The NFL trade deadline has come and gone. For all the big names rumored to be in the mix Tuesday afternoon, the most significant trade involved Titans safety Amani Hooker, who was dealt to the Bills with a fifth-round pick for a second-round selection. The Vikings reunited with quarterback Kirk Cousins for a third-round selection, but the biggest moves ended up taking place Monday, when the Jaguars sent out a first-round pick and two second-round selections to land Jordan Davis and Jessie Bates III.
With the final trades of the 2026 season in the books, what we saw over the past 24 hours left me with more questions than answers. And so with that in mind, I set out to try to answer those questions.
I’ll get to the Cousins deal, a trade that was ruined by the internet and the teams that missed an opportunity to make a deal, but I have to start this in Florida, where a Jags regime that has been very happy to bet on themselves doubled down.
Did the Jaguars give up too much to address two injuries on their roster?
The most fascinating team at the deadline did its work Monday with a series of stunning trades. The impetus for those moves, seemingly, goes back to a pair of relatively under-the-radar injuries in the Week 8 win over the Colts. During that game, defensive tackle DaVon Hamilton tore his quadriceps muscle, and safety Eric Murray injured his elbow. Both are expected to sit out the rest of the season.
Hamilton and Murray aren’t bad players -- Hamilton was having his best season as a pro -- but they’re not the sort of load-bearing, cornerstone contributors who would lead a front office to panic that the defense will collapse without them. It was surprising, then, that the Jaguars decided to fill those holes by sacrificing a significant portion of their high-end draft capital over the next three years.
First, general manager James Gladstone & Co. addressed safety by trading second- and fifth-round picks to the Falcons for veteran Jessie Bates III, whose contract expires at the end of the season. Trading a sixth-round pick to the Saints for Davon Godchaux seemed like a logical addition in terms of adding a rotational defensive tackle, but the Jaguars went over the top Monday evening, sending first- and second-round picks to the Eagles for fellow defensive tackle Jordan Davis. Suddenly, the Jags look as if they’re all-in, and it’s to fill holes that didn’t really seem as if they were huge liabilities.
Let’s start by talking about the players. It’s easy to understand why Jacksonville would be excited. Bates is a leader and a playmaker on the back end, where his instincts and experience help get him into throwing lanes and in position to break up passes. He hasn’t missed a start since leaving for Atlanta in 2023, which helps mitigate some of the concerns about his advancing age, given that Bates turns 30 in February.
The league is generally very anxious about targeting safeties with significant contracts as they hit 30 given the sheer need to cover ground while playing as a single-high or two-deep free safety. I’m not concerned about that with Bates at the moment. He has covered an average of 16.7 yards per play so far this season, per NFL Next Gen Stats, in line with what he did in 2023 (16.8), 2024 (17.0) and 2025 (16.7), when the Falcons aligned him near the line of scrimmage more often than they had in past years.
I’m not sure there’s evidence that his ability to access top speeds has fallen dramatically. According to Next Gen Stats, he has topped 19 mph three times through nine weeks, which is in line with his averages through the first half of the season in each of the three previous years with the Falcons. One measure I use as an estimate is a player’s average 90th percentile maximum speed, which tries to measure the speed each player is likely to get to on the vast majority of their snaps. Bates’ 2026 figure there (15.6 mph) is higher than it was in any of his previous seasons with Atlanta.
Godchaux is a reasonable nose tackle, but he now projects to be in a backup role behind Davis, who was added to be an essential player for the Jaguars up front. The Eagles moved up ahead of the Ravens in 2022 to take Davis with the 13th pick in the draft, forcing Baltimore to “settle” for safety Kyle Hamilton with the 14th selection. The expectation was that Davis would have a floor as an excellent run stopper, while his high-end athleticism raised hopes that he would end up developing into a significant pass-rushing threat on the interior with more experience and NFL coaching.
That hasn’t really come together. Despite playing next to Fletcher Cox, Jalen Carter and Milton Williams at different times during his run in Philadelphia, Davis hasn’t been able to create steady pass pressure. Davis has 9.5 sacks and 15 knockdowns over 4½ years as a pro. And those really haven’t typically been a direct product of Davis creating opportunities, such as last week’s sack against the Giants, where Davis twisted with Carter and the latter came free, only for J.J. McCarthy to duck under the initial sack of Carter and into the arms of Davis.
