NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - Why are there more NFL Trades?

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Gregg Rosenthal and Jourdan Rodrigue discuss the trade landscape in the NFL and talk about the influx of trades over the last decade, why some teams choose to build via trades rather than lean on free agency, discuss how some of the more successful teams in recent memory use trades, owners roles, and how cap space across the league has influenced the changing landscape. NFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to NFL Daily, where the trade tsunami of my dreams has finally happened all over the NFL. I'm Greg Rosenthal. I'm with Jordan Roderig. We're in different parts of Los Angeles. She's wearing the official Los Angeles celebrity hat, which is the black guy. Learned it from you, Greg.

Learned it from you. Can we tell the listeners, our airport story? Greg came into the airport. We were on our way. I think to the combine a couple years ago. And Greg and I were on the same flight. And he came up looking so famous with this hat, pulled extremely low,

as if he just was waiting for people to recognize him all across the airport. Or the pops. Or the pops to be out. Nobody knew that that's a famous person's hat. Only you knew that. But I go, wow, you look really cool in that hat. I think I want to get one. Yeah, and you did.

And I've lost mine since, but I have many similar ones. This is the show. I alluded to it at the top where we talk about a big issue we've been talking about plenty. Not an issue in a negative sense, just something that's been popping up around the NFL. And that's trying to answer a very simple question, a whole show, Jordan, on answering the question, why are there more NFL trades than before? Why don't we just establish, at least in this, I was wondering in my own head, was like, am I just imagining things?

Are there more trades than before? And I did just check over the last decade or so. And this year has had 34 players traded veterans since the start of the new league year. That is significantly more than any year since 2018. But it's not like it's crazy more. 34 players traded. There was 20 last year. There was 23 the year before, 17 before that.

It was usually in the low 20s. 2018 actually had more trade. So it's not like totally out of bounds and out of the realm of possibility that there would be this many trades. But it's not just that it feels like there's been more trades this season. There actually has been. And we have a large amount of reasons why. And there's obviously not just one reason. But if like one reason stuck out to you the most, what do you think it is?

Putting you on the spot here right to start. Yeah, I love that. I think comes in waves because you see these large fluctuations in condensed periods. It's like I think back to like the 2022 off season when a free agency started, but what was really the conversation at that time was when the new league year began, all of these trades were happening. There was like something like eight players were traded over the course of 15 days. And a couple of them were very high profile players, including Tyree Khill at that time.

And it was, I like how it ebbs and flows because teams, I think, are pivoting between models. Some teams are pivoting between. models with more fluidity than usual. And that would be one of the hallmarks of this is the concept of time, the concept of what teams see their windows as. And we're talking about teams that do trade. There are still some teams that just, they just don't really do it. But teams that do trade and trade frequently when they see their windows of time in terms

of contention windows, what they see those as, whether they believe they are in a build mode or whether they believe they are in an actual contention mode, how those trades speed up their timeline in some cases backfire entirely, like the Denver Broncos back in 2022, which we'll get to. But to me, it's like how teams are viewing when they can reach and push, and that it's happening in faster increments than it was previously. Yeah. And that 2020 season, which I happen to have open on my browser right now. Russell Wilson, Khalil Mack, who stands

out as one of the guys that have gotten traded twice in recent years. Jalen Ramsey's another one. Gino Smith's another one. A.J. Brown is one that's been traded twice. But in that season alone, yeah, I think there was Russell Wilson, Khalil Mack, Carson Wentz, Amari Cooper. I'm just picking the bigger names.

Drew Locke was traded that season two. Devante Adams, Deshawn Watson, Tyree Kill, Matt Ryan, all those trades within a couple weeks. And so it's not just this new phenomenon. Having two June 1st trades of players of this caliber, a future Hall of Famer, and then a guy in A.J. Brown who's going to have a candidacy for the Hall of Fame, that doesn't normally happen.

But one thing, doing some research for this show, it very often was top-of-the-line players. Of course, there's, like, lower-level trades. But as I went through year-by-year, it's very often some of the best players in the league. So we'll go through, like, a lot of big bucket reasons. And I'm just going to give you like a few ones and then we'll go through them as we go. Like on one hand, and I think they're all the right answers. But it's just been hard to get good players otherwise because free agency is harder. It's all connected.

