Tag: nfl trade deadline

Ron Rivera talks how difficult it was to trade Montez Sweat

Rivera couldn’t discuss Chase Young’s departure yet as the trade isn’t complete with the 49ers on a bye week.

Washington Commanders head coach Ron Rivera never wanted to trade defensive end Montez Sweat. Rivera and his staff long praised Sweat — traded to the Chicago Bears Tuesday for a 2024 second-round pick — and wanted to work out a long-term agreement for him to remain in Washington.

Unfortunately for Rivera, the team’s ownership situation prevented the Commanders from working on any long-term deals throughout the spring and summer until Josh Harris and his group officially took over on July 20.

Once Harris arrived, his focus was on the 2023 season and making immediate improvements to FedEx Field and the fan experience. That meant contract discussions with key 2024 free agents, such as Sweat, Kamren Curl, and others, wasn’t on the immediate agenda.

Over the past few weeks, it became increasingly clear that the 2023 Commanders weren’t contenders. Losses to the lowly Chicago Bears and New York Giants proved this was another middling team. That’s why the Commanders were willing to listen to offers for their upcoming free agents, namely Sweat and Chase Young.

On Wednesday, the Commanders returned to practice to prepare for their Week 9 game against the New England Patriots. Sweat and Young were no longer a part of the franchise. At his post-practice presser Wednesday, Rivera reflected on trading Sweat to the Bears.

“Trading Montez was a really tough decision, but something that we felt was in the best interest of the football team,” Rivera said.

“We really appreciate everything Montez had did for us. A heck of a football player came in and did some nice things and really fit well. But again, football’s a very difficult business, and a lot of things change and things happen, and so we made the decision. Really do appreciate everything that Montez did for us and wanna wish him the best in Chicago as he finishes up his opportunities there.”

It’s important to note Rivera did mention Young but couldn’t discuss the move because it wasn’t complete yet. The 49ers are on a bye this week.

With Young and Sweat gone, James Smith-Williams and Casey Toohill, both of whom have played plenty of snaps for the Commanders, will move into starting roles.

Rivera is confident in both of the fourth-year defensive ends.

“Yes, for the most part, we really just talked about opportunity, and as well as some of the younger guys too, they’re going to get chances to step out on the field and play a little bit more as well,” Rivera said on his conversations with Smith-Williams and Toohill.

“I think that’s the thing that’s exciting is really to find out where that is.”

Sweat and Young will be missed, but Harris is clearly focused on the long-term future of the franchise.

Updating the traded picks in the 2024 NFL draft after the trade deadline

Tracking all the 2024 NFL draft picks that have already been traded after the 2023 NFL trade deadline

Now that the NFL’s trade deadline has come and gone with a few trades, it’s a good time to update the list of picks in the 2024 NFL draft that have already been traded.

The action this week added a few more to the list. Here are the picks that have been traded, round by round, for the 2024 NFL draft as of November 1st.

Former Commanders DE Montez Sweat not ready to sign an extension

The Falcons wanted Sweat, too, but the Commanders took the better offer from the Bears.

The Washington Commanders shocked the NFL world Tuesday, trading both starting defensive ends, Montez Sweat and Chase Young, for second and third-round picks in the 2024 NFL draft.

The second-round pick from Chicago is expected to be a top-40 pick and could be a top-35 pick. Surely, the Bears intend to sign Sweat to a contract extension, right?

Chicago general manager Ryan Poles believes the Bears and Sweat can agree to a deal.

“I feel really confident that we can get a deal done,” Poles said via Alyssa Barbieri of Bears Wire.

As for Sweat, he’s obviously eager to sign a long-term deal. Sweat is playing this season on the fifth-year option of his rookie contract. Not so fast.

“I just want to consider everything around me before I make a decision,” Sweat said.

According to Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, the Atlanta Falcons wanted Sweat and were working with Washington on a deal, but the Bears offered more, and the Commanders took Chicago’s offer.

Sweat is from Georgia, and returning home to play appealed to him.

While the Bears may be concerned about their ability to re-sign Sweat, they can apply the franchise tag on him, securing his rights for 2024.

The Commanders had long wanted to extend Sweat but were unable to work on a new contract while the team was for sale.

 

Cost to acquire, retain, key factors at trade deadline for Cowboys

Given the cost to add players at the deadline, the Cowboys would have felt obligated to re-sign them, which didn’t fit their long-term plans. | From @ReidDHanson

The Dallas Cowboys were quiet at the NFL’s trade deadline Tuesday. Their inactivity on Halloween was a haunting reminder they like the players they have and refuse to commit to an “all-in” attitude many of their counterparts have recently embraced. Right or wrong, it’s the reality of the team.