Since entering the starting lineup for good in 2023, Davis has generated pressures on 5.6% of his pass-rush snaps and 1.2% of his quick pressures. Among defensive tackles with 700 pass-rush opportunities or more over that timeframe, Davis ranks 63rd out of 71 qualifiers in pressure rate and 60th in quick pressure rate. Godchaux, for what it’s worth, ranks 71st in both categories.
Davis is a good two-down nose tackle. I’m assuming the Jags think he still has another gear to hit. For one, they can follow in the footsteps of what the Eagles did when they got A.J. Brown and simply play him more often. Davis hasn’t sat out a regular-season start since the start of 2023, but with the Eagles rotating Davis alongside Moro Ojomo, Williams and others over the years, he has played about only 48% of Philly’s defensive snaps in that span, dropping just below 25% on third downs.
Getting Davis on the field on third downs will simply get him in the lineup against pass plays more often, which would give him more opportunities to get after the quarterback. The Jaguars also might greenlight Davis to be more aggressive getting into the backfield with opportunities to one-gap as opposed to playing the gap-and-a-half style that Vic Fangio employs with his defensive tackles. I’d be surprised if Davis became a great pass rusher after not showing it for four-plus years, but I wouldn’t be shocked if his pass-rush production improved with the move to Jacksonville.
That’s the good news. The prices the Jags paid to get those guys? That’s the bad news. These were trades in which the guys on the other side of the phone had to ask twice to make sure that the rounds they were hearing were correct. The Eagles just signed Davis to a contract extension in March and paid him an $18.8 million bonus in the process; I suspect they asked LeBron James if they could borrow his helicopter to get Davis to the airport before the Jaguars changed their mind.
Bates is a pure half-season player since his contract expires at the end of the season. The Jaguars could re-sign him, of course, but they could also have gone after him (or a replacement) in free agency next offseason, and signing him would be locking the team in for what are likely to be Bates’ decline years. As my colleague Seth Walder noted, the Jags are far more likely to recoup a compensatory pick for Bates than the Falcons, but I’m at least a little skeptical that it’ll be a significant selection. The last time a safety on the wrong side of 30 even qualified for anything higher than a sixth-round compensatory pick was 2019.
Let’s say Bates breaks that mold and lands the Jaguars a fifth-round compensatory pick, which would be a realistic possibility given that his next deal projects to come in the $12 million to $16 million range. That would essentially wash with the fifth-round pick they sent to the Falcons, meaning they sent a second-round pick to the Falcons for eight games of Bates. When you consider that Bates has to learn the defense on the fly and probably can’t step in as a full-time player this week, and that the Jags are already heavy favorites to make the playoffs, that’s just not a great deal.
The second-round pick the Jaguars are sending -- even if it lands toward the bottom of the second round -- projects to be worth something in the ballpark of $25 million over four years, which would value a half-season of Bates as being roughly in line with Will Anderson Jr. in terms of production. I love Bates as a player, but there’s just no universe where that’s going to be equal.
Davis should be around for much longer. Because the Eagles already paid his bonus, the Jaguars should have their new tackle on a pretty reasonable contract in terms of cash for years to come. The 2022 first-round pick will make just $607,500 over the rest of 2026. He has $18.9 million guaranteed due in 2027 and $26 million in practical guarantees for 2028 before a non-guaranteed $26 million in 2029.
In practice, the Jaguars are signing up for 2½ years of Davis at $45.5 million, or an average of $18.2 million per year. That’s less than John Franklin-Myers got this offseason from the Titans as an older player, albeit one with more pass-rush production on his résumé than Davis. High-end nose tackles such as Dexter Lawrence II ($23 million in cash annually over the next two years) and Vita Vea ($24 million) are making less.
