These Contenders Have To Go All In at the Deadline

Before we get to Sunday's games, Albert, let's catch everybody up on what has happened with the trade deadline to this point.

The latest news, the Jacksonville Jaguars send a 2 and a 5 to the Atlanta Falcons for Jesse Bates.

Atlanta covers a lot of the salary, so it's kind of a draft pick purchase for The Atlanta Falcons, a little bit surprising though.

Bates was playing well this year.

He had a couple really good games.

The Jaguars though, make it an offer that's too good to refuse.

They had, I mean, safety go down two weeks ago.

It was, yeah, I think it was a good trade all around.

Yeah, I love this for Atlanta.

I, I just to get a guy in a contract year, a non-premium position, um, to get a 2 for him, I think is massive.

I mean, that's obviously an older player.

Jesse Bates had a really good career.

Um, the Jaguars were looking for defensive help.

Um, safety was, I don't think safety was even at the top of their list.

I could still see them adding a defensive tackle or an edge player.

Um, that was really primarily where they were looking and where they have been looking.

Um, but this is a very big swing, and Jesse Bates is like one of the most cerebral.

Like Smart, like, like cerebral and smarts redundant, and that's cause I was up till 2 a.m. writing last night, but you know what I mean, like, the, um, the, the, the most cerebral, um, in control, um.

I'm gonna turn my phone off now.

How about that?

Uh, one of the, one of, one of the more cerebral and control safeties in all football, he's capable of running the defense from the back end.

Um, there's just, there's a lot to like about acquiring him if you're Jacksonville.

I think the question would be the price and Um, you know, again, to, to get a 2 and a 5 for him, I think the Falcons did great.

Once Eric Murray went down, you figured that it was two-tiered, that they were going to go for a defensive tackle to replace Devon Hamilton and then a safety to replace Murray.

I don't think that they're anywhere close to being done.

And as much as I think they wanted to rebuild their pick, uh, stockpile after.

The Travis Hunter trade this year, you gotta go for it.

Like this is, this is the year the rest of the division's crap.

Trevor Lawrence is playing great.

Liam Cohen's on a heater.

Anthony Campanale and Grant Udinsky might be head coaches next year somewhere else, Albert, right?

And so I think this is the year that you gotta punch the pedal, and it's good to see Gladstone, uh, doing that.

Um, the Giants, and they have like, and they have like they have a good.

Base of picks to begin with, they're doing what the Rams would do, which makes sense because that's where, where James is from, but like they, they're, they're starting to build up compensatory picks and mid like and that's what the Rams did.

The Rams were willing to move higher-end picks, uh, because they, they would, they would, they would have so much capital backfilled in the 4th and 5th rounds, and that's sort of the part of the logic here too.

And I think too, right, um.

I mean, let's not sugarcoat it, right?

The NIL era makes draft capital incredibly difficult to predict, incredibly difficult.

Uh, 3 years ago , 4 years ago, it was like, OK, this guy's got graduate and come to the, to the professional ranks at some point.

Not so anymore.

You can play in college football for 11.5 years, you can collect your pension, you can retire comfortably as the quarterback at Utah State and, uh, and never have to work again.

And so, I think that there is just a different level.

And it, and it does kind of sandwich the value.

Now, right, you're gonna get Arvel Reese at the top of the draft, you're gonna get guys like David Bailey at the top of the draft, but If you look at even like Defensive Rookie of the Year right now, it's Reese, it's Bailey, but it's also guys like Jacob Rodriguez, right?

2nd-round pick.

And so, I think that, you know , and, and you could say that about most years, I would say offensively and defensively.

And so, I think Jacksonville's like, hey, we know what we need, we know who we are.

So, why not just, you know, use some of these picks to get established veteran talent.

And that's why I wanted to bring the Giants into this, Albert, because That's exactly what John Harbaugh is trying to do.

Uh, they had a 2 and a 5 on the table for Jonathan Taylor and then yanked the offer.

I dug that.

I dug the fact that John Harbaugh did not deny it either, uh, when he was asked about it postgame.

Uh, it sounds like the Colts are going to basically, you know, this is gonna be an eBay-style auction for Jonathan Taylor.

Yeah, I don't know about that .

I mean, like, I, I would just, I think there's some background here that I can help with like I.

I do think, so, I would say this, a couple of weeks ago, they traded Quentin Nelson and De Forest Buckner.

They get a 3 and a 5 for Nelson, they get a 4 for Buckner, and they got, I think, killed, like in the media for it, right?

Like, like that they didn't get enough.

And I don't think that's the case because both those guys are aging and both those guys are in contract years, and so I, I don't think they did poorly in those trades.

Um, but because those guys are big brand name players, multi-time time All-Pro, all of that, they did take a little bit of a beating.