This isn’t to say upgrades were not available or the Cowboys were uninterested in making upgrades. It’s because the options that would have helped them, cost so much in trade compensation, they would have obligated Dallas to re-sign them. And that, the Cowboys could not have afforded.

For as conservative as Dallas can be, they still monitor the market and constantly look to improve. It’s how they scored trades that brought in Stephon Gilmore and Brandin Cooks last March.

Neither Gilmore nor Cooks cost them anything more than Day 3 draft picks. They arrived with below-market salaries and were veterans with plug-and-play ability. They were fantastic deals by nearly every measure, and they were used to justify a fairly underwhelming dive into free agency.

The beauty of those trades was the cost to acquire was low enough they didn’t feel obligated to re-sign them to extensions. When Dallas traded for Amari Cooper in 2018, it cost them a first-round pick. At a price that steep, the trade only made sense if they were planning to extend and retain Cooper.

Here in 2023, the Cowboys could have upgraded at a number of positions at the deadline. They could have used help at CB, OL, LB, and possibly even RB. But not just any old player would do. The help they needed would have to be an upgrade over the players who are getting snaps today.

And those players were going to be costly.

If the Cowboys used a Day 2 pick on a player at the deadline, they would have felt obligated to give him a new deal. Looking at all the costly contract extensions coming up in Dallas, that’s not something they are eager to do.

There’s a narrative the Cowboys draft better than anyone else, therefore they don’t need to look outside the organization to fill holes. That’s not entirely correct. Plenty of teams draft well. By many accounts, even better than Dallas. Their young and inexpensive players play significant roles for their franchises.

The Cowboys are still generally a young team, but they largely rely on veteran players on second contracts to take most of the snaps. Dallas is in the bottom half of the NFL in snaps played by players on their rookie deals.

If the Cowboys had more players playing meaningful snaps on rookie contracts, they could probably afford to trade and re-sign helpful players at the deadline. But they don’t.

And since the Cowboys refuse to seize the moment and take advantage of what appears to be a widely ajar window of opportunity, they stand pat at the deadline. Again, right or wrong, it’s just how the Cowboys front office does things.

So, it wasn’t just that the cost to acquire players was too high, it was also the feeling of obligation to re-sign said players to costly extensions. Because the Cowboys inexpensive players on rookie deals aren’t doing enough heavy lifting right now to offset the cost of adding and re-signing another expensive veteran.

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The Bills listed a very humorous reason as to why new CB Rasul Douglas missed his first day of practice

Rasul Douglas didn’t practice for the Bills on Wednesday. The reason as to why is pretty funny.

The Buffalo Bills added a veteran cornerback in Rasul Douglas from the Green Bay Packers on Tuesday ahead of the NFL trade deadline.

On Wednesday, they found a fantastic way to share with fans why Douglas wasn’t practicing for his first day in Buffalo.

On the team’s first injury report of the week, the team listed the normal ailments that are bugging players and what their practice status was for the day.

For Douglas, they shared that he did not practice, but not for reasons concerning any injuries. They simply listed the reason as “just got here.”

That is a delightful way to point out Douglas’ absence from the Bills practice, as it makes perfect sense for a brand-new player to miss a little time on the field while he’s getting acclimated to his new surroundings.

Hey, we hope Douglas can get out there on the practice field soon for the Bills, as injuries are starting to pile up for the Super Bowl-contending team.

Seeing quarterback Josh Allen’s name on the list with a right shoulder injury and a “did not practice” moniker might be worrisome, but that just might be precautionary as opposed to something serious.

Maybe Allen and Douglas both will be out there soon enough; Bills fans will surely hope so.

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Mickey Loomis: Saints were inclined to be buyers, not sellers at NFL trade deadline

No deals came to fruition, but Mickey Loomis says the Saints were inclined to be buyers, not sellers at Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline:

This lines up with what we’re hearing from national outlets: New Orleans Saints general manager Mickey Loomis said Tuesday evening that he and the team were inclined to be buyers, not sellers, at the NFL trade deadline. Loomis commented on the situation during a regular appearance on WWL Radio with Mike Hoss, which you can listen to here.

“We talked to a couple of teams about a couple of things, more in the acquisition area as opposed to trading somebody,” Loomis told Hoss. “We didn’t really talk about trading anyone from our team. We did talk to a couple teams about an acquisition, but I wouldn’t say it ever got really serious.”

