Our weekly afternoon notes with the trade deadline less than 24 hours away …
• The Ravens’ trade of second- and fifth-round picks for Roquan Smith is very much a Baltimore deadline move. They’ve made these sorts of deals in the past, with Eugene Monroe, Marcus Peters and Yannick Ngakoue big names to come in over the past decade. Two of those trades were made to bring in guys, such as Smith, in contract years—they wound up re-signing Monroe in March 2014, five months after trading for him, and losing Ngakoue the offseason after dealing for him.
It won’t be cheap to keep Smith, and the Ravens presumably won’t have the franchise tag to preserve his rights, absent a deal getting done with Lamar Jackson before March. But if they lose him, they’d presumably have a third-round compensatory pick coming back in 2024, and they already had an extra fifth-rounder in ’24, which they acquired from the Patriots two summers ago for young corner Shaun Wade.
As for what he’ll do for the Ravens on the field, pairing Smith with Patrick Queen off the ball will make it a real challenge for offensive lines to get up on Baltimore at the second level. And Smith is better in coverage than Queen, which should allow coordinator Mike Macdonald a little flexibility in how he deploys the two of them.
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On the Bears’ side of this, I think things are pretty academic. If they weren’t going to re-sign him, and contract talks with Smith—who represents himself—didn’t go anywhere, then it makes sense to get value for him now, particularly since Matt Eberflus’s system typically favors bigger, longer linebackers (à la Shaq Leonard). Doing this now gives Chicago three picks in the first two rounds next year, and eight in the first five rounds. So the Bears will have a lot of capital to build more effectively around Justin Fields.
• The Elijah Moore situation in New York continues to mystify those within the Jets’ building—on Sunday, after a loss to the Patriots, he told the media that he doesn’t know whether he has chemistry with Zach Wilson “because I don’t get the ball.”
Even more confusing: Moore had a sterling reputation coming out of Ole Miss in 2021, a guy who was seen as one of the cleanest players in that class (despite the infamous dog-peeing incident in the Egg Bowl), and projected as a future team captain in the pros. It’s also not like he’s been lacking for play-time—prior to his trade request, he actually led all Jets receivers in snaps played.
If this is purely about getting the ball, which it seems it is, then that’s probably not going to be great for his trade value since he’s in a competitive receiver room with the likes of Corey Davis, Garrett Wilson and Braxton Berrios among those competing for touches. And because of that, it doesn’t make any sense for the Jets to move on now, and sell low on a player playing on the second year of an affordable four-year rookie deal.
So it looks like the Jets will ride this one out. And, yes, like I said, it’s weird for the guys working there. When I asked one staffer about it earlier this month, his response was simply, “The world we live in.”
• There’s no need to go blow-by-blow through contributions of the Seahawks’ super-six rookies (tackles Charles Cross and Abe Lucas, tailback Kenneth Walker III, edge rusher Boye Mafe and corners Tariq Woolen and Coby Bryant) again like we did last week. By now, you probably know their impact.
But it was interesting to ask Geno Smith about the group in general after Sunday’s win over the Giants, as a guy who started all 16 games as a rookie back in 2013, and what sticks out about them.
“Honestly, yeah, I would say they’re special,” he said. “I think by all measures, you’re just talking about who they are as people, then you go to who they are as athletes, [and] they’re all-around special. And then you see them on the field being productive, it just speaks for itself. And they’re continuing to grow; they’ve got a lot of room to improve, which is the scary part, and that goes for our entire team.
“So the main thing that we have to do is to continue to stay humble and just keep working and not worry about anything else and just stay focused and continue to work until there’s no work left to do.”
Safe to say, it’s a pretty exciting time for that whole franchise. And that all of this feels like it’s come out of nowhere only adds to it.
• I didn’t think Terry McLaurin would go where he did when I asked about having Taylor Heinicke’s trust the past two weeks—Heinicke made a couple throws where he put complete faith in McLaurin being where he was supposed to be at the wire of Commanders’ wins over the Packers and the Colts—but I’m glad he did.
Here’s how the Washington star answered the question.