And so, the sense I've gotten talking to other teams is that the Colts have pushed everybody back to this week, and basically saying that our owner , our management, whoever, thinks that we're gonna do better just on our return.

If we wait until the 36 hours leading up to the deadline, when teams have already played their week 9 games and have a more full view of where they are.

And we'll see if that works or not, but the asking price for Taylor was high.

The asking price for Taylor was a 1 or the Christian McCaffrey deal.

Are they willing to come off of that?

I don't know.

You know, I wrote on Friday, the Giants were the closest offer to, to the closest team to, to, to, to getting.

Um, to, to, to, to getting to the threshold that the Colts were looking for in Taylor.

The Vikings, the Broncos, like they, they, they inquired, and they weren't willing to go there.

The Giants got closer.

So is there another team that emerges now?

Do the Giants add a sweetener?

Like, I think all of these things are sort of, What you're looking at when and Taylor is a great player, um.

But I think like John Harbaugh's approach with this, which was really interesting.

I texted him last night, and so I had this in the column, yes, uh, I had, I had this in the column overnight, and I asked him like, is this a reflection on Well, how do you see your team?

And he responded, um , and I thought, again, like this was kind of going the other way on it, which I was hoping he would, but he said, No, that's not how we look at winning.

You're never one thing away.

This is not addition and subtraction.

The math is running on multiple levels of formulas and algorithms and humanity.

You have to assess your options and opportunities, seek value, what makes you better short-term and long-term, and avoid what hinders your team, even impossibility.

It's a case by case decision regarding options.

The work is on finding and creating the options.

That's where the stones have to get turned over.

We are building day by day for what's coming tomorrow and in the future both.

And so, In a nutshell, what he's saying is we owe it to ourselves to look into everything.

We owe it to ourselves to take swings.

We owe it to ourselves to pull every lever, and this goes back to the Simmons thing too.

They've called on players that are not available, you know what I mean?

Like they've called teams on because they don't want to miss those opportunities, you know, and that's why they were aggressive on Simmons, whether that was a faux pas or not, you can, you can debate that, you know, but like defensive tackle help like.

If you're another team, why not call the Buccaneers on Vita A?

Why not call the Panthers on Derrek Brown?

Uh, like, now, I think the problem for those teams for like Carolina and Tampa, because they have gotten calls, when you get calls like that and you engage at all, it turns into, oh well, he's available.

No, he's not, then those teams have to manage that.

But if you're the team seeking the player, why wouldn't you do that, you know what I mean?

Like it's just.

I don't know.

I mean, we make such a big deal of the trade deadline, and it's because it creates traffic and conversation and all that different stuff.

But I do think it's like sort of created a real problem for these teams, you know, where they can't have these open conversations anymore because of the hysteria around every other player who's mentioned, you know, you're putting Vita Vela in a, you know, in a Jaguars edit, like jersey edit, and it's like, I mean, it, it can cause a problem, you know, so, I, I would say, like I, the, the Giants deserve credit for taking these sorts of swings.

Um, and it'll be interesting to see where it goes with the Colts over the next 24 hours, um, because Taylor's out there, you know, my, my understanding is on Jones, like they had told teams that call over the last week or so.

Um, not now.

That didn't mean not ever, um, but his, but his, his contract.

You know, like, and you look at his contract, his contract is very tradable.

If they're willing to eat the $44 million signing bonus.

And I don't think he's gonna request a trade out of respect for Shane Stein, who he loves as his head coach.

Um, but, you know, if you're Minnesota, would you swing on that?

So I think there's just some interesting things like some interesting pieces of conversation that can happen that sometimes get torpedoed because we make such a big deal out of it, outside of these teams, you know.

Um, I think that a couple of things are going to happen or need to happen before the trade deadline.

And I, I, I think that, again, the Jacksonville Jaguars, getting a defensive tackle is not a, it's not a question, it's a need.

Uh, they can't move forward without another defensive tackle, even though Jesse Bates, he'll help in a lot of different ways.

I mean, he's a run, he's a problem solver in the run game, and so you can, and Campanalli will do a great job.

Kind of moving the pieces around to make that work, but you need defensive tackle help.

If you're gonna have any serious ambitions of stopping the run and being, uh, a legitimate team, uh, in December and January, you need defensive tackle help.

The Jaguars will get a defensive tackle.

Um, the Giants will take a big swing.

I don't know who it is at this point.

But Harbaugh seems to be in the mindset that this team is already good enough, this division sucks, which I agree, you know, I don't think that anybody's kinda Fighting to take the mantle here even next year, right?

I mean, the Cowboys are probably gonna be worse next year.