The problem, again, is that there’s an opportunity cost in sending away those draft picks. Even if we treat the first-rounder as the 30th pick in the 2027 draft, which is where ESPN’s Football Power Index projects the Jaguars to finish, the two picks Jacksonville is sending to the Eagles are worth something in the ballpark of $68 million relative to the rookie contracts those players would have signed. Prorated over 2½ years, the Jaguars are really paying Davis something like $35 million per season, which is where the superstar interior pass rushers such as Jeffery Simmons and Chris Jones reside. Davis has never made a Pro Bowl and hasn’t been particularly close. He would have to make an enormous leap to be worth what the Jaguars paid here.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to upgrade at the deadline, of course, but even if the Jags don’t value these picks, there’s an opportunity cost in getting rid of them for these specific players as opposed to using them for someone or something more substantial. What if a franchise left tackle or high-end cornerback comes free this offseason? What if the Jaguars love a player in the draft who won’t be on the board by the time they pick? Could they have added, say, Christian Barmore or Maliek Collins at defensive tackle and Cam Bynum at safety for a pair of middle-round picks, making upgrades without giving away their most valuable draft selections?
When the Bears traded for Simmons, the best argument I could make was that they were striking to add a true superstar while Caleb Williams was still on a rookie deal. The Jags have a great quarterback in Trevor Lawrence, but he’s already being paid like one on his second contract and coming up on a third. They’ve traded multiple premium picks to land a temporary safety and a good-but-not-great defensive tackle. Those selections (and the players who come with them on cost-controlled deals) are essential when you’re paying a quarterback and two edge rushers market-value significant extensions.
The comparisons to the Rams are understandable given where Gladstone cut his teeth, but when Los Angeles made these sorts of moves, they were for the best defensive player of his generation (Myles Garrett), a high-end quarterback (Matthew Stafford), young standouts with significant Pro Bowl-level production entering the prime of their careers (Brandin Cooks, Jalen Ramsey) or short-term players at premium positions who projected to return third-round compensatory picks (Von Miller, Sammy Watkins). I’m not sure the Jaguars landed those sorts of players here. I do believe the Jags are in position to compete for a championship, but I don’t think these moves drastically changed their chances -- and they paid a staggering amount to get there.
Can Kirk Cousins fix what’s wrong with the Vikings?
How the tables turn. Three years ago, feeling trapped by Cousins’ lofty salary and the midtier starter production that accompanied it, the Vikings moved on from their longtime starter, allowing him to leave in free agency for the Falcons. It didn’t go well for either party. Cousins, coming off a torn Achilles, was benched by the end of his first year in Atlanta before eventually leaving to join the Raiders. The Vikings, seeking low-cost options at quarterback, cycled through Sam Darnold, Nick Mullens, Daniel Jones, J.J. McCarthy, Carson Wentz, Max Brosmer, Joshua Dobbs, Jaren Hall and Kyler Murray under center without finding a long-term solution.
Now, the idea of midtier starter play has Vikings fans eager to welcome the once-maligned Cousins back to town. The Vikings rank 28th in QBR this season, and after a brutally ineffective performance by Wentz as he filled in for an injured Murray against the Bills on “Monday Night Football,” general manager Nolan Teasley basically had no choice but to act. The Vikings have a championship-caliber defense and can’t count on defensive coordinator Brian Flores sticking around forever. Justin Jefferson has spent the past two weeks looking as if he’s about to run into the tunnel and never return.
Enter Cousins. Given how desperate the Vikings must have seemed after last night, Teasley did well to land Cousins without needing to send a second-round pick to the Raiders. The first-year general manager was also able to hold onto the third-round pick he landed from the Eagles as part of the Jonathan Greenard trade, which is likely to be a much better pick than Minnesota’s own third-round selection.
The irony is that Cousins is coming off his worst game with the Raiders. He threw three interceptions against the 49ers in last week’s loss. One was an almost comical series of mishaps, as Cousins fumbled a play-action exchange, tried to throw late into the flat and handed a gift of a pick-six to 49ers linebacker Jaden Dugger. It’s the sort of play that would have driven Vikings fans to insist on a new quarterback if it had been Wentz doing the same thing against the Bills.
The final interception Cousins threw was more concerning. Working from a clean pocket, he recognized that he had quarters coverage on the left and wanted to hit a shot over the top to speedy wideout Tre Tucker. His throw was about 3 yards too short, allowing Malik Mustapha to catch up for a leaping interception. Cousins is 23rd in QBR on deep throws this season with an off-target rate over 35%. He has hit that throw on occasion over the past two years, but I would be a little concerned that the Vikings aren’t going to be able to consistently throw deep with Cousins.