“If you want to be a great receiver in this league, you want to be a go-to guy,” he said. “You want to be in those situations with the game on the line to be trusted to make that play. And I know I kind of said it last week, against a corner like [Jaire]Alexander, that just doesn’t happen. Coach [Scott] Turner just doesn’t call the play. I think it comes from the reps, I think it comes from the trust that I’ve tried to earn since I’ve walked into this building, since this coaching staff’s been here, since Taylor’s been back there, Carson [Wentz], whoever’s back there.
“My sole focus is trying to make them as comfortable as possible, to know that 17’s going to get his job done and he’s going to make the play. I just want to continue to try to earn that respect.”
• The Lions moving on from defensive backs coach Aubrey Pleasant is, indeed, the first sign of the heat being turned up on the Dan Campbell–Chris Spielman–Brad Holmes braintrust the Ford family put in place 21 months ago. Simply put, Detroit’s defense was a disaster, and someone had to pay the price.
I also think it’s interesting how perception lines up with reality here. I can remember asking around about position coaches a couple years ago, and touching base with Rams people on promising young assistants there. I brought Pleasant’s name up, who was well-regarded at the time. But, I was consistently told that the real guy there was the quieter, more reserved of the secondary coaches, Ejiro Evero.
That’s the same Evero who’s led one of the NFL’s top defenses in Denver over the past couple months, in his first season as a coordinator.
• It was interesting to listen to Kyle Shanahan raise Christian McCaffrey’s upbringing as we talked on Sunday night. It’s not, of course, why the 49ers traded for him, but that Shanahan knew how he was raised sure didn’t hurt.
“I’ve known Ed and Lisa for so long, and that’s just been totally separate from this,” said Shanahan of McCaffrey’s parents. “I never expected to get Christian, and it just kinda happened in a couple days, and to have him, to have a player like that, that’s what was so neat. Whenever you make a big deal for a talented guy, you might worry if you don’t know him that well. I mean, I didn’t know him except from when he was like 3, 4 years old. So it was just his parents that I really knew.
“But you know what type of person you’re dealing with. You know how important it is to him. You know he’s been planning for this moment since he could remember, which is very similar to how I’d look at things, too. It’s neat to have him on our team.”
• In Monday morning’s Week 8 takeaways, we gave the 12 teams with the most cap space ahead of tomorrow’s trade deadline. Here, on the other side of the ledger, are the 12 with the least:
1) Vikings: $1.35 million
2) Titans: $1.59 million
3) Patriots: $1.77 million
4) Bills: $2.07 million
5) Ravens: $2.38 million*
6) Texans: $2.96 million
7) Lions: $3.00 million
8) Rams: $3.02 million
9) Giants: $3.12 million
10) Seahawks: $3.21 million
11) Saints $3.24: million
12) Chiefs $3.39: million
*The Ravens’ number is from before the Smith deal.
• The Colts are in a fascinating spot going into the deadline. If I were a team looking for help at linebacker (Bobby Okereke? E.J. Speed?) or receiver (Parris Campbell?), I’d be checking in with GM Chris Ballard to see if there are deals to be made.
• To add on to what I had from Titans center Ben Jones in the Monday morning takeaways, there was something he said to me that I thought was interesting on Mike Vrabel’s bond with his team.
“You know he cares,” Jones said. “He cares about you as a player and your family, and he knows what it takes to actually sacrifice and go through it because he’s been through it. And he puts everything on the table for us so we can go out and play. And he knows how hard it is to win in this league and what we play through to get wins here and how we give it our all, and a guy that ... it means a lot to him. We’re his family.
“We’re not just players to him. We mean something to him. He checks on us constantly. We’re just a part of his family.”
• To wrap up here, it’s worth reiterating that the big pass rushers (Brian Burns, Bradley Chubb, Josh Allen) are the ones worth watching before Tuesday’s 4 p.m. ET cutoff. The Rams, who made a monster, quarterback-level offer for Burns, are one team in that mix. I’d put the Chiefs, Ravens and Titans in there with them.
Chubb, to me, is particularly interesting because he’s in a contract year, and talks on a long-term deal between him and the Broncos haven’t yet gotten off the ground. Stay tuned on that one.
