By the standards of a typical NFL trade deadline, Tuesday was utter chaos. When the dust settled at 4 p.m. ET on Nov. 1, teams had completed 10 deadline-day deals, doubling the prior record from 2018. The big deals seemed to escalate in importance, culminating in the Broncos dealing edge rusher Bradley Chubb to the Dolphins.
Naturally, in the haze of a frantic deadline day, a lot of questions go unanswered and assumptions unchecked. After having 36 hours to digest everything that happened, I want to run through some of those ideas and try to see whether they check out. There's a lot to consider, both about the teams that made moves and the teams that sat out the deadline.
Let's start with the biggest move, where the Dolphins officially marked the end of their rebuild.
Jump to a question:
Why didn't a contender add Claypool?
Why didn't the Packers trade for a receiver?
Why didn't the Texans trade away players?
Are the Dolphins really title contenders?
Should Carolina have dealt its star edge rusher?
What does Minnesota's trade tell us about the NFL?
Are the Dolphins good enough to go all-in?
Kids grow up so fast. A year ago, the Dolphins were 1-7 and wondering whether they needed a rebuild of their rebuild. Now, at 5-3, they're all-in with Tua Tagovailoa to try to win a Super Bowl. The last of the unused first-round picks from the 2019 Laremy Tunsil trade tree is out of the organization, as Miami sent San Francisco's 2023 first-round pick -- acquired in the Niners' move up to select Trey Lance at the 2021 draft -- as the lead asset in a package for Broncos edge rusher Bradley Chubb.
It's not hard to understand why Miami feels like it can be something great. It has won all five of the games Tagovailoa has started and finished this season, scoring an average of 26 points. Mike McDaniel's team gets the Bears, Browns and Texans for its next three games, giving it a reasonable chance of going 8-3. The Dolphins already have beaten the Bills, who sit ahead of them in the AFC East. If Miami beat Buffalo once without Chubb, why can't it do it again with the star pass-rusher?
There's not much of an issue with the Dolphins adding a pass-rusher, either. Through Week 8, they rank 29th in pressure rate (22%) and 25th in sack rate (4.8%). Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen are two of the league's best quarterbacks against the blitz, and the Dolphins had the league's worst sack rate when rushing four or fewer. Emmanuel Ogbah has been playing at less than 100% this season and has just one sack, which came in the opener. Jaelan Phillips has flashed moments of brilliance and looks like he's about to break through. And Miami's best pass-rusher at times has been safety Brandon Jones, who tore his ACL two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, Chubb has been playing some of the best football of his career. The No. 4 overall pick in the 2018 draft has 5.5 sacks, eight knockdowns and two forced fumbles through eight games. He ranks third in the NFL in pass rush win rate on the edge this season, trailing only megastars Micah Parsons and Myles Garrett. He's on pace for his most productive season since 2018, when he racked up 12 sacks and 21 knockdowns across from Von Miller.