In this week’s Tuesday notes, we have the NFL trade deadline covered pillar-to-post. Let’s dive in.
• Here’s the reality of the Jets’ situation: The new brass went into the week leading up to the trade deadline open for business, and open for business in large part because, after a half-season, it believed the talent it inherited had been overrated.
The team’s 1–7 for a reason. That’s no blip, either. The Jets haven’t won more than seven games in a season in a decade. They haven’t made the playoffs in a decade and a half.
So Sauce Gardner is off to the Colts for two first-round picks and WR Adonai Mitchell, and Quinnen Williams is a Cowboy, for a 2026 second-round pick and a 2027 first-round pick and DT Mazi Smith is headed for New Jersey. Those are two of three players, with Michael Carter II also dealt (to Philly) the last week, off a defense that ranked fourth in the NFL in 2022 and third in each of the past two seasons.
A lot of folks looked at the Jets roster as one good enough to be microwaved into contention when the GM and coach jobs were available in January. Nine months in, Darren Mougey and Aaron Glenn have opted for a hard reset instead.
Time will tell if it was the right move. But there’s no question that those two have the capital to mold the franchise in their own collective image. Remaining in place is a core of Garrett Wilson, Olu Fashanu, Ali Vera-Tucker, Armand Membou, Will McDonald IV, Jermaine Johnson and Jamien Sherwood that’s locked in going into 2026, plus two first-round picks and two second-round picks that April, and three first-round picks in 2027.
But now the Jets have to hit on those picks and find a quarterback. If they don’t, then Gardner and Williams have a shot to make you look dumb. That said, I’d applaud the conviction with which Mougey and Glenn are going forward. There are no half-measures here.
Indianapolis Colts
• There’s no half-stepping here by Colts GM Chris Ballard, either.
This is he and coach Shane Steichen doubling down on the core they’ve built. Over the summer, I passed along a stat they loved in that organization: The 2024 Colts finished 29th in the NFL in total defense and 30th in giveaways, yet still won eight games. The logic then followed that if Lou Anarumo and Daniel Jones could be difference-makers on their respective sides of the ball, the rest would fall into place, and the team would take off.
Indy’s now 7-2, and the acquisition of Gardner further shows that the Colts think this is no fluke. Getting Gardner is an implicit message that they won’t need the two first-rounders they’re giving up to get him, because the roster is in excellent shape. It’s also a vote of confidence in Jones, who’s on a one-year deal, since those sorts of premium picks are generally how you’d find a quarterback.
So Indy’s chips are squarely in the middle of the table.
• As for Gardner’s fit in Anarumo’s defense, he’s a press-man corner by trade, but has the versatility to play off as well, and should complement Charvarius Ward perfectly. Both can play different types of coverage, and will give the coordinator a shot at matching up with bigger, stronger receivers and smaller, shiftier receivers alike. And when Ward returns from IR in the coming weeks, the two should allow Anarumo to call the defense more aggressively, which will only help pass rushers DeForest Buckner and Laiatu Latu.
One other thing on Gardner: Because his deal was done with two years left, and a bonus has been paid, Indy gets a good contract as well. They have him on the minimum for the rest of the year, then $25.5 million in 2026, $24.95 million in ’27 and $20.2 million in ’28. After that, the team holds de facto options for ’29 and ’30.
If Gardner plays to his potential, that’ll look like a bargain.
Dallas Cowboys
• O.K., now we can dive in on the Cowboys. If you want to look at this as a Micah Parsons–Quinnen Williams swap, then Dallas traded Mazi Smith for Kenny Clark, got a year and a half older (Williams vs. Parsons), lost a half-season of service, moved a second-round pick in April up in the first round, and got a bunch of financial flexibility.
Dallas has Williams under contract for $7.825 million this year, $21.75 million next year and $25.5 million in ’27. Comparatively, the Packers are paying Parsons $45.17 million, $40.837 million and $38 million over those three years. That’s a savings of $68.932 million, or about $23 million per year. Now, Dallas has got to do something smart with that money, but that’s a comparative player who costs a lot less.
To me, that’s how the Cowboys will be judged here—dealing out one cornerstone of their defense for another. And for what it’s worth, when Matt Eberflus had his best defenses in Indianapolis, they were built around a dominant, disruptive defensive tackle, not an end.