One player the Saints reportedly looked to acquire was Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Hunter Renfrow, a favorite target of Derek Carr from his past experience with the team. But trade talks were scuttled in the hours leading up to the deadline, either through the teams struggling to work out the financial aspect or the Raiders firing anyone with authority to take Loomis’s phone call, including general manager Dave Ziegler.

Loomis added that these negotiations are often complicated by both team’s salary cap situations as well as the free agency outlook in the next offseason, not to mention their forecasts through the rest of the current season. It isn’t as simple as calling another team and offering a pick for a player before confirming a deal with the league office in New York.

And it’s easy to see why the Saints were looking to add more talent, not shed it. They’ve clawed their way back to a 4-4 record with several very winnable games in front of them; it will be a big disappointment if they don’t go into the bye week with a 6-4 record later in November. They’re coming off maybe their most impressive win of the season and they have few contracts that could be traded away for salary cap relief.

The talent on the roster isn’t the problem. It’s been the self-inflicted wounds holding them back: poor execution, mental errors, and too many sloppy penalties. If they don’t get to the playoffs this year, it’ll because of poor coaching and lacking effort on Sundays, not any lacking physical tools or pro experience.

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Report: Bears didn’t lay groundwork for extension before trading for Montez Sweat

ESPN’s Dan Graziano believes the Bears “will at least make an effort” to sign Montez Sweat to a long-term deal before the end of the season.

The Chicago Bears made a splash ahead of the NFL trade deadline when they acquired defensive end Montez Sweat from the Washington Commanders in exchange for a 2024 second-round pick.

It addresses a huge hole with the pass rush, which has totaled a league-worst 10 sacks this season. Sweat already has 6.5 sacks this season, which is equal to the amount by Chicago’s defensive line.

But there’s been criticism about the move for a 2-6 Bears squad that isn’t trending in the right direction. That stems from the fact that Chicago shelled out a premium draft pick for a player in the final year of his contract.

While the expectation is the Bears would have laid the groundwork for an extension before making the trade, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler indicated that Chicago didn’t exactly lay the groundwork for an extension before acquiring Sweat.

Sweat gives Chicago a marquee player at one of the game’s most important positions for years to come, assuming it extends him — though that’s another story.

…However, Chicago not laying the groundwork for an extension now seems shortsighted, though it can use the franchise tag next season. And I also keep going back to this: The presence of Sweat isn’t going to monumentally shift this season for Chicago, a team that desperately needs draft capital to rebuild. That’s why I at least understand why some league folks have a problem with the deal.

ESPN’s Dan Graziano believes the Bears “will at least make an effort” to sign Sweat to a long-term deal before the end of the season. Which should be common sense and something they previously planned for before sending a premium draft pick for a nine-game rental.

While it’s true Chicago could use the franchise tag as a means to buy time during the offseason, the fact that general manager Ryan Poles used a second-round pick on a player with an expiring contract should mean the intent is to hammer out a long-term deal as soon as possible.

Raiders firing GM, HC may have prohibited Saints-Hunter Renfrow trade

The Raiders fired their GM and head coach at the NFL trade deadline. It’s hard to hold trade talks when there’s nobody answering the phone:

It’s hard for Mickey Loomis to trade talks when there’s nobody answering the phone, and that may have been the case for the New Orleans Saints and Las Vegas Raiders at Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline. The Raiders announced late Tuesday night that team owner Mark Davis fired everyone at the top of the organization, including head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler.

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reports that the Saints were working on a trade for Raiders wide receiver Hunter Renfrow which fell apart in the hours leading up to the deadline, citing disagreements in which side would have paid more of Renfrow’s salary for the rest of the season. It shouldn’t have been difficult to work that out.

Renfrow is due $3.7 million in weekly game checks the rest of the season, but the Saints could have lowered that number by lowering him to the veteran minimum salary and getting the Raiders to cover the difference; he’s qualified for a $1.08 million base salary, which comes up to about $600,000 for the last ten weeks of the regular season. So the Saints would have paid that and the Raiders would have been on the hook for $2.1 million. Were they really so busy haggling over that number (which is less than 1% of the $224.8 million salary cap) they ran this down to the deadline?

Maybe the sudden layoffs at the top of the Raiders’ organizational chart played a factor. CBS Sports’ Josina Anderson cited a source with a team that was in negotiations with Las Vegas who said the lines of communication fell apart on trade deadline day: “Explains why they ghosted us …  Nobody responded yesterday.”

