ClutchPoints
For the second time this year, Kenny Pickett has been traded, going from the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles to the Cleveland Browns, and now to the Las Vegas Raiders in exchange for a 2026 fifth-round pick.
With Aidan O’Connell expected to miss months, not weeks, following a fractured forearm, the Raiders found themselves in dire need of another just in case something happened to Geno Smith, with 2025 sixth-round pick Cam Miller simply unready to take on such a major responsibility right out of the gates.
Fortunately, the Browns famously had more quarterbacks than opportunities for playing time, with a pair of mid-round rookies, Dillion Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders, both flashing enough potential to justify being gameday options behind Joe Flacco.
After a summer where it looked like four quarterbacks might just make the Browns’ roster, the team found a deal for their least likely contributor long-term and helped the Raiders when they needed it most, forming the rare win-win trade that helps all parties involved.
When news broke that O’Connell was going to be out of action for an extended period of time, it wasn’t if the Raiders were going to trade for a veteran quarterback to back up Smith, but who the player was going to be and how much it was going to cost to get a deal done.
While Smith has played a ton of games over the past three seasons, recording more starts from 2022-24 than his previous eight seasons combined, at 34, he’s one of the elder statesmen of the NFL, with a body that simply doesn’t bounce back in the same way as one belonging to someone in their 20s.
Granted, the Raiders likely won’t be running Smith on too many designed runs, especially with Ashton Jeanty drafted early on to serve as the team’s bellcow. But over the course of an NFL game and especially over a 17-game season, quarterbacks are going to get hit, and may ultimately spend time on the bench, as happened to Smith in 2023.
Enter Pickett, who knows how to win games at the NFL level in multiple different situations.
Originally drafted in the first round out of Pittsburgh by the team across town, Pickett’s run with the Steelers was up and down, with the team ultimately trading him to the Eagles in favor of rolling with the dynamic duo of Justin Fields and Russell Wilson, neither of whom is on the team in 2025.
From there, Pickett played a few games for the Eagles, going 1-0 as a starter despite playing through a rib injury and proving that he can be a winning quarterback on a really good roster over a five-game sample size. While the Eagles ultimately chose to roll with Tanner McKee as their QB2 heading into the fall – even if they just traded for their own backup quarterback due to injury in Sam Howell – in the end, the Browns felt comfortable with...