New Orleans Saints
• The Saints wanted a third-round pick for Rashid Shaheed, and got fourth- and fifth-round picks from the Seahawks instead. Worth it? Well, my understanding is that Shaheed had trepidation about re-signing with New Orleans, given the quarterback situation. So if he was gone anyway, this is more than they’d have gotten in a comp pick.
Seattle, meanwhile, gets a perfect compliment to Jaxon Smith-Njigba in acquiring the Saints burner. Now, the question becomes whether he’s more than a rental, with his contract up.
Las Vegas Raiders
• Along those lines, the Raiders did great to get fourth- and sixth-round picks for receiver Jakobi Meyers, who was playing out the string in Vegas. Meanwhile, the Jags used some of the flexibility they’d built up from a draft-pick perspective—they still have the lower of their two fourth-round picks (their own or Minnesota’s) and their own sixth-rounder (they traded the one they got from Cleveland, which is actually the Jets’ slot).
Baltimore Ravens
• Maybe interesting only to me: The Dre’Mont Jones trade condition was a new one for me. If Jones has two sacks through the rest of the regular season (he has 4.5 in his past four games) and the Ravens make the playoffs, the Titans will get a fourth-round pick. Otherwise, it’s a fifth-rounder.
Jones is a good get for Baltimore, too, because he is enormously versatile and played in the Ravens’ scheme under Titans DC Dennard Wilson.
San Francisco 49ers
• A leftover from my conversation with 49ers QB Mac Jones on Sunday: I wrote about how Jones saw the way Kyle Shanahan develops the whole roster as key to the team’s resilience, and so I asked him how he’d felt that in his own development.
His answer was excellent.
“In OTAs and training camp, it was the most reps I’ve ever gotten as a backup,” he said. “I’ve been a starter, and you usually take every rep, and they might not give the backup a lot of reps. But he gives everybody an equal amount of reps. So I really felt comfortable, like two or three weeks into OTAs against the defense. I just felt like, Alright, this is the system, and I made some good throws, I made some bad throws. But you understand why, because there’s footwork and timing, and every play has a plan.
“I learned that the first two weeks in OTAs—This works, if I do it right. So I just challenged myself to do that every day in training camp, and I stacked up like 15, 16 good days in a row. And then, eventually, I got to play in a real game.”
And that’s gone pretty well, too, I’d say.
• One other leftover from Jones: I asked about the value of Christian McCaffrey to the team, as one of two real bellwethers (Trent Williams being the other) in a storm of injuries in San Francisco. He had no problem taking up McCaffrey’s MVP case.
“He’s the man,” Jones said. “He’s played a lot of football in this league. He’s another guy who got traded here and wasn’t in a great situation. He’s just a great player on any team he plays on. I think the system fits him very well because he’s very detailed, and he’s like that, just like me and all the other guys on offense. He has rules that he follows, but it’s his playmaking abilities outside the rules that are amazing.”
McCaffrey, in his ninth year and coming off an injury-marred 2024, is at 1,222 scrimmage yards. That puts him on pace for 2,308, which would be just outside the top 10 all-time.
Buffalo Bills
• Finally, a feel-good story to wrap up the day. I noticed Josh Allen’s hat at his press conference after Sunday’s Bills win over the Chiefs and remembered the story he once told about having patients at Oishei Children’s Hospital design those hats for him.
So when I talked to him on the phone a few minutes later, I asked him about it.
“Obviously, it’s my relationship with the Oishei Children’s Hospital and my Patricia Allen Fund that we have there,” Allen said, referencing the fund he established in honor of his late grandmother. “Patients from Oishei designed these hats, and we auction them off after each home game. And I didn’t wear it in today [on the field] because I didn’t see it in my locker. I screwed up.
“But getting a chance to wear it after, and shoutout to Carson [Clauser]. I’ll sign it and put the score on it, and then we’ll auction it off, and every cent goes to kids and families who need it here at Oishei.”
You can bid on the hat until 8 p.m. Tuesday, right here. https://e.givesmart.com/events/KCa/
And being the husband of a cardiac ICU nurse at Boston Children’s, I can tell you that the doctors and nurses at places like Oishei are miracle workers, and efforts like Allen’s are so important helping them do their jobs at the highest possible level. So every dollar you give counts, and the last hat Allen auctioned off raised $17,150.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Key Factor That Led to the Jets Trading Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams.