The way teams are managing cap space and cap management, the dead money teams are willing to take on, the younger GMs, the boldness, kind of following the path of some of the teams that have been successful, the Eagles, the Rams, and the Patriots. and just like the way of evaluating their roster. So let's kind of start with the idea that it's been too hard to get players otherwise. And I've noticed this doing the free agency, one-to-one list anymore, and you can speak to how front offices see this.

I think one of the reasons we're seeing all these trades to start with is because there just aren't enough players available in free agency. Yeah, that's part of it. And then those guys come come off in clusters too. So like I look at this again in terms of how teams view what their timelines are. Let's say it's a brand new head coach. We saw this with, you know, the Patriots. We've seen this with new coaches around the league.

We're seeing it with second year coach, Aaron Glenn, for example, in New York. When coaches feel they need to go and sign a bunch of, I guess, middle tier financially or lower tier financially players, that is where they allocate their resources in order to reset some of their floor of their roster. A lot of that happens with these middle to low tier, either A players or deals or players they're familiar with. If it comes to a point where there is a player

they're very familiar with, I would say, you know, Mike Vrabble, A.J. Brown, being very familiar with each other. And it's a player of a certain caliber, then yes, that's when you do see an actual trade for that player versus letting them hit the market and have multiple teams bid on that player. I think that the core of a roster is often informed by that middle section, right, like that middle section of players.

And so you're seeing teams being willing, more teams than ever being willing to trade for the high quote unquote premium players, the elite players at premium positions. You're seeing a willingness there, which automatically shoves to me, I think, down the middle pool of players who are available in free agency because resources are going elsewhere. So I think both of them, they're very much hand in hand, but one can't really exist without the other, is what I also would argue. Right. And financially, it's just easier because there's more cap space in the league in general, but there's less free agent players to necessarily spend it on. And I think you look back over the last decade,

and you look at the Eagles, I wrote a piece on the Eagles and the Patriots leading into the 2017 Super Bowl that noted the two most frequent trading teams in that decade so far were by far the Patriots and the Eagles. That specific Super Bowl, which is almost a decade old now,

had seven starters, I believe, from the Patriot, you know, five starters from the Eagles that were acquired via trade and like seven from the Patriots. So it's not that it's a totally, phenomenon. And yet the way that cap space has exploded that so many teams are so much better at managing the cap, it just makes it more flexible to make these trades possible. And even if you're

a team like the Eagles who have been so frequently the aggressor, sometimes they can be the seller with a mistake that they made. And you know how much cash they spend. Like they're, they're always pushing money into the future and they're able to spend a ton of cash. And they have void and they're willing to take a ton of dead money. They have a ton of dead money this season, but this has been an exploding phenomenon. And they can do that and kind of eat the negative financial end of a.J. Brown trade because they've managed the cap so well. And so many teams now are so easily managing the cap that you almost build in all this

dead money that you're going to be spending anyways into the cap. Going through some of the dead money today blew my mind a little bit. That's what's really blown up. Yeah, that's what's really blown up. Teams do not fear dead money anymore, mostly. Again, we're talking about the teams you see that are active along the trade market. You see teams, these are teams that are typically, you know, playoff teams. You see these are teams that typically have continuity in their front office.

These are teams that typically build with real clarity that understand what their windows and timelines are. These are also teams that don't fear dead money, truly. And even, and I just think that it's, we were. gasping in shock a few years ago when like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, for example, decide to absorb a huge amount of dead money. The Eagles prior to that absorb a huge amount of dead money. But if you can absorb it in like one rip or like one calendar year of a rip on and off your books and you can draft very well around that, then you can go be strategic again in the players you do trade for or the players you do sign in free agency. It's why I think even if I don't

know that it will work for them in the short term. It's why I actually can see what the dolphins are doing. Why I actually think what they're doing process-wise makes sense. You got to draft the right players. You've got to pick the right players. Their process to me makes sense. And it follows a very similar process as a lot of these other teams who have done this in the last five to seven years. Yeah, we'll bounce around a little bit. The dead money stuff I find interesting. The dolphins are another level. That was what opened my eyes. They have almost $179 million in dead money this year. That has to be the record. Yeah. Hold my beer. You say we don't fear dead money. Hold my beer.