Um, you know, they're gonna lose Pickens, they're gonna, you know, you know, Quinn Quinnin Williams is gonna turn 30 next season.

Kenny Clarke's gonna turn what, 33 next year.

I mean, you know, that, that team's gonna be worse.

Uh, the Eagles are not gonna have figured themselves out, uh, over the course of one offseason, at least I don't think so, and the Commanders will probably be starting over the new coach.

So, a lot of this makes sense.

I think that Harbaugh will take a swing.

The Vikings, and tell me if I'm wrong here, but like, something's gotta happen at the QB position.

Please tell me that something is happening.

I mean, the, the, the Raiders have now lost, what?

Well, no, not 5 straight, but because they had the Jets win in there, like, are we really, are we really holding on to Kirk Cousins just to, like, I think it would take something significant to get him out of there.

So this is the analogy here, the and I, and I know.

I do have like a an idea of what The Colts have already turned down for Daniel Jones.

What if, what if the Colts turned down for Daniel Jones?

Well, I, I, a multiple pick.

Like I, I, it's, it's not like insignificant.

I mean, it's not a huge price.

It's not the Jesse Bates price, but it's not insignificant, you know.

And so like I think what that message is, is that they're not just gonna give him away if that makes sense, you know what I mean?

Like they're not just gonna give him away, and I think it's the same thing.

With Cousins where, you know, I, I think there's like a, in both cases, you know, like there is a message that goes to the locker room.

In one case, you've got a first-year coach, you know, with Cousins and the Raiders.

In the other case, you've got a coach who's now in a really tough situation where the players might be looking for signs that he, he could be a lame duck, you know, like, so I think in both scenarios, there's like, there'd be challenges to walking away from your starting quarterback.

I mean, what people have to remember is this isn't Madden, you know, and these are human beings that are in these locker rooms.

And, you know, when you're talking about having 22, 23, 24 year year old players that you're looking to develop, you're trying to create the best environment from which they can develop.

And when you're early in your career, those last two months of the season can be really important because You're not gonna see them for 3 months after that, you know.

So how they leave the building could wind up painting how they handle January and February and March, and how they come back in April.

And so those things are all, I think those things are all really important.

And I mean, if you're the Colts, You know, like the part of the risk is, and I'm not saying they won't trade him, but part of the risk is, well, you know, if Apartment, well, if we, if we wind up offloading him now, what does this look like with Anthony Richardson as our quarterback?

It's a little better in Vegas, of course, because they've got Mendoza there.

So like the messaging would be a lot easier with your team , but, um, there is like a, an element here of dealing with human beings and like you just.

If you, if you go too far with a fire sale, you can create a bad environment for your players.

Let me ask you this now, um, because I, I'm wish casting at this point, and I know this, and anyone who's listening to this podcast is probably sick of me saying it, but I'm, I'm willing to up the ante now.

OK?

If you're the Minnesota Vikings, your, your first round pick is 30 next year at this point, right?

Why not trade your 1st round pick for Kirk Cousins at this point?

Honestly, I mean, but like, what, what, oh, I think the Raiders would do that, right, but that's what I'm saying, like, you know, uh, I mean, I'm not, that's not reported, that's just common sense.

I think the Raiders would do that, you know, right?

But like, and I'm not saying, you know, obviously you're gonna miss out on a player, but like, because what I think, I think the point, I think is you're not doing this, if you're gonna slam yourself into the playoffs with Carson Wentz and Kyler Murray, a quarterback who has a proven track record in your system.

That would unlock Justin Jefferson, like, because I think you got one of the oldest rosters in the league and you, you need resources to get younger.

I, I like that's the way I think that that's the way I look at it would be like there's gotta be a line somewhere, Connor, you know, and they are gonna have to get younger and do you think you can win the Super Bowl with Kirk Cousins?

Yes, you do.

OK.

I mean, so if that, if that, if that's what you think, then I'd say look at I would really think about a first round pick.

Yeah, look at Seattle last year.

I mean, Sam, look at, like Sam Darnold is, is Sam Darnold, right?

I mean, and it has always been Sam Darnold.

The Seahawks had a, a good run game.

They had an elite wide receiver that could take off yards after catch and make things happen, and they had one of the best defenses in the NFL.

Same formula, you know, um, Kirk Cousins is like, you know, 2nd in the league in touchdown passes right now.

And he knows the system.

Like you could, there would be no, you know, and, and again, I know I'm pushing this one, but like, and everyone's like a first-round pick for Kirk Cousins.

What, what's the point of doing this then?

It's like, oh, there's a calculation, we need to get younger here.

OK, then you're giving up on the season because Kyler Murray is not good enough, and we're gonna see Carson Wentz tonight.

It's just not, you know, I don't know, man.