Of course, the Vikings haven’t had quarterbacks who can throw short or intermediate, and Cousins offers an upgrade there. As has been the case for most of his career, Cousins thrived working out of play-action for Klint Kubiak in Las Vegas, where his 76.6 QBR was the third-best mark in the league before the trade. The Vikings have actually been much better with play-action (20th) than without (30th) by QBR this season while running play-fakes at the fifth-highest rate so far this season.
Cousins is also comfortable operating from under center, which should go a long way for a Vikings offense that was forcing Murray to grow more familiar working there. Minnesota was under center about 39% of the time with Murray on the field and slightly more often with Wentz. And though the offense wasn’t good in any situation, the Vikings were better under center (23rd by EPA per play) than they were out of shotgun (29th) this season. I’d expect Kevin O’Connell to get the offense under center more often.
Can that fix Minnesota’s moribund run game? Cousins was operating with the league’s worst rushing attack in Las Vegas by just about any metric, but the Vikings aren’t much better, ranking 27th in success rate on rush attempts this season. The vision for this run game heading into the year was a zone-heavy approach, but the Vikings haven’t shown much aptitude for getting it to work. Getting under center should help, but it’s fair to wonder whether the Vikings left something on the table by not addressing their running back situation.
It’s absolutely fair to say that Cousins raises the floor for the Vikings, which was something that needed to happen given that they were going three-and-out at the second-highest rate in the NFL. At the bare minimum, picking up a few more first downs per game would keep the defense off the field and allow the unit to rest, a problem that has bit the Vikings in each of their two losses. After allowing the Bills and Lions to average 3.1 yards per carry and post a 24% success rate in the first half of their games, the Vikings’ run defense has gassed out in the second half, giving up 5.3 yards per carry and a 53.3% success rate in the second half.
Does Cousins actually have the ceiling to put the Vikings in contention to win a Super Bowl? I’m not sure. The best midtier quarterback for this team would have been someone who could protect the football and not hand the opposing team short fields, and that has never been Cousins’ forte. I obviously can’t fault the Vikings for trying, and they paid a reasonable price to see what they look like with Cousins in the fold, but he’s entirely capable of the same sort of meltdowns or game-long slumps we’ve seen from Wentz and Murray this season.
If the Cousins move fails, what happens next could be even more dramatic. O’Connell had deservedly earned a reputation as one of the league’s best offensive architects after building successful offenses with Cousins, Dobbs and Darnold under center, but recent results haven’t been quite as promising. McCarthy’s (admittedly very small sample of) success in New York after being traded to the Giants earlier this year doesn’t help O’Connell’s case. If the Vikings do squander this dominant defense and miss out on the playoffs in a brutally-difficult NFC North, would ownership prioritize keeping Flores around, even if it meant promoting the defensive coordinator to head coach?
Do the Bengals know how the compensatory pick formula works?
NFL front offices aren’t always as competent as you might think. There’s the famous story of the Browns failing to complete a trade for AJ McCarron in 2017 when they failed to notify the league in time. The Vikings failed to execute a trade down in the 2003 draft and passed on their first-round pick twice as part of an attempt to save money. The institutional knowledge of executives and scouts is collectively very strong, but edge cases slip through the cracks more often than you think.
That happened Tuesday afternoon, when reports began to leak that the Bengals were about to acquire edge rusher Arnold Ebiketie from the Eagles for a sixth-round pick. Nick Korte, who writes for the OverTheCap website and focuses on compensatory pick analysis, noted on social media that the trade would cause the Bengals to inherit Ebiketie’s compensatory pick compensation, costing them the third-round pick they had earned for Trey Hendrickson in the process.
Frankly, this wasn’t even an obscure or unprecedented situation. The fact that teams inherit potential compensatory pick implications when they trade for a player is spelled out in the CBA. The Bengals had lost three players who qualified for compensatory picks and had signed only two -- Bryan Cook and Boye Mafe, who offset those selections. The only compensatory pick left to cancel out was Hendrickson. Korte realized it before the Bengals did.
Hours later, with the trade yet to be official, the Bengals realized that looking bad was less expensive than trading a third-round pick for a half-season of a rotational pass rusher. The organization told NFL insiders that they were no longer going through with the Ebiketie deal, acknowledging in the process that the compensatory pick issue was the reason why. Give the Bengals credit for being honest, but it’s remarkable that the front office of a multibillion dollar organization had to be reminded of the compensatory pick rules by a (very smart and well-researched) person on social media.