That has to be the all-time record. I'd have to go through it. Maybe ask our research group. I mean, they're only spending $116 million on players on their roster and 179 on players that aren't. But I mentioned the Eagles. Like they are spending more than $70 million in dead money last year. A few years ago, we saw in the final eight when the Eagles went and won that Super Bowl, that five or six of the top teams were high in dead money. And there are nine teams this season. It is not rare. And a lot of them are expecting to contend with over $50 million in dead money.

So the fact that all the TV money has come in, 22 teams have more than $20 million in dead money. So like I said, it's just like part of the equation for the vast majority of the league. Like, teams are just not afraid essentially of making mistakes. So it's a long way of explaining that with some of these trades, either you can feel like you made a mistake with the Miles Garrett contract that the Browns kind of quote unquote kind of made a mistake that financially giving them that money. But they can just eat it. Like they can deal with it and you can still be flexible with your roster even if you're taking all these penalties financially. I would say in terms of the acquiring team specifically, when the acquiring team feels like it's able to take on a lot of dead money or, you know, shed a lot of dead money.

or shed a lot of dead money. Often it can come hand in hand with understanding either you're about to go be aggressive and get elite players at premium positions, meaning quarterback, meaning number one or 1B receiver, meaning corner, meaning pass rusher, whether that's interior or most oftentimes exterior. So either you know you're going to go out

and get those players, we joke around a lot. Teams call them, you know, the Rams called them weight-bearing walls. so they already have them for the most part on their roster. You know, teams refer to them as bridges or players that can, you know, hold the foundation or whatever. It's premium player, elite players at premium positions, which means you feel okay not only taking on or eventually shedding that dead money, but also hand in hand spending the resources to go out and get those elite players

because they will make your roster turnaround very, very, very quickly, and they ease the pain of that dead money, especially if it's another team that's acquiring it to, excuse me, that's taking on that dead money because they are giving away the player. And that to me is why teams, for a lot of reasons, and we'll get to more, I know, but value that as a hinge point or pivot point, a flexibility for their rosters, that's worth more to them than draft picks in a lot of cases. Yes, draft picks are cost controlled, controlled,

especially at those positions. But there are some teams that just prefer the roster flexibility of what trading those picks can do for them. Yeah. I think we can get into some of the teams that have been successful doing that. And that is, I think that's a huge part of it, that if it's the Rams,

the Eagles, the Patriots, when it was the Belichick Patriots, it's not that way anymore, that are trading the most, that are kind of pulling these levers the most. And it's working. And I think you've seen what,

the front offices and there's more and more not just cap guys, but the like the blending of business school cap guys and analytics guys all into these front offices. How do you think like those teams specifically Philadelphia, L.A., who do it in very different ways, have influenced and maybe made copycats around the league of some of the team is doing similar ideas? Well, I think the most important part is either the teams that are the most aggressive in doing things like this, either A, have continuity already, or they have the assurance of continuity. And what I mean by that is, like, we know that the Howie Rosemans of the world, the less needs. Like, we know that these guys are lifers at their job. When they're done, when they say

they're done, that's when they're done, right? And, but there's other teams that are also, I would say, have the assurance of continuity. When we saw what the Broncos did, when the Broncos tried to go all in with George Payton and go all in for what whispers were at the time, not necessarily the player they wanted to go all in for. The whispers at the time were the preference of matching Aaron Rogers with their first year head coach Nathaniel Hackett. But taking a swing that big with the assurance of continuity, at least in the front office on the other side, you can try this thing if it fails.

