved onto evaluating players using an evidence-based board like Stuart's.

This is hardly what the Steelers planned when they drafted Pickett in the first round of the 2022 draft. He was picked one selection before Chiefs star cornerback Trent McDuffie and three selections before standout Cowboys lineman Tyler Smith, both positions of need for the Steelers. It wasn't a great draft for quarterbacks -- we're going to discuss three different passers from that class who were traded over the past few days -- but Pickett was the player Pittsburgh highlighted as being worth a first-rounder.

It's an ignominious end to Pickett's time in Pittsburgh and an admission that he's probably not an NFL-caliber quarterback. If you go back through the passers taken since the league moved to the slotted draft system in 2011, the list of players who failed to make it to a third season with the team that drafted them isn't pretty. Pickett joins Brandon Weeden, Johnny Manziel, Paxton Lynch, Josh Rosen, Dwayne Haskins and Trey Lance as two-and-done with their original franchises.

Barring a few preseason passes that had Steelers fans excited for Pickett's future, it's hard to argue with the decision. He has gone 14-10 as a starter by virtue of protecting the football, but he has been a low-ceiling starter, averaging just 6.3 yards per attempt. His 46.5 QBR ranks 23rd in the league over the past two seasons; the only players below him who were their team's primary starter both years were Baker Mayfield, Zach Wilson and Russell Wilson, who now seems to have a clear path to Pittsburgh's starting role. (Update: On Saturday night, Pittsburgh sent a Day 3 conditional pick in next year's draft to the Bears for Justin Fields.)

It doesn't appear the ending came on great terms. Our Adam Schefter reported that Pickett preferred to move on after the Steelers signed Wilson to a one-year deal, while Gerry Dulac of The Pittsburgh Post noted that the organization felt Pickett wasn't handling the Wilson move well and refused to dress as the emergency third quarterback in the Week 17 game with the Seahawks. Pickett had undergone ankle surgery earlier in the season and given way to Mitch Trubisky and then Mason Rudolph, but he appeared to be healthy by the end of December and told reporters before the Seahawks game he was healthy enough to play. Apparently, he felt he had lost his job while being injured. He looks to have been correct.

What this means for the Steelers, unfortunately, is they've now failed to hit on another first-round pick, something which once seemed like a formality for the league's best drafting-and-developing organization. Going back to 2016, they have just one first-round pick who has justified picking up a fifth-year option, a very big hit in star edge rusher T.J. Watt. The year before Watt saw them choose cornerback Artie Burns, who lost his starting job in the middle of his third season.

After Watt, things have gone downhill. The 2018 pick was safety Terrell Edmunds, who wasn't able to cover at an NFL level. In 2019, the Steelers traded up for linebacker Devin Bush, who wasn't playing on third downs as a rookie before tearing his ACL in Year 2. Two years later, they used a first-rounder on running back Najee Harris, who has averaged 3.9 yards per carry as a pro and is likely the second-best back on the team behind undrafted 25-year-old Jaylen Warren.

Pickett was the 2022 selection, and it's still too early to judge 2023 first-rounder Broderick Jones, who started the final 10 games of the season and the playoff loss to the Bills at right tackle. Burns, Edmunds and Bush all had their fifth-year options declined, and Harris should follow, even though it's a relatively modest figure at just under $7 million. Those are missing core pieces for a competitive team.

You might have noticed that I skipped 2020, which was the first-round pick the Steelers traded to the Dolphins in exchange for safety Minkah Fitzpatrick. It's hard to argue against that deal, given that Fitzpatrick has been an All-Pro-caliber player at his best since moving to free safety on a full-time basis with Pittsburgh. Landing a young player who might challenge to be a Hall of Famer one day is always going to be a good trade.

The arguments against the deal at the time, though, also ring true today: That 2020 draft might have been the best opportunity for the Steelers to land their quarterback of the future, given that they were likely to land their highest first-round pick after Ben Roethlisberger got injured. And while Pittsburgh wouldn't have been in position to get Joe Burrow or Justin Herbert, Jordan Love was drafted with the No. 26 pick, eight picks after where Pittsburgh's selection eventually landed. The Steelers thought they had solved that problem by drafting Pickett, but now, they're starting over.

