No team had a busier week than the Los Angeles Rams, who completed three trades involving four players.
But one of their first trade proposals sparked the rest of the deals, and it turned out to be a deal that the Rams didn't even get done.
The Rams offered cornerback Marcus Peters to the Cleveland Browns on Monday for offensive lineman Joel Bitonio, league sources told ESPN.
The Rams thought Browns general manager John Dorsey would be interested in reuniting with Peters, whom he had helped draft in Kansas City. It was that proposal that started the chain of three trades being completed, all on Tuesday.
Dorsey turned down that deal for Bitonio but proposed sending offensive lineman Austin Corbett to the Rams instead, an offer that intrigued Los Angeles enough to accept. And when the Browns passed on Peters, the Rams offered him to the Baltimore Ravens, who had been having conversations with the Jacksonville Jaguars about Jalen Ramsey.
But here's how the Ravens expedited their talks with the Rams, and the Ramsey discussions, all at once. The Ravens told the Rams they wanted to complete the deal as soon as possible, within the next 24 hours, so that Peters could play Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks. And a short time after, the sides struck a deal that sent Peters to the Ravens, which gave the Rams the extra pick they needed to send to Jacksonville for Ramsey.
Up until then, the Rams had offered the Jaguars two first-round picks, and Jacksonville had insisted on an extra third-rounder as well.
But when the Rams got the 2020 fifth-round pick -- what most teams consider as the equivalent of a fourth-round pick in 2021 -- from Baltimore, they turned around and flipped that pick to Jacksonville to seal the deal on Ramsey.