And in this case, it failed disastrously. If it fails, then you still, if you have a plan on the, the other side, you still have that assurance of continuity. The Panthers getting more aggressive, especially this offseason. They were very aggressive in free agency, again, to reset a lot of that core and lift the floor of their roster, doing so via cash spending and in free agency spending. Now you're seeing a little bit more of them maybe willing to dip their toe in the trade waters. You're seeing them be a little bit more aggressive at those elite premium positions as well with the assurance of front office continuity. And the Tampa Bay Buccaneers certainly are a team that reflects

that as well. And so I feel like that is the biggest thing. You talk to any front office person in the league and they'll tell you that that is the most, the biggest edge or the biggest weapon that a team can have, whether it's along the coaching staff, if it's an above average staff or specifically in the front office, is continuity because you're basically running game theory against your own stuff all of the time. You have your own internalized set of data points. you have your own analysis. You have like your own examples of it working or not working within your own building. And there's also a sense of, you know, some people in the league say this all the time.

There are teams that are just afraid or they are making decisions that are fear-based, fear of losing their job, making decisions to not get fired. Or there are teams that are making decisions to try to win Super Bowls. And more and more, especially as the cap continues to go up, especially as teams, teams work in these, like, I really want to get to the shorter windows of time that it takes to build and then push with their team and their roster. Like, you're seeing the urgency increase among some teams. And you're going to start to see the gap, I think, between the, we try this or we don't try this, get even wider than before.

Well, and that, like, you can make a mistake. I think a lot of the biggest gap hits in recent NFL history are on course. which is just, you know, part of the issue of, like, it's just part of the cost of doing business. It's Jared Goff, which obviously worked out for the Rams when they're trading him away for Stafford. It's Tootunga by Loa, which is completely disastrous. It's Matt Ryan at the end of his career. But then it's also Drew Breeze, you know, and the Saints would do that all over again. They were always just pushing it into the future.

It's Aaron Rogers with Green Bay, but you had the plan anyways where you have a cheap quarter. So you can kind of eat all the financial pain. The problem is when it happens with one of those middle tier guys, like a Derrick car in Las Vegas or with a Tuatungavai Lowa. You mentioned guys, you know, teams potentially on shorter windows. And you think about the Dexter Lawrence trade, for instance. That felt out of character for what the Bengals would normally do. But they're in a different sort of part of their build right now.

Yeah, I think that's another symptom of that, leads to trades like this is like I always think that it's it's there's not really a neutral zone when it comes to the teams that do this and don't you're either you do this because you're used to doing it and you understand how to do it and that's the way you want to live it's a it's sort of a high wire walk that you've chosen to walk as an organization or you do it because there's a real sense of desperation to maximize either a rookie quarterback or a star quarterback in this case, Joe Burroughs contract and a prime window, a real sense of urgency among the front office and probably the coaching staff heading into a contract year as Zach Taylor is,

you can act out of character when you have that sense of urgency. To me, I don't think that is necessarily, quote unquote, assurance of continuity like we just talked about with those Broncos of a few years ago. To me, this is more of that other side of the coin, which is get more aggressive very, very quickly and act out of character to make what I thought was a very smart trade, but to act completely out of character because of those factors that are a little bit unique to you, which is that quarterback and that a little bit of a void on the other side that you're not quite certain what's going to happen. Right. Duke Tobin's been there a long time. Zach Taylor's been there a long time.

It felt like, to me, a little similar to what the Falcons did last year when they traded away their first round pick to draft James Pierce. That is such a strange build because they were taking over Terry Fontenow, the old regime, and they were given a relative, like a medium time frame, but the first couple of years was just getting out from under the Matt Ryan mess. But then they went into last year, essentially promising ownership, like, we think we can contend right now. And they start to make maybe out of character trades.

for James Pierce. Only one year after making a trade for Michael Pennix that you're making a pick in Michael Pennix that was very much thinking about long term. It's not consistent philosophy. And then that's how bad teams stay bad because now you have a new Falcons regime that essentially is pressing pause once again.

Even though the team that ended last season for Atlanta, you could kind of see the vision. They were decent. And yet because ownership was sold one bill of goods and they were pushing in theory and 8 and 9 wasn't good enough, then you take a step back. So I think it's how teams like the Eagles, Rams, you know, for instance, stay ahead of the pack because they have more continuity, as you mentioned.

