Let’s review every major deal before the 2024 NFL trade deadline, which is November 5 at 4:00 PM ET. I’ll get things started by sending Las Vegas Raiders wideout Davante Adams to the New York Jets, reuniting Adams with the quarterback he played with during his time with the Green Bay Packers.

I’m a big believer in judging decisions based on the information available at the time. The saying “Let’s see how it works out” isn’t an option for general managers making deals for their teams, so why should it be up to us to evaluate those transactions? So when I review trades, I evaluate them for each team based on on-field impact, cap implications, draft compensation, and effects within the context of a team’s overall short- and long-term prospects. I like to think about decisions along two axes:

They both play a role in our grades, although a low-impact decision can still result in a high or poor grade. Low stakes, clear wins or losses still matter. I’ll be reviewing more deals in the next two weeks:

New York Jets get: W. Davante Adams
Las Vegas Raiders get: Conditional selection in the third round
Trade date: October 15

Figure for the Jets: A-
Rating for the Raiders: B-

It actually happened: The Jets reunited Davante Adams with Aaron Rodgers despite starting 2-4 and firing their coach a week ago. And you know what? It was the right move.

The Jets had pushed their chips in pretty far in hopes of a Super Bowl run before the 40-year-old Rodgers called it a career. The bull case remained the same Tuesday as it was in the preseason: a future Hall of Fame quarterback paired with an elite defense. The problem? The attack wasn’t good enough. Rodgers isn’t the MVP he was a few years ago, and the team needed another good pass catcher besides Garrett Wilson. Enter Adams. What’s actually going on with a few chips left in the pot at this stage?

However, there are legitimate questions about who exactly the Jets are getting. At his peak, Adams was the NFL’s best wide receiver. He led the NFL with 3.1 yards per route run and 18 touchdowns in 2020, the latter coming despite playing in 14 games. He also recorded an open score of 99, the highest possible score in our receiver stats. In 2021 and 2022 – his final season in Green Bay and then his first season as a Raider – he continued to put up huge numbers: he averaged 2.7 yards per route (third best) and had more than 3,000 receiving yards. His open score remained an elite 85 and 81 in those two seasons, respectively.

We started to see the first signs of Adams’ decline in 2023. His yards per route dropped to 2.0 and his open rating fell to 71. Those two numbers continued to drop in the three games he played this season, to 1.8 and 64. respectively. While the drop in yards can be somewhat attributed to the decline in quarterback quality, the open score is intended to take into account the quarterback on the field. The signs of what appears to be his decline are happening for him at an age (he turns 32 in December) when we would expect it.

At this stage, Adams is probably a top-15 or top-20 wide receiver. However, he is also worth more to the Jets than any other team. Chemistry with Rodgers seems elusive at this stage; somehow, Rodgers and Wilson have struggled to connect at times, while Allen Lazard, a much worse receiver who spent years with Rodgers, has flourished. New York has no more time to lose.

It’s perhaps ironic that some of the recent Jets dysfunction stems from ceding too much control to Rodgers, and yet the rational move at this stage was to give in to what he (almost certainly) wanