TEAM TALENT ALONE – TRADE DEADLINE

Welcome to Week 8 of Team Talent Alone. This week a special trade deadline edition. If you want to know what Team Talent Alone is, check out the previous articles here or the list for the team here.

Montez Sweat

Tuesday saw the passing of the trade deadline, which happens way too early in the season. It always feels that Week 8 is two or three weeks too early for the trade deadline (although maybe the NFL shouldn’t have a trade deadline at all but that’s a topic for another day).

This year’s trade deadline was a lot quieter than last year which saw 19 trades including the highlights of Christian McCaffrey, Bradley Chubb, Calvin Ridley, The Bears trading the 32nd pick for Chase Claypool, and Roquan Smith.

This year only had nine trades, headlined by the Commanders trading both of their expiring contract, star pass rushers: Montez Sweat and Chase Young. For the purpose of Team Talent Alone, we can only really go into Montez Sweat as he is the only TTA player who was traded. First, I want to talk about Ryan Poles

Reviews of Poles (the Bear’s GM) have been, to put it kindly, mixed. I mean the jury is still out a little but he traded the 32nd pick for Chase Claypool (I’m never going to shut up about this). He sold high on Khalil Mack and got a ransom for the Bryce Young pick this last year. However, he also traded the 32nd pick for Chase Claypool. Poles has been more of a fantasy player than most GMs. He’s repeatedly moved high draft assets for star players and you know what, maybe he’s right. He’s taken the basketball approach of valuing proven assets more than potential ones and if nothing else, at least he’s unique in that strategy.

Off of trades, the Bears got their WR1 (DJ Moore), a boatload of high picks, and perhaps now, his pass-rusher of the future.

On Tuesday, Poles traded a 2nd Round pick (as of this post, the 35th pick) for Montez Sweat, and has yet to sign Sweat, who is on an expiring contract, to an extension. Now, if Poles does get the extension done, it increases the potential return on value for Poles (duh), but what price tag will Sweat demand?

So far in his career, Sweat has been an underrated pass rusher. Sweat has an 11%  pressure rate (average is 10.3%) and has converted those pressures into sacks 29% of the time, a top-5 rate in the NFL. In 2022, Sweat had a 13.8% pressure rate. 

Montez Sweat is probably looking at a top-10 EDGE contract in the league for two reasons, one, the team just traded a high 2nd round pick for him, and two, he has been efficient recently in a large sample size. That range is anywhere from 17.5 mil per year (Harold Landry) up to the massive 34 mil per year that Nick Bosa is making. I would say, I don’t expect Sweat to break into the top-3 in terms of AAV but he does have a lot of leverage right now and Poles hasn’t proven to be close-fisted with contracts so far. 

The other possibility is that the Bears could franchise-tag Sweat and kick the can down the road for a year. That would put his price point at $20,461,000. If I’m part of Sweat’s camp, that’s the starting point for negotiations.

My prediction for Montez Sweat’s contract:

5 YEAR $120 MILLION

Now the other question is, was this a good trade? Sweat could be a top-10 pass rusher and that doesn’t show up on the trade block every day. However, Sweat was about to walk into free agency. Maybe Sweat would have been re-signed by the Commanders if he had stayed in D.C. but that’s only speculation. If we look at what we know, Sweat was walking into Week 9 without a contract, on one of the most expensive defensive lines in the NFL, who were playing for a team with no real post-season aspirations. Poles might have moved a valuable pick for a player that he could have signed in free agency.

Beyond that, there is a potential disaster brewing. Poles has positioned himself in a situation where there are three outcomes and two of them are bad. Poles could overpay for a pass-rusher who never performs to an elite level, he could fail to reach a deal with Sweat and end up trading high-end 2nds in two straight years for players who aren’t on the team, or he could reach a deal and Sweat plays up to his potential. I think the risk is worth the reward, but, if he’s wrong that will cost him his job. Even if he’s right it might already be too late.

THE TRADES THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN

The trade deadline was mostly boring. We really need to get some of that NBA magic powder and sprinkle it on the NFL next season.

Here are some players or situations that relate to Team Talent Alone that I’m surprised weren’t affected during the trade deadline.

COMMANDER’S FIRE SALE

Terry McLaurin and Kam Curl both stay home in DC. 

Terry is on the expensive side of the WR market and starting to hit that 30 range it’s defensible that no one made a move for him but McLaurin is a high-tier possession receiver and route runner with the ability to thrive under bad QB play (3-Straight 1000 yard seasons with the Commanders’ cast of QBs). A team like Kansas City, Baltimore, or Detroit could have used someone with his skill set, especially because he comes locked down for another two seasons.

I’ve written a lot of words about Kam Curl this season. Curl fits the outline of the players the Commanders traded. He is a young, high-impact defensive player on an expiring contract without an extension. A team like Detroit or Dallas could have used a versatile secondary piece like Kurl to augment their defense and help push their championship aspirations up a notch (bam). 

PACKERS DOING SOMETHING WITH JORDAN LOVE

Is Jordan Love good or bad? Nobody knows but here is what we do know, The 2-5 are going to be bad for a while to come unless something changes. They are notably the youngest wide-receiver room in the league, Sporting ZERO players with more than two years of NFL experience.

If Love is going to be good, the Packers should be looking to add a veteran or two to the group to give him a shot to learn from players who weren’t living in College Dorms last year.

If Love is going to be bad, now is the time to move on from him. Love has the 28th-ranked EPA+CPOE in the league which is not great. He hasn’t cracked a 70 grade on PFF since last season and he 11:8 TD-to-interception ratio. Despite all of that, he is still young and cheap and a team like Arizona or Las Vegas could do worse than to take a shot on Love.

BALTIMORE DOESN’T HELP LAMAR 

Don’t get me wrong, I love Zay Flowers as a prospect. He’s fast. I like Mark Andrews. He’s big.

But there’s not much else there for Lamar to target. I want to blame the Ravens for drafting poorly but honestly, Flowers and Andrews have seemed pretty good so far and their only major major miss has been Rashad Bateman.

I would have loved to see them target a Deandre Hopkins, Terry McLaurin, Davante Adam, I can keep going on this. The Ravens stood pat and that might come back to bite them in the ass if they hit the same postseason issues that have plagued the Lamar Jackson era.