It's not good enough.

It's not good enough.

I know, I, I know, I just play Madden a little bit, folks, you know, like, let's, you know.

I don't mind the idea.

I don't get, I don't mind the idea of it, a first-round pick being a little rich for me, you know, when the guy's probably not gonna be on your team next year and now I, but you have him under, but then you can make him the bridge quarterback, you know what I mean, right, right.

And then you play around in the offseason, whatever, you go get.

You know, you spend the 20 million or whatever you need to spend on Mac Jones, and then Mac Jones, Kirk Cousins, I don't know, man.

Make it work.

I I, I, you know, I haven't worked out the details fully in my head yet and I know that this is not like, but I, I would trade a 1st-round pick for Kirk Cousins right now.

I know that's insane, but it's the 30th, it's gonna be the 30th pick.

It's gonna be the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth pick.

So you trade a first round pick for Mac Jones.

No, because he doesn't know your system.

Kirk Cousins can come in tomorrow and Kevin O'Connell can unlock the little file cabinet behind his desk and say, OK, here's the call sheet, and here's what's interesting about Kevin.

This is, uh, uh, he told me this a couple of weeks ago.

Um, he has, so I'm sure he still has one with Kirk.

He goes into every game.

With different versions of his call sheet.

And depending on who comes in at quarterback, highlighted in different sections are the quarterback's favorite comfort zone plays.

And so, whatever.

If, if Kyler Murray gets hurt and Carson Wentz goes in, you flip the call sheet to the, to the other one, it's the same call sheet, right?

But another section of it's highlighted where it's like, OK, these are the wheelhouse plays for Carson Wentz, these are the wheelhouse plays for Kyler Murray.

You don't think he's got a stack of those?

You know, somewhere sitting around there, here's all the Kirk Cousins play, the play cards.

Justin Jefferson remembers the plays.

What does it matter?

I don't know, man.

Like, I, I, I just think we get so caught up in, like, the Browns have been running a version of this Ponzi scheme for a decade plus , where it's like, well, here's the calculation, and we gotta get older here, younger here, older here, younger here.

It doesn't matter.

Go win a goddamn Super Bowl.

I know, I know, I would just, I would just say this, like, I.

I think you have to.

I think like the Rams, like we talked about the Jaguars, right?

And the Rams are the same.

And what facilitated the Rams being able to do what they did over all those years they didn't have first-round picks is they had more draft picks than anyone in the league.

They just didn't have their first-rounders, right?

So they would have 3 4s or 2 3s or 4 5s, and they would be able to just take swing after swing after swing, and they would take, and they wound up like hitting on a bunch of guys later in the draft, Kyron Williams, Blake Coorum.

Pukaakua, I mean, if you go way back, Cooper Cupp, Alaric Jackson was a, was an undrafted free agent.

I mean, Byron Young, um, you know, Kobe Turner, Braden Fisk were all outside the first round, right?

Like, so, you go down the list and you see like they were hitting on all of these picks outside of the first round, and that's what facilitates that strategy.

And I don't know, but the Vikings.

I have to look at like their draft capital over the next couple of years, you know, cause if you do have a multitude of picks that facilitates you doing that, I just don't think you can be reckless with it.

So let me tell you this, the Vikings have the 1st round pick, their 2nd round pick.

They have a 3rd round pick for an additional 3rd round pick from the Eagles.

They have an additional 5th round pick, uh, from the Carolina Panthers, another additional 5th round pick from the Giants, an additional 6th round.

I feel a little better about it then, yeah, I feel a little better about it then.

Yes, yeah, come on.

Like, I, I, I, I'm, you just want shit to happen.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You know what this is like, You know what this is like.

Here's what it is, OK.

Here's the comp.

You spent $10,000 taking your family to Disney World, right?

And you want your family to have the time of your life.

You want them to have the trip that they're gonna remember forever, OK?

And then you get to the park and your little girl looks up at you and she says, I want to have breakfast with the princess.

It's an extra $200.

So you're gonna sit there, you're already at Disney, you've already paid the, the entry price, you've already paid the $100,000 and you're gonna look at your little kid in the eyes and say, no, the 200 bucks is, is, that's in the algorithm for another cost down the road.

No, like, make memories, make it happen.

Push the chips to the center of the table.

Gosh, darn it, like, I'm, I'm sick of this, like.

You know, and it's different for different teams.

Like the Browns, I think it's a legit Ponzi scheme.

Dallas, their owner is just full of hot air, and it's just like a hot air balloon, and that's different.

Minnesota, it's like, this is it.

The defense is never gonna be this good again.

Not never, but like, for another 50 years, this defense is not gonna be this good.

Do it now.

Like, you know, I, otherwise, what are we doing here?