Well, that was it. The NFL trade deadline has come and gone and, a bit like Christmas as an adult, most of what you have to show for it is a slight upgrade in socks and underwear (while the kids in this metaphor, aka Eagles and Colts fans, are sprawled out in front of a brand new Sega Genesis with multiple games and the 32-bit graphics enhancer). I suppose to round out the whole analogy, Cowboys fans would be a little bit like a pack of feral cats outside that ran into the carcass of some roasted animal near the garbage with a bit of meat still on the bone which, in their world, would qualify as a strange but beautiful holiday.
Like in any instance, there are winners and losers in life and there are certainly winners and losers at the trade deadline. We’re here to explore them following a stretch that offered just as many sparkler moves as firework finales.
Behind us is the second-most active trade deadline of the modern era. Ahead is the dissection of this highly consequential day. The most wonderful time of the year, amirite?
WINNERS
Darren Mougey, Jets general manager
Mougey now taps into the real sweet spot for a general manager, who earns top-tier draft capital by trading away the previous GM’s best players. This is an opera totally familiar to Jets fans, who remember well that Woody Johnson leaned on Mike Tannenbaum’s successor to trade Darrelle Revis, which led to a massive two-draft haul that left the Jets with…Dee Milliner? Anyway, Mougey is going to appear in this piece multiple times because, with great power comes great responsibility.
But first, the positive: the Jets deserve credit, I suppose, for arriving at the position where they wanted to pull the plug on what they believed to be a failed experiment. Any general manager would die for the opportunity to completely remake a franchise over the course of consecutive drafts with an owner that has been temporarily embarrassed out of the spotlight and is wary of meddling.
Jack Bech, Raiders wide receiver
We have not seen much from the Raiders’ second-round pick, who I thought would be a perfect fit for the Chip Kelly-Geno Smith offensive experiment. Bech did not record a single snap in last week’s loss to the Jaguars and seemed to be replaced and made expendable by the Tyler Lockett signing. Though Lockett made his presence felt against the Jaguars, especially as a blocker, the Raiders clearly needed to make some room for the TCU product. Bech needs more experience and more volume, and eliminating Jakobi Meyers’s targets from the fold should do just that.
Vic Fangio, Eagles defensive coordinator
I remember this scene from the show The Bear where Uncle Jimmy complains to Carmy about the ridiculous amount of money he’s spending on butter from some organic farm in Vermont. Carmy insists it’s critical to the integrity of the dish and, as such, the expectation is set that no expense will be spared (I tailed off in season two and missed the last few episodes so please don’t complain if there was a plot reversal in terms of Bear expenditures).
That must be what it’s like to work for the Eagles, the most responsive franchise in the NFL to the direct needs of both coordinators. Not only does Philadelphia pile up on big-game veterans for the stretch run—Jaire Alexander, Jaelen Phillips and Michael Carter II—but the team still has a full chicken coop full of picks for 2025: 10 total and four inside the top 100.
Lou Anarumo, Colts defensive coordinator
Could there possibly be a better feeling than, after being scapegoated by your former franchise, heading to the most thrillingly surprising team of 2025, getting a star cornerback at the deadline and watching said former team collapse defensively into a pile of wet paper? Maybe that’s just the petty in me (I’m still bitter about high school—it’s fine) but coaches are also a notoriously salty lot and Anarumo has hit the diamond portion of this mine. The addition of Sauce Gardner gives the Colts a legitimate top receiver match with Rashee Rice and Jaxon Smith-Njigba still on the schedule. Anarumo’s unit came into the week as a top 10 unit against the pass, albeit with a pair of Titans games and a Dolphins game in the rearview mirror. While the Colts have been good against some clear-cut No. 1 wide receivers, like D.K. Metcalf, the Rams game was instructive in what a truly dominant lead wideout might be able to accomplish.
