Calvin Ridley wasn’t long for Atlanta. The Falcons’ All-Pro wide receiver sat out the bulk of 2021 while dealing with personal issues. Months later, he was suspended indefinitely — but for at least the entirety of the 2022 regular season — for betting on NFL games.
This tainted the value of a player who’d emerged as one of the league’s most valuable young wideouts. It didn’t make him untradeable. With an hour to go before the league deadline, he was dealt to the Jacksonville Jaguars — a team he’d bet against in one of the parlays that brought down NFL discipline — for conditional draft picks that could, at most, be worth a 2023 fifth-round pick and a 2024 second-rounder.
That’s a calculated gamble from a Falcons team with little to lose and a Jaguars offense that has been hamstrung in recent weeks by its lack of a true top wideout. So who got the better end of this deal?