Well, owners have so much to do with this too. Like, are they patient? Are they not patient? And I think some of this too is because they have decided that if they're the ones putting up all of the money or putting the money into escrow for some of these contracts to assure that they can pay them out or the ones that are saying,

okay, we're willing to take on this dead money. Perhaps in some cases, that leads to a little bit more of an influence or a say. I think you can say that with Arthur Blank. And I think my opinion, it's a huge reason why Matt Ryan's in that building right now is to say, no, we're not doing this. To someone to say, no, we can't do this

or no, this doesn't make sense. I think when you look at, you know, Jeffrey Lurie, obviously very involved in what in what the eagles do but you don't necessarily other than very very rare cases you don't necessarily hear him ever overshadowing or overpowering Howie roseman's voice in that building. Stan Cronky is not even there so you know it's like he basically is says you know he gets final approval on things at that point the case has already been made among the power structure of Kevin Demoff Tony Pasture's less need and Sean McVeigh that's

It's been that way for years. So I think some of it's like, it's on the other side, you see the Colts, you know, Carly or say Gordon heavily, heavily involved in the acquisition of sauce Gardner, wanting to be more aggressive in that model, hand in hand with the fact that she straight up said she wants to spend money like the best teams in the NFL. This is a franchise that maybe didn't necessarily do that in the past. So I think there's all different kinds of ways of doing it. But those particular examples are, I think, showcase a range of owner involved,

maybe bad decisions are made in light of that involvement. Owner involved wants to spend more money than previously, wants to be more aggressive previously. We'll see how it goes. Owner involved, but doesn't overpower the GM or brain trust. Owner basically not involved. Everyone else is in charge. So those are kind of the range of what you see in the NFL right now. And when you mentioned ownership, wanting to spend more money and willing to spend more money,

one thing I think I could stand to understand even better, but I know in my heart and I certainly talk about, like, is that the teams that are willing to just spend cash year over year, I mean, it is a huge advantage. It is an extremely soft cap. Like you can manipulate this thing. And the owners, like the Browns, it hasn't worked for them. like the Eagles, it absolutely has worked for them, who are willing to just spend cash, like upfront, cold hard cash that you can start spreading out

into all these void years in the future. It gives you a real deal advantage against the teams that aren't willing to do that. And that, it has to do with the salary cap, but it kind of doesn't because there are teams that are, like most teams are spending somewhat close to the cap. Like we're going to talk about cap space in a second. But the teams that are just willing to spend cash, it gives you not as big a margin for error as you would get in baseball, but it gives you a bigger margin for error than other teams have.

Yeah. And I think we were just having this conversation the other day, Greg. I think one of the things that's really interesting about that is if you don't necessarily have that high of a cash flow, you have to find other advantages elsewhere with which to win with. So I would not say John Schneider's made some great trades. A lot of it's been, you know, getting rid of players and bringing back in and roster turnover and continuing to win despite roster turnover is a huge strength of his and that front office. And I also think that they draft and develop extremely well, especially in this new

Mike McDonald regime. So that's like one specific advantage that I think the Seahawks, even though they don't necessarily, I would not call them the highest cash flow team. like they do this very, very well because they maximize those particular edges and they have continuity. So that's the third major edge. Les Needs Sean McVeigh is one of the better advantages

for a team to have in the NFL. And also they read the picks for players markets very, very well in correlation to their roster build. So those advantages and that willingness to take risks and also, you know, less need not fearing for his job, essentially, is where you get some of these things. So it's like, what I like about the Eagles is that they have exorbitant amounts of cash flow and they still go out and take risk and they still have continuity and they still try to get their hands in the mix on every single trade. So I think that those

teams are good examples of like, if you don't necessarily have that ultimate huge advantage of that cash spending ability, then yeah, you can also, you have to find other ways to other levers to pull that gives you a better jump over the rest of the NFL. Yeah, it is funny with the Rams because in some ways, they do not act like a big market team. You know, they act like they're in L.A. You're thinking they're doing everything possible. They are doing everything possible to try to win,

but they are not necessarily spending as much cash as the other teams out there. And the Seahawks, it's next level. I mean, I know they've had, they're looking for a change in ownership, and that is informing some of them. but when I went through the dead cap situation that I said, you know, over two-thirds of the league are spending more than $20 million in did cap.