Kyle Hamilton, Ravens safety
Hamilton has had two of his best weeks of the season as Baltimore continues to cobble together a complementary defense on the fly. The arrival of Alohi Gilman and now the trade for Dre’Mont Jones gives Baltimore more pieces that can increase the Ravens’ ability to generate organic and designer pressure and allow Hamilton to continue expanding his role as one of the league’s most versatile defenders. Over the last three weeks, the Ravens have been seventh in defensive EPA, reshaping a bleak unit that allowed 37 or more points in four games this year.
Dan Quinn, Commanders head coach
Stick with me for a moment. The Commanders more than likely will not have their franchise quarterback until very late in the season—or not at all. For a team that was comprised of easily broken off veteran contracts, the sensible maneuver for some would have been to explore trades for pieces like Deebo Samuel, Andrew Wylie, Javon Kinlaw, Zach Ertz or even Bobby Wagner (those latter names are increasingly unrealistic, I know, but you get the idea). This signals to me a desire to keep the backbone of this team together and ride into 2026 with some familiarity, which can be valuable for still-developing young quarterbacks. If I were Quinn, I’d view a purge as a first overreaction from a front office that may be growing a little restless.
The Draft Industrial Complex
The 2026 draft now features three teams with multiple first-round picks and the 2027 draft—at least for now—has the Jets one pick behind a transformational four-first-rounder 2000 that set the stage for a franchise turnaround. More aggressively than we’ve seen in the last few years, a few teams have pivoted furiously toward the sale of Hopium in the absence of actual on-field success. Even though the draft normally fuels a special kind of delusion, this will be especially present and fuel what I imagine will be a feverish interest in a ho-hum 2026 class and an obsessive focus on the more stockpiled 2027 class.
The future GM of the Miami Dolphins
One surprise I heard on Tuesday from some around the league was the belief that this Dolphins team could be a quick turnaround candidate with the right executive hire and head coaching hire this winter. The idea is possibly bolstered by the fact that Miami did not gut its roster at the deadline despite keeping a few very high-profile pieces—Bradley Chubb and Jaylen Waddle among them—who could have been seen as superfluous given that Miami will not be a factor in the 2025-26 NFL season. This leaves the decision up to a new voice, who inherits pieces that could possibly now be dealt during the 2026 draft, or kept as a veteran bedrock of the new-look roster a year from now.
LOSERS
Jerry Jones, Cowboys owner
Imagine using your Monday Night Football platform to whip up your fan base, tease a trade that left speculation lingering overnight, and come up first with Logan Wilson—the captain of literally the only other defense that is worse than yours. This, after getting your doors blown off by Jacoby Brissett and the Arizona Cardinals. The follow up act was splashier, albeit just as confusing: Adding Quinnen Williams from the Jets for a second-round pick in 2026 and a first-round pick in the salivatingly rich 2027 class. This went partially toward torpedoing the capital from the Micah Parsons trade, all for a player who will be 28 years old in a few weeks and 29 by the time the Cowboys are going to be close to contention.
Jones traded an in-prime 26-year-old pass rusher and a former 24-year-old first-round pick (Mazi Smith) for a 30-year-old Kenny Clark and Williams, who, while fantastic and good enough to certainly unlock the Cowboys’ linebacking corps by drawing some more double teams, is likely reaching the tail end of his prime years.
Aaron Glenn, Jets head coach
While I agree that the Jets had to take both of the offers for Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams, I do wonder if there’s part of Aaron Glenn who wished he’d made it work. As we’ll discuss in a moment, the Jets would be incredibly fortunate to find players as good as Williams and Gardner in the upcoming two drafts, especially the 2026 draft which has been described to me as “not a great year to stockpile draft picks.”
Glenn may see the appeal in getting “his guys” in the upcoming draft, but I would challenge him to look around at other coaches who have undergone a rebuild of this magnitude and come out the other side. Hue Jackson was driven to near madness in Cleveland. Brian Flores ended up winning double-digit games after battling an attempted tank in Miami and still got fired. Expedited rebuilds are the preferential mode for most coaches who hope to keep long-term zip codes and Glenn is now fielding a defense with almost no tentpole players. Glenn will have to battle the optics of being a defensive head coach who will most likely have trouble fielding a top-half defense in 2026.
