NFL Trades

The annual NFL Trade Deadline isn't much of a thing. Many in and around the game, some in the spiffy 345 Park Avenue offices, want it to be a thing but it simply isn't. It's rare for an in-season trade to have a significant impact in the NFL. There are too many moving parts in football team for a new player to be seamlessly incorporated into a team on the fly. It can take an entire offseason and training camp for a football player to get comfortable in a new system. It can take years for a player to be comfortable on a new team and in a new system. A handful of days in the middle of a season?  Forget about it. None of that keeps the talking heads in the media and fans everywhere from getting antsy with anticipation as the NFL Trade Deadline approaches. That deadline is Tuesday, 4 PM EST.

With all that nonsense being said there have been three trades in recent weeks.

Green Bay gets:
RB Knile Davis

Kansas City gets:
2016 7th(conditional)

After Eddie Lacy's injury the Packers were desperate for a running back. The Chiefs had a surplus even with Jamaal Charles being eased into the lineup. Knile Davis has shown a lot of promise when given the chance to carry the ball and a conditional 7th is hardly expensive.


Denver gets:
TE A.J. Derby

New England gets:
2017 5th

Despite making the Patriots' 53-man roster in his second season A.J. Derby was hardly going to get much playing time. Rob Gronkowski and Martellus Bennett were ahead of him. The most interesting aspect of this trade is that the Patriots selected Derby in the sixth round of the 2015 NFL Draft. Just over a year later they flip him for a fifth. How does a player with a few preseason highlights and only four real games with no statistics appreciate in value like that?

New England gets:
Kyle Van Noy
2017 7th

Detroit gets:
2017 6th

I really liked Kyle Van Noy when he was coming out of BYU in 2014. The Lions selected him in the second round. He finally broke into the Lions starting lineup this season. The surprise of the trade was that the Patriots managed to pry a seventh round pick out of the Lions in addition to one of their starting linebackers.

Taking the two trades together, it's remarkable that the Patriots to managed to acquire Kyle Van Noy, a 5th-, and a 7th-round pick for A.J. Derby and a 6th-round pick. That's some fine work by the Patriots decision-makers.