Like there's five or six teams that are over $70 million. The Seahawks are spending less than a million. There's no one else even close to their ballpark. Like everyone else is over like fight. Like they don't have any dead cap. Like it's just, it's like not something that they would do. That was, it was true of the Bengals for a while too. But even the Bengals are getting a little.

more modern. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHartPride Canada. Stream us on your phone or listen now at IHartRadio.ca. So we've gotten over some of the reasons. It's harder to get players in free agency. And I think the Eagles ramp, like some of these teams have shown a model.

It has to do with like you can make mistakes now when it comes to the dead cap. But ultimately, I think the biggest reason is that the cap is just easy now. It's just, it used to be such a thing. It's just not a thing compared to the NBA specifically, which I feel like I have a better handle on. There are 14 teams now, Jordan, and we're in June when you don't really need cap stays. Of course, you're going to use it to sign players. Over three years, you have to use a certain amount of it. Yeah.

And you also have to, you know, it's good to have some at this time of year to spend on long-term contracts, but that doesn't necessarily help your cap space because you can spread it out. You have to sign your rookies, although most of them already sign. And yet, almost half the league has over $20 million in cap space. almost a quarter of the league has over $30 million in cap space. And it just makes me think, like, teams are smarter about this. The money just keeps rising. The streaming money, like, helps a lot.

And it takes me back to the Arrested Development phrase. Like, there's just always more money in the banana stand. Like, teams can always find more salary cap money in the banana stand. Yeah, and I think contract structure is changing very slow. slightly too, at least among, you know, the middle, I would say mostly the middle tier of players. Because I think when you're seeing, you're seeing a huge increase. I wrote about this, the spring coming out of league meetings because some people were talking about it.

There's an increase in these three year contracts, which on paper look very player friendly because especially a player going into his second contract, so out the second one, so after his rookie contract, it's, it's like they can maximize that window and then all, also have another choice to make. They're not locked into one thing for five years as it used to be. But what's being unsaid or maybe not talked about as much is how friendly that is for the team, too. Because like I said, if you draft well in one class and then you sign complimentary free agents and you don't worry as much about dead money and you do have, you know, certain advantages, especially if you've gotten out and traded for Premier players or you've drafted

to develop premier players at key positions, you can turn a roster over and around in two years, maybe even less depending on if you get really lucky, right? And I think that that plays really well into how financially these teams are looking at how fast the money is flowing in and out of their buildings and how fast and how clearly they're willing to allocate a lot of that spending, especially on the middle positions. We're also seeing a time where some of the, key contributions from certain positions are still not being paid as the elite premium or premier players are. So like tight ends, everybody's using more tight ends. They're still not being paid anywhere close to that of a volume, even like a volume two receiver. There's very few tight ends

that are being paid the same way that, you know, even a B or a C receiver on a really, you know, high volume passing team is being paid. Running back, so obviously we've talked about. this ad nauseum. And then teams are also willing to not maybe invest as much in the cost of their defense, a lot of teams, especially if they have a quarterback and a high volume passing game and like a medium to above average run game on the other side. So I think that in combination with if the bulk of your contracts in like the middle cluster of your Excel spreadsheet that shows you about how you're allocating finances, that's all set in a certain window. then you can get really fluid and flexible with the money that you spend on either side of those

three-year deals. And I think it's good for the players for sure, but teams are not talking as much about how it also creates more cap flexibility for them. And it also creates more flexibility with their picks. If they know that certain players are out of their building in X amount of time, then they can start drafting right out from under them quickly or they can use those picks to go after other players at maybe the same position. So I think, I think, it all is very, the puzzle is getting more truncated and yet the money around the puzzle is getting a lot larger, if that makes sense. It does. And I just think it's just easier than ever on some level to keep your best players. And sign them early. Sign him at three years. That's part of the

three year contract thing too, is signing them early. Like Darno Washington and Christian Watson, those two contracts to me were incredible values. Those actually were large. longer ones where I, you know, and you're seeing this with quarterbacks too and in some of the bigger players where, okay, you have them under control for four years, if it's a three-year extension on your rookie deal. And two years into it, like we just saw with Certan and Nico Collins, you can give them a raise, you can adjust it or whatever, but you're always controlling that player's career essentially, financially, and you don't need to be a super duper star. It can be a darnel Washington type who we love and is incredible. But with all this

cab space and I think just the way that the front offices are smarter, I just think it's truer than ever that there are exceptions to every rule. But my rule is like, young players don't really ever get to the market unless a team doesn't really want them. Like, of course there's exceptions or teams just don't allow players that they truly want to keep ever to leave. And that gets back to where we started was like, well, then how do we get freaking good players? There's really only two good ways to do it. Like, you can get some value in free agency, but it's trades and it's drafting.