Though it has become more common to talk about compensatory picks and their impact on decision-making over my time covering the NFL, this has always been a relatively opaque process and one in which teams have looked to outside sources to understand the league’s formula. I once mentioned the name “AdamJT13” to an NFL general manager in referring to the name of a blog that had reverse-engineered the compensatory pick formula and saw his eyes light up as if I were describing an old friend or an obscure band he loved.
Korte, incredibly enough, had already saved the Bengals from losing a third-round compensatory pick. When the Bengals lost Jessie Bates to the Falcons in free agency, they were initially awarded a sixth-round pick as compensation, which was at odds with Korte’s projection. He tweeted about the issue and the league quickly corrected the mistake, awarding the Bengals a third-round pick instead. At some point, it just seems as if the Bengals should hire Korte, if only to protect their compensatory picks.
What does the Josh Downs trade tell us about the 2027 Chiefs?
The Chiefs needed one more receiver after Tyquan Thornton dislocated his ankle. Counting on Rashee Rice to be available every week would be foolish. We’re coming up on 2½ years of Xavier Worthy failing to make a weekly impact during the regular season. After averaging 1.3 yards per route run as a rookie, Worthy maintained that mark while battling a shoulder injury during the 2025 season. This was supposed to be the year he took a step forward, but Worthy has averaged 1.1 yards per route run and has broken one tackle in nine weeks. The oft-suggested reunion with Tyreek Hill might still occur, but the Chiefs can’t count on a 32-year-old coming off a multiligament knee injury to transform their passing game.
I wondered whether the Chiefs might choose to lean into heavier personnel groupings by trading for a tight end like Dallas Goedert, but Downs offers some of the separation and after-the-catch creativity that Patrick Mahomes needs in this offense. Downs’ top speed isn’t spectacular, as he has topped 20 mph once this season, but he had an elite 10-yard split coming out of North Carolina and can win quickly off the line of scrimmage. Downs has a 67 open score in ESPN’s receiver scores across his four years in the league, in line with stars such as Puka Nacua and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Downs isn’t that same caliber of wideout, but he’s going to be a useful player in this offense.
How long will he -- or the other receivers on his new team -- be there? Downs is an unrestricted free agent after the season. So is Rice, who wasn’t able to command an extension from the Chiefs given his history of both injuries and suspensions. The Chiefs will decide on Worthy’s fifth-year option for 2028 next spring and could decide to move on before the start of next season. Thornton is under contract for 2027, but just $2 million of his $5.5 million salary is guaranteed, and the ankle injury could scare the Chiefs into not letting the other $3.5 million lock. And as we say every year, this might be Travis Kelce’s final pro season.
That’s a lot of vacated targets. It feels like the second half of 2026 and the playoff run for these wide receivers will be an audition, both for the Chiefs and the other 31 teams. And though Downs is new to the organization, I’d argue that he has a real shot of sticking after the season. It’s hard to imagine the Chiefs making a serious commitment to Rice on a multiyear deal given his off-field issues. Worthy hasn’t looked like a starting-caliber wide receiver outside of the stray game or two. The Chiefs will need an X receiver to play on the outside alongside Downs and Thornton in three-wideout sets if that’s who returns in 2027, but if this is a three-way battle between Downs, Rice and Worthy for one spot in the lineup next year, the new Chiefs wideout might already be the favorite.
Why weren’t more trades made?
Though we did get a handful of trades over the final 48 hours, this wasn’t quite as dramatic of a trade deadline as some would have forecast. (Myself included.) Plenty of big names who seemed likely to be on the move, such as Riq Woolen, Jonathan Taylor, Budda Baker and Khalil Mack, all stayed put. The biggest trade happened two weeks ago, when the Bears moved two first-round picks for Jeffery Simmons.
Why didn’t we get more? To start, with the 14-team playoff structure, there aren’t many teams that are completely out of the playoff picture. ESPN’s FPI still gives 22 of the league’s 32 teams at least a 5% chance of making it to the postseason, in part because the NFC East and NFC South are still up for grabs among a bunch of subpar teams. Of the 10 remaining teams, eight traded at least one veteran for draft capital over the past two weeks. The only exceptions were the Ravens, who are counting on getting Lamar Jackson back by the end of the year, and the Dolphins, who are rebuilding around young players and lost a potential trade candidate in Zach Sieler to a torn biceps last week.
