NFL Trade Rumors
I have written multiple times this offseason about how the Falcons should trade TE Kyle Pitts. Shockingly, the team has not listened to a blogger on the Internet, even though I think I make a pretty compelling argument. Trading Pitts could prove to be addition by subtraction, freeing Atlanta of the burden of his $10.878 million guaranteed salary and opening up snaps for a tight end who’s a better fit for the offense, to say nothing of adding another draft pick.
At this stage of the offseason, the Falcons probably won’t change their minds. The time to shop Pitts would have been February and March when teams were building their vision for the upcoming season and when the Falcons could have added picks to help the 2025 team. Still, other teams have at least been poking around with the Falcons about Pitts.
His salary and the Falcons’ asking price are major obstacles to a deal, but let’s just suspend belief for a minute and say Atlanta has decided to move Pitts. Perhaps a team does indeed put a Day 2 pick on the table, even conditionally, or the Falcons decide it’s time to make a move and take what they can get. Maybe Pitts decides he’s ready for a fresh start and forces the issue with a trade request.
Should the Falcons look to move Pitts, three teams stand out above the rest as potential landing spots. There are a handful of others that could make sense if you squint, but there’s a component or two of the situation that doesn’t completely add up. No matter if it’s Atlanta or another franchise, it feels likely that Pitts plays out the final year of his contract and the chips fall where they will in 2026, whether it’s free agency or perhaps the franchise tag if he has a strong season.
The Patriots are already in pretty solid shape at tight end with the duo of Hunter Henry and Austin Hooper. Henry’s going on his fifth season in New England as a do-everything player, while Hooper is a solid No. 2 with experience playing for HC Josh McDaniels. But it’s fair to say there are still questions overall about whether the Patriots offense has enough firepower. While adding Pitts would make for a crowded depth chart, McDaniels also has a ton of experience featuring multiple tight ends in his offense, and has been chasing the on-field dynamic he had with Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez for years and years.
Trading for Pitts would give McDaniels a Hernandez-type to go with Henry and Hooper, the more traditional in-line options. Injuries have sapped Pitts of some of the freaky movement skills he had coming out of college but if he can get back to that or 95 percent of the way there, he’s got true receiver skills in a tight end’s body. The best offenses of McDaniels’ career have focused on isolating and exploiting mismatches against opposing defenses....
