Tag: sign and trade

Report: Saints would have been leapfrogged in Jadeveon Clowney sign-and-trade

The Ravens and Jaguars had a sign-and-trade deal ready for Jadeveon Clowney had the New Orleans Saints won NFL approval for the move.

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The New Orleans Saints nearly made NFL history in attempting the first sign-and-trade maneuver in football over the weekend, angling to swap a draft pick and player with another team that would have agreed to foot the bill against the salary cap for free agent pass rusher Jadeveon Clowney. But the NFL office reportedly wouldn’t approve such a deal, and Clowney ended up signing outright with the Tennessee Titans.

But it might be for the best that the Saints didn’t get the green light from the league office they were looking for. Mike Florio reported for NBC Sports that if the Saints had received league approval for a Clowney sign-and-trade, another pair of teams were standing by to pull off the same trick before the Saints would be able to: the Baltimore Ravens.

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport confirmed that report, clarifying that the Ravens had been exploring a similar proposal with the Jacksonville Jaguars before the NFL squashed the Saints’ attempt. It’s anyone guess where the Ravens got wind of these negotiations, but they were among Clowney’s preferred teams and, like the Saints, running short on salary cap space. It makes sense that they would have tried to take a leaf from New Orleans’ playbook.

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Report: Saints attempted first-of-its-kind sign-and-trade to land Jadeveon Clowney

The New Orleans Saints pulled off all the stops, including an attempted sign-and-trade deal to acquire free agent DE Jadeveon Clowney.

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They used every trick in the book, but the New Orleans Saints weren’t able to land free agent pass rusher Jadeveon Clowney, who instead reached a contract agreement with the Tennessee Titans. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero reported that the Saints stretched their ambition to its limits and attempted a sign-and-trade deal to acquire Clowney. Unable to match Tennessee’s contract offer totaling $15 million, the Saints approached another team with more salary cap space, proposing that they sign Clowney and take on the bulk of his cap hit, then trade him to New Orleans in exchange for a second-round draft pick and player to offset the costs.

It would have been bold. These sort of maneuvers are more common in the NBA, but they aren’t really allowed per NFL bylaws (or at least in such an obvious fashion). The Cleveland Browns once agreed to accept a second-round pick in exchange for taking on Houston Texans quarterback Brock Osweiller’s $16 million salary, for example. Other trades have been made that had one team take on a portion of salary to help facilitate the deal, but this apparently crossed a line.

But it all fell apart. Rapoport and Pelissero’s report adds that the NFL office wasn’t likely to approve the deal, interpreting it as a violation of rules preventing cash-for-pick trades.

Then again, that’s just their source’s belief. The deal didn’t actually go in front of NFL executives, and similar arrangements had been worked out before. Without putting it to the test, it’s impossible to say whether it would have been blocked by the league.

At the end of the day, fitting Clowney’s cap hit on the books was just too complicated a process for the Saints to pull off cleanly. It certainly didn’t help that he was eager to go play for Mike Vrabel again after having his best production under Vrabel’s coaching in Houston. There may be a parallel timeline where the Saints made this happen, but in our reality, it’s time to move on.

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How DeForest Buckner’s extension impacts Jadeveon Clowney

DeForest Buckner’s new $21 million dollar contract will make it much harder for the Seattle Seahawks to re-sign Jadeveon Clowney.

The San Francisco 49ers agreed to ship Pro Bowl defensive tackle DeForest Buckner to the Indianapolis Colts in exchange for a first round pick, a massive deal that gets Buckner out of the NFC West but has ramifications far beyond that for the Seattle Seahawks.

Buckner reportedly agreed to a massive contract extension with Indianapolis that will pay him $21 million dollars per year, making him the second highest paid interior defensive tackle in the NFL behind Aaron Donald of the Rams.

The early market reports were that star defensive end Jadeveon Clowney would command a contract that paid him between $18-20 million annually, a sum that many already felt would price the Seahawks out of his services.

Now, it seems almost certain that Clowney and his agent will use this Buckner contract as a baseline for what he needs in order to sign. The Seahawks don’t seem exceptionally likely to shell out over $21 million per year to bring back the star defensive end, even if they technically have the cap space to do so.

The team would also like to bring back defensive tackle Jarran Reed, who is hoping for more than $10 million annually and may get it now that Buckner is worth double that.

It was always a longshot that Seattle would retain both Reed and Clowney, but the Buckner deal makes that nearly impossible, and could leave Seattle empty-handed when all is said and done.

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