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.