What plays into the hands of teams that do think like that is, A, there's still a lot of unknown ripple effects from what the COVID college seasons did. We're, you know, we're, what, six years, basically six drafts past that initial one. But the after effects are really truly being studied by, like I talked to teams. who are studying what this means,

not just for player output physically, but also, you know, longevity, mental health, those types of things. And then also, that was like an elastic band where there was so much unknown and it was stretching and stretching people trying to figure out, okay, what's on the other side of this, what's on the other side of this, what's on the other side of this?

And then all of a sudden, right when teams were maybe starting to get a handle on it and, like, picks, there was a surge of picks for players' trades, And then there's still picks for players trades, but it's not a lot of the middle guys, like you mentioned at the very top of the show when you were reading off of that chart. A lot of like sort of middle guys are backup quarterbacks or spot starter quarterbacks. And then, and then like they're starting to get an answer, starting to get an answer. And then all of a sudden, boom, here comes NIL.

And players are staying in school for longer. And so draft picks, there are very specific picks that, yes, will always be valuable. Top 10 picks will always be valuable. Like all of that. Like, don't get me wrong. But I do think among some teams, there is a decrease in valuation of middle to late first round picks that's way more prevalent than it was when just a select few were thinking about it that way seven years ago. Now, I think a lot more teams and maybe a rise in maybe younger GMs, younger evaluators, younger coaches. the next era, not trying to be ages,

but like the next era of what the NFL will be built upon here, are thinking a lot more along those lines and how they can maximize maybe an inefficient market. Now the irony of that is if too many of them do this at once, then that becomes an inefficient market, and then the cycle continues over and over again. That's the story of football, but I think the Jaredverse trade and the compensation really spelled it out

because I started to think, like, well, what's Jared Verse entering year three worth, like in this year's draft or in next year's draft in future drafts? I said definitely a one plus, whether that's a one and a two, a one in a three. Like if you just even had done it before this draft, would I rather have a bird in the hand in Jared Verse? Cost controlled going into year three, you know you're going to have to give him more money, but you also know you have Jared Verse versus, let's say, the 10th pick in this specific draft. I think different teams would answer that question differently,

but let's call them like the 10th best edge rest in the league. Like, I'd rather have the burden of the hand. As great as that contract flexibility is and how much value you get and save by having a rookie contract, it's harder to find good players than it is to get under the cap. It's freaking easy. Like, the easiest thing ever is resetting and getting under the cap and being financially reasonable.

Like, everyone can do that. If you can't do that, you shouldn't be. I could not do that. It's taken me 10 years to understand the cap. And I, it's still a... It's a good point. It's a good point. Maybe I couldn't do that.

I mean, Mickey Loomis couldn't do that for a long time. Although they were doing all sorts of different things. And I don't hate them for approaching, you know, the whole strategy differently. But you know what I mean. In today's NFL, you can find a front office that can do that. And so, yeah, finding good players. It's tougher, I think, than finding cap space right now. Do you, now I'm going to put you on the spot.

Do you have like a, all of these I think are exactly the reasons and sound, very sound logic and well stated, Greg. Yes. But do you have like a galaxy brain reason why more trades are happening? Like do you have a take that could get blurbed that would get you, you know, like, like do you have a sort of a pie in the sky conspiracy about it? You know, these kids growing up playing Madden, it's all madden to them. These kids playing up playing fantasy football. No, we're not quite there yet. I do think it has a little bit to do with generationally.

I think the younger we get, the more analytic less, just old school football we maybe get, and the willingness to take on risk, like the risk profile. I don't know if that's galaxy brain thinking, but I do think that's a factor. Yeah, I think too. players, these generations of players feel like they can speak up a little bit more. I think we're seeing, we see that more often.