With few teams willing to trade talent, asking prices were very clearly in the stratosphere. The Titans got a massive haul for Simmons to go with a second-round pick for Amani Hooker, who went to the safety-needy Bills. The Eagles landed multiple high draft picks for Davis and Cam Jurgens, who weren’t essential to the franchise moving forward. The Raiders got a third-round pick for Cousins, who is owed a $10 million bonus next year as part of a contract option that probably will be rejected, weeks before they were likely to bench the starter for Fernando Mendoza.
I’m surprised that some teams didn’t move players who were out of favor at the bottom of their rosters. Given how many teams need offensive linemen around the league, it was a surprise that the Raiders didn’t move Jackson Powers-Johnson or that the Commanders didn’t trade Andrew Wylie. The Chargers moved only pending free agent Daiyan Henley while holding onto veterans such as Mack and Donte Jackson. The Panthers didn’t trade Ja’Tavion Sanders despite so many teams needing tight ends. The Eagles, in the middle of what’s very clearly a retooling, didn’t trade Woolen, Dallas Goedert or Zack Baun.
The Colts holding onto Taylor was surprising, given that they’re likely to command a more significant premium for their star back now than they would during the offseason, but it’s fair to point out that the 27-year-old could still be a viable contributor on a Colts team that’s beginning to come out of a rebuild in two or three years. I can understand Indy holding out for a Christian McCaffrey-sized return to trade their most popular player. If that deal wasn’t on the table, trading Taylor for something less than full value wasn’t going to win any hearts and minds in Indianapolis.
Which teams will look back and regret not doing more?
Of course, that leaves plenty of teams that were going to be active in the trade market but didn’t do much (or anything at all) at the deadline. Let’s finish up by running through four teams that might have disappointed their fans by staying out of the news Tuesday and figure out what happened:
Los Angeles Rams: It seems natural to start here, given that the top wideout on a team that’s actually all-in to win this season is currently ... Konata Mumpfield? Tutu Atwell? The Rams were already down Davante Adams for two months because of a hamstring injury. On their final offensive snap of Sunday’s win over the Commanders, Puka Nacua suffered a multiligament knee injury executing a third-and-11 jet sweep, probably putting him on injured reserve. He’s out indefinitely.
The Rams were reportedly looking for help at wide receiver, but no deal shook out. In part, that’s because of the unique profiles of both injured receivers. There’s not a real like-for-like replacement for Nacua around the league when you consider his impact as a receiver, creator after the catch and blocker with Los Angeles’ gap run scheme. The Rams build their entire play-action game around Nacua’s impact. Even if there was a player who could step in on the fly and do that for Los Angeles, why would his team want to trade that superstar wide receiver to the Rams?
Adams plays a more traditional role as the X receiver, although his ability to get open near the goal line is one of a kind. If the Rams added a short-term option to replace Adams on the outside, though, that receiver probably was going to be shunted into a backup role once Adams returns. Guys such as Keenan Allen and Calvin Ridley don’t fit stylistically as Adams replacements. And though the Rams could have gone for a multiyear solution, there wasn’t really one available at the deadline once the Jaguars decided they weren’t going to deal Brian Thomas Jr.
Though the Rams weren’t able to find an answer via a trade, there just might be a solution coming free in the next few days. Brandon Aiyuk would be a short- and potentially long-term replacement for Adams in the lineup. He obviously isn’t a sure thing after tearing his ACL and spending two full years out of football, but he has a higher upside than anybody else the Rams could have acquired and won’t cost them a draft pick. The Rams, along with the Chiefs, would give Aiyuk the best chance of putting some good reps on film before he hits free agency next offseason. Playing with Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs would be great for anybody, but you have to imagine that playing for the Rams -- the 49ers’ archrival -- would really appeal to Aiyuk.