It's true the Steelers have found talent after Round 1: Edge rusher Alex Highsmith, wide receiver George Pickens and cornerback Joey Porter Jr. have emerged as standouts at their respective positions. In the big picture, though, they have come to rely more on talent acquired from outside the organization, either via trades or free agency. OverTheCap's Jason Fitzgerald noted on Twitter before last season that just 50% of the players on the Pittsburgh roster were homegrown talents, one of the lowest rates for any organization.

This was once a team that mostly eschewed free agency; go back a decade ago to 2014 and look at Pittsburgh's depth chart and you'll see almost exclusively players who were drafted (or acquired as undrafted free agents) by the organization and developed into standouts. A decade ago, 16 of the 18 players who lined up for at least 50% of Pittsburgh's snaps were homegrown players. That number dropped to 11 of 18 last season.

It will likely fall further in 2024 with Pickett and Diontae Johnson both leaving town. The Steelers moved on from their veteran wideout earlier this week, sending him to the Panthers in a swap of late-round picks to land cornerback Donte Jackson. It was a bizarre decision, given that the Panthers were reportedly about to cut Jackson and that Johnson presumably has some more significant trade value on his own. Johnson came under scrutiny for failing to dive and recover a fumble against the Bengals during the season, and his receiving yardage has dropped from 1,161 yards in 2021 to 717 in 2023, but some of the blame for those issues might fall on the quarterback play.

It's not all doom and gloom for the Steelers, who managed to ride a 9-2 record in games decided by seven points or fewer into a playoff spot, but it's hard to argue they are an organization heading in the right direction. They've cleared out some of the people who could be blamed for the issues I've written about here. Long-time general manager Kevin Colbert retired after the 2022 draft. They fired offensive coordinator Matt Canada. There's no question Mike Tomlin is a great coach, but if they do finally regress toward the mean in 2024, this roster and what has been done over the last six years is going to be cast in a harsh light.

From the Eagles perspective, this is a relatively low-risk gamble for a team that previously didn't have a backup quarterback. Pickett is owed just $4.6 million over the next two seasons combined, a modest cost even by backup quarterback standards. He isn't exactly a fit in the quarterback run game that the Eagles use with Jalen Hurts as their starter, but with Philadelphia making atypical investments at running back (Saquon Barkley) and linebacker (Devin White) in recent days, this trade is a reminder that general manager Howie Roseman is still going to hunt for value as he fills out the roster.

Vikings trade up to land another first-round pick

Minnesota Vikings get: Pick Nos. 23 and 232
Houston Texans get: Pick Nos. 42 and 188 and a 2025 second-round selection

It's fun to see a plan come together in real time. The Vikings, who just lost Kirk Cousins in free agency, certainly seem to be hatching a move up the draft board for a quarterback after they struck a deal with the Texans. General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has typically traded down and amassed extra draft capital in his deals since he got the job in 2022, but Friday's deal has the Vikings going the other way, perhaps in a move for J.J. McCarthy (Michigan), the No. 4 quarterback in what is considered a great draft class.

To move up from No. 42 to No. 23 and land a second first-round pick -- they also own No. 11 -- the Vikings moved down one round on Day 3 and sent a 2025 second-rounder to the Texans. For Houston general manager Nick Caserio, this is some extra draft capital after moving up in last year's draft to grab edge rusher Will Anderson Jr.; the 23rd pick was the third and final first-round pick Houston landed from Cleveland as part of the Deshaun Watson trade.

By the draft charts, this is an easy win for the Texans. The Johnson chart values this as a 21% premium as part of moving up, while the Stuart chart sees this more like a 51% premium. The analytically inclined Vikings are likely using something similar to the Stuart chart in their internal calculations, so I doubt they were naive about the cost they were paying to get that extra selection. Analytically inclined teams usually value future picks more than old-school organizations, so this seems at odds with how Minnesota would handle its draft capital.