What could the future hold? Renfrow is due a hefty salary in 2024 that will probably make him a cap casualty, and the Saints are clearly interested in him at a near-minimum salary. If he’s willing to sign for that much in the spring and work to reestablish himself as a reliable receiving threat in the NFL, working again with his old quarterback Derek Carr, maybe they’ll circle back to him once he becomes available. But that won’t happen until the season is over and the Raiders have rebuilt their organization yet again.

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Updated look at Bears’ 2024 draft picks after Montez Sweat trade

The Bears now have six draft picks in the 2024 NFL draft after the Montez Sweat trade. Here’s a look at Chicago’s picks by round:

The Chicago Bears acquired defensive end Montez Sweat from the Washington Commanders ahead of Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline, giving Chicago the pass rusher it desperately needed.

The Bears sent a 2024 second-round pick to the Commanders for Sweat, as general manager Ryan Poles is looking to the future with the move. With Sweat in the final year of his deal, the next step is locking him down to a long-term extension.

Edge rusher was a huge need for this roster, and the 2024 free agent class doesn’t sport any big names. So while it cost a premium draft pick for Sweat, it’s hard to be too critical considering Poles invested in a top position of need to help the defense moving forward.

But how does the move impact the Bears’ draft picks?

After dealing their second-rounder to Washington, Chicago now has six draft selections in the 2024 NFL draft, including two first-round picks.

Here’s an updated look at the Bears’ 2024 draft picks, per Tankathon (exact picks TBD):

  • First-round pick (from Panthers)
  • First-round pick 
  • Third-round pick
  • Fourth-round pick
  • Fourth-round pick (from Eagles)
  • Fifth-round pick

Where things currently stand ahead of Week 9, those two first-round selections are top-three picks — with Carolina’s being No. 2 and Chicago’s No. 3.

While things could certainly change down the line, it’s looking like the Bears could have a pair of top-five — or, at worst top-10 — selections in the draft. That would give general manager Ryan Poles plenty to work with, whether it’s landing impact players and/or trading back in the process. If we’ve learned anything with Poles, it’s he’s always looking to acquire more draft capital.

Report: Saints, Raiders ‘got very close’ on trade for WR Hunter Renfrow

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reports that the Saints and Raiders ‘got very close’ on a trade for WR Hunter Renfrow at the NFL trade deadline:

Well that’s a good nugget. The New Orleans Saints didn’t make a move at the NFL trade deadline on Tuesday, but not for lack of trying. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reports that the Saints were working on a deal that would have brought in Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Hunter Renfrow, only for trade talks to fall apart when it got to the finances.

“The only one I thought might happen was Hunter Renfrow going to the Saints. There was just so much contractual stuff that they had to work out. Who was going to pay his salary, didn’t get it done by yesterday. In the end, did not end up happening.”

Renfrow is owed $3.7 million in weekly salary payments for the rest of the 2023 regular season, which the Saints could have barely fit on their books with an estimated $4.6 million in salary cap space per Over The Cap (Spotrac has them with $3.8 million in spending room).

One other complicating factor: the Raiders cleaned house overnight Tuesday with team owner Mark Davis firing general manager Davie Ziegler, head coach Josh McDaniels, and offensive coordinator Mick Lombardi after a disastrous 21-month run while also sending quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo to the bench in favor of rookie draft pick Aidan O’Connell. There may have been no one to answer the phones when the Saints were calling to iron out the details in a trade for Renfrow.

“Explains why they ghosted us,” one source with anonymous team told CBS Sports’ Josina Anderson. “Nobody responded yesterday.”

So Renfrow will remain in Las Vegas and the Saints will stick with their three-man rotation of Chris Olave, Michael Thomas, and Rashid Shaheed, with Lynn Bowden, A.T. Perry, and Keith Kirkwood coming off the bench. At least for now. Renfrow has a $13.7 million salary cap hit next season and he was demoted to a decoy role in McDaniels’ offense. Unless the Raiders suddenly reverse course, he’ll likely be a cap casualty in the spring.

And it feels like a safe bet that the Saints will be interested. Renfrow was Derek Carr’s favorite target for several years on the Raiders and the Saints have been linked to him since March, before they even signed Carr. If Renfrow is ultimately released and becomes a free agent, the Saints could sign him without jeopardizing a future compensatory NFL draft pick. But we’re putting the cart before the horse here. At this point Carr has the same weapons at his disposal he used to play his best game this past Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts. We’ll circle back to this Renfrow scuttlebutt in the spring.

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