Garrett Wilson, Jets wide receiver
I think this is true to a lesser extent about Breece Hall as well, but Wilson will be tasked with at least another year of struggling before any sign of a competitive turnaround. Wilson has been grinding through the Zach Wilson era, the false start of the Aaron Rodgers era, the Rodgers era that brought Davante Adams over top of his personal progress in the offense and now the Justin Fields era. The Jets clearly made forward pivoting moves that carved up a bad defense while leaving a struggling offense relatively untouched. Wilson has watched as a convoy of young star receivers have sped by him on the highway despite the fact that, from a pure talent and skills perspective, Wilson may be among the best players at his position. Period.
Most of the NFC West
The Seattle Seahawks, in my mind, are the best team in football right now. While I think their chief need of interior offensive line help was bypassed at the deadline (even though Trevor Penning was available), the addition of Rashid Shaheed transforms the Klint Kubiak offense and gives the scheme a classic top-remover that is so coveted with Shanahan-Kubiak inspired systems. Sam Darnold and the Seahawks are constantly getting loaded boxes, with Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet both among the top 10 running backs in 8-plus man fronts, according to Next Gen Stats. That doesn’t leave a lot of resources for the back end. Shaheed is going to clear out space and allow Smith-Njigba more room to operate. This is a long way of saying that the 49ers and Rams are firmly on notice.
Detroit Lions
As uneven as this season has been so far, the Lions are solidly one of the four or five best teams in the NFL. The Lions are going to be missing both of their anchor tackles against the Commanders this weekend and just had Christian Mahogany knocked out for the season. Even though Trevor Penning was the only offensive lineman that moved, and Penning has certainly struggled at times, he did provide guard/tackle versatility and could have been an essential depth piece for Detroit as it progressed deeper into the season.
Lions fans feel differently, but I thought the team simply met its depth threshold at certain positions down the stretch a year ago. The Lions play at an exhausting pace both mentally and physically and while some of the team’s signature wins of the Dan Campbell era have taken place with razor thin, back-of-the-roster players, this was a chance to move some draft equity and see if Campbell’s culture could foster a turnaround for someone like Penning.
The 2024 rookie QB class
In my Dream Trades post last week, I noted that the Broncos were lacking in multiple tight end sets, which, to me, would have been the impetus for a possible David Njoku trade (the Broncos went on to pull longtime veteran Marcedes Lewis out of retirement). Caleb Williams and the Bears are on a franchise-altering offensive tear and Drake Maye has the Patriots in first place. Only one of these teams (Chicago) added at the trade deadline and none added pieces on the offensive side of the ball.
While you could argue that only the Patriots have a pronounced need as it relates to the quarterback position—Maye is the second-most sacked quarterback in the NFL and has been put down 12 times in the last two games—that’s never a reason not to explore possible moves, especially acquisitions that can help teams break tendency and morph into harder-to-defend units down the stretch. I’m not a fan of sacrificing real draft capital to add another team’s castaways, but there were some fringe offensive playmakers who could have added depth upgrades or stylistic complements to existing players.
Darren Mougey, Jets general manager
We finish where we began. Mougey’s Tuesday reminds me of the body high one gets while playing in a touch football game in their late thirties only to wake up the next morning and realize the flip side of such outsized aggression: the possibility of unfathomable pain.
Mougey is now firmly center stage in the complex and vitriolic New York Football media landscape. The next two drafts will be the central focus of a fan base that consumes cycles of hope followed by performative disgust like a 1990s baseball player balancing steroids and estrogen (it produces similar side effects if we’re being honest). Five first-round picks in two years, including the inevitable selection of a quarterback, is a massive undertaking that will test every last one of Mougey’s skills as an evaluator, a trustor of the correct people and a politician who is able to sell his decisions to one of the five most naturally cynical fan bases in all of professional sports.
Pressure is a privilege, they say. But in New York, it more commonly means a man named Bruce in Orange, New York is going to phone the local radio station and call you a schmuck the second one of those five picks misses a tackle.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL Trade Deadline Winners and Losers: Eagles Stock Up, Jerry Jones Confounds.