If players are unhappy, they, a lot of times, especially if they're a star player, they can talk about it or they feel like the collective understands the sport and the structure of the sport enough to understand why they might be unhappy. We're a long way away from the absolute like earthquake shot. of, you know, the Eli Manning situation. I think there would be, if that happened today, there would be a lot more people who actually could understand that

and could understand why something like that was manipulated the way that it was. And I also think, this is so galaxy brain, but teams want more attention. There are teams that want more attention. There are teams that want to dominate new cycles. There are teams that want the primetime games. there are teams that want to, if you look at a team like the Rams, for example,

like I don't think it's a far, I don't think it's a reach to say there's a certain legacy of the type of rosters on these sports that are built in this city and you will lose the grip that you are building in this culture and in this town or in the city that is so Dodgers focused, that is so Lakers focused, that is so King's focused. that's for Eric Roberts, our producer, Big Kings fan, to say like, okay, we are right pace for pace there with you and you will look at us because you can't not. So I think that that's a very galaxy brain,

but to me it's like there are some markets where like Philly, Philly builds its team the way that you would want Philly to build its team. They are a monolithic, destructive entity. that openly is openly emotional with each other quite a lot. It's entertainment. It's something the fan base loves to talk about. But they will kick your ass. And I think when teams reflect their market and you understand that,

Seahawks do the same thing. When teams reflect their market or what the ethos of the market is, I think that also empowers you to maybe build in different ways or build and attune to what that is. Yeah, as we wrap up, I think those are all really good points. And like the player empowerment, like that's not just in the NFL,

but players know their value. They're not going to accept less than their value. They have more control than they did in the past. So using the Michael Parsons example, Cowboys run things a very old school way. And I think personalities got involved there of why that happened in the first place. but then you get a team in the packers that's willing to kind of deviate from their normal model

and have the flexibility to do so because of where they're at, but also just because of all the caps bus space we just talked about. So they make that trade, trading Michael Parsons away. And what have the Cowboys done like since? They traded for Quinn and Williams. You got the Rishon Gary situation. They traded for George Pickens at one point. I know that's unrelated to Michael Parsons.

But what I mean is like they're just freewheels. and dealing on the fly. And they're not like that forward thinking in terms of how they handle their cap space. And yet there's enough flexibility in the league where they're making all these big time deals with players just going in and going out. Well, I would say look at how Detroit turned the Matthew Stafford trade,

including bringing in Jared Gough, turned it into an absolute foundation point for a complete narrative change for their entire franchise. and roster and had picks and picks and picks, right? And you could argue, you know, they pick the guys they want. You can argue process those types of things. But it's not just teams that are willing to acquire players. It's also teams, we should say, that are willing to shed players or willing to trade

players for future assets. But unlike what the Browns just did, which we have no proof that they're going to turn that into something productive, you have to turn it into something. If you're going to be a team that will aggressively shed quote unquote assets or shed players for and recoup some sort of resource and return, like you got to turn it into something. That's a part of this. That's the other side of this high wire walk where, you know, you can't just say, oh, we did the analytically sound thing. Look at all of our fun picks. No, you've got to go do something with them at this point.

So that's the other side of it is the shedding teams, quote unquote, that sometimes you see it work in a big way. And Detroit is an example of that. And sometimes you have no proof that it does or will. Yeah, the Browns are doing it for like a second time. They have so much dead money. The dolphins are in the middle of it. The jets are kind of in the middle of it right now. I think we did it.

I think we explained it all, Jordan. And I think we came, we got to the bottom of why are there more trades now? Yeah, what's the other arrested development? Well, it never worked for any of those people, but maybe. Maybe it will. I love that this is the NFL now. I love that we could take an afternoon in the off season to try to explain or at least come up with our reasons, bounce off each other, why there are more NFL trades.

That's going to be it for today's NFL daily. You wore the Dodgers hat well. It's an L.A. Hat. We're going to be back on Wednesday. It's mini-camp week. Most of the league are in mandatory mini-camps right now. So the next time we talk to you, it'll be myself. It'll be Patrick Claibon, and we're going to have takeaways from all those mini-camps.

Maybe they'll even be a trade in the meantime. We'll see you then. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.