Gang Green Nation
I guess my first thought on everything that happened at the trade deadline is that I need to pick my jaw off the floor. I was genuinely shocked that Sauce Gardner got traded and pretty surprised that Quinnen Williams was. The article I wrote ahead of yesterday’s trade deadline certainly looks like a first ballot addition into my Hall of Fame of terrible predictions. (In fairness to me, I figured the Jets would want to keep the cornerback they just signed to a lucrative extension a few months back instead of taking a $20 million dead money hit, and I figured a team giving up massive assets for Quinnen Williams would want a long term extension. When the Jets and then Jerry Jones get involved, all bets are off.)
As always when moves like this are made, people offer instant grades. Trades like these, however, cannot be graded instantly. These two trades are franchise-altering decisions, and the true implications will not be known until well in the future. The Jets just traded away two star players in their respective primes and added four premium picks in the NFL Draft over the next two years. There are a lot of different directions these deals could go, and anybody saying they know for sure is just guessing.
Over the last three and a half decades, one trade in the NFL has been discussed over and over. It was a move that turned the worst team in the league into a dynasty. It was the 1989 trade when the Dallas Cowboys sent their best player and only star Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings. It was a complex deal involving Draft picks, players, and additional Draft picks tied to conditions. In the end, it netted three additional first round picks, three additional second round picks, and an additional third round pick.
Dallas hit on enough of those extra picks to build the foundation of a dynasty.
The Walker trade lives on in NFL lore to the point that no team will ever give up that much for a single player ever again. Here you can see that the Jets traded not one star but two and still didn’t get a return close to what the Cowboys obtained for Walker.
But in the aggregate, you could argue these trades are as close as a team has come in some time to trying to replicate Dallas’ feat.
In season ticket deposit season, the Jets are leaking narrative that they didn’t actually have any intention of trading Gardner.
I find that a tad tough to believe. Since the Khalil Mack trade in 2018, the starting point for deals around the league for star players in their prime has been two first round picks. I’m sure the Jets knew they could get two first round picks for Gardner at almost any point they wanted. If it wasn’t from the Colts, somebody else would have stepped up. This wasn’t some unprecedented offer. It’s fair value.
Taking a step...