Even if the Rams aren’t planning to add Aiyuk, one alternative would have been upgrading the offense elsewhere. Starting guard Steve Avila is out for several weeks because of a hamstring injury, and tight end Terrance Ferguson pulled his hamstring just before returning from injured reserve and might not be able to return before his window to leave injured reserve expires. Adding a tight end or some offensive line depth wouldn’t have been the worst idea for the Rams, but they’ll have to move on.
New York Giants: Despite rumors linking John Harbaugh to upgrades at running back, defensive tackle and a handful of other spots in the lineup, the Giants didn’t make a single addition at the deadline. Sacrificing significant draft capital for Jonathan Taylor might not have made sense, and the trade compensation for defensive tackles appear to have been at SkyMall levels, but it has to feel like a disappointment that the Giants didn’t add depth at either position.
I wonder how much the Ravens and Chargers mostly deciding to hold onto their veterans mattered here, given that Harbaugh has shown an affinity for adding players from those organizations (and front offices) he knows best since joining the Giants. It’s also true that New York will get Cam Skattebo back from his hamstring injury sooner than later, but the Giants are relying heavily on a player who was a healthy scratch for them earlier in the year in Devin Singletary. They’re one injury away from Greg Desrosiers Jr. stepping in as their primary running back.
Like the Rams, the Giants are probably going to look toward veteran free agency as a place to add depth. It wouldn’t be a shock to see them bring in someone like Taven Bryan for a tryout at defensive tackle. Backs like Antonio Gibson and D’Ernest Johnson are still available in free agency. Given that they’re in position to win the NFC East for the first time since 2011, though, I’m a little surprised that the Giants didn’t make at least one move for a rotational player on offense or defense.
Detroit Lions: The Lions did make one of the smaller trades of the past week, sending a sixth-round pick to the Jets for Andre Cisco. He fell out of the lineup in New York after playing 168 of 174 snaps over the first three weeks of 2026. He’s a special teams player and a depth option for Detroit behind Brian Branch, Chuck Clark, Christian Izien and what will hopefully soon be a returning Kerby Joseph at safety.
In a division in which the Bears added Jeffery Simmons and the Vikings traded for Cousins, though, are the Lions going to look back and rue that they weren’t more aggressive? Detroit went another deadline without adding a secondary pass rusher behind Aidan Hutchinson. They also stuck with what they have at cornerback, a decision that I find confusing at best. Landing a shutdown cornerback probably wasn’t going to happen, but couldn’t they have asked the Jets about 2025 Pro Bowl player Nahshon Wright, a pending free agent who hasn’t played a single snap on defense all season? Should they have found a way to trade for Woolen from the Eagles or former Lions starter Carlton Davis III, who was rumored to be available in New England?
The Lions have an expensive core of talent, so I understand why GM Brad Holmes wanted to hold onto his draft capital, especially given that Detroit has been arguably too aggressive trading up for players during the draft in years past. The Lions shouldn’t have been all-in, but with their offense, I think it’s fair for fans to be disappointed that the organization didn’t add at least one defensive starter at the deadline.
Cincinnati Bengals: I’ll finish with the Bengals, who are in the middle of a four-game winning streak and playing their best sustained stretch of football in years. Of course, they very nearly made a move for Ebiketie but backed off after the compensatory impact became clear. They didn’t follow that move by making any sort of trade for a secondary edge rusher, a role that probably will fall instead to struggling 2025 first-round pick Shemar Stewart.
I would have loved to have seen the Bengals add a difference-maker at linebacker or safety, where regulars such as Jordan Battle and Barrett Carter are stretched as starters. Reuniting with Bates would have been a dream, although I can understand why the Bengals didn’t outbid the Jaguars given the cost for Jacksonville. Calling the Colts about Cam Bynum or the Giants about Tyler Nubin would have seemed like logical next steps.
And at linebacker -- a problem spot for the Bengals going back nearly a decade -- there surely must have been opportunities to try to add a starter. Even if the idea of adding Zack Baun might have been too expensive, it’s a surprise that the Bengals didn’t outbid the Broncos for Daiyan Henley, whose sound tackling would have been another step in the right direction for a defense that’s still struggling to take down ball carriers after they get past the first level. A pending free agents such as Mack Wilson Sr. of the Cardinals might also have made sense.
Again, given the quality of what the Bengals are putting out on offense, adding at least one more starter on defense felt like a realistic goal for this deadline. The Bengals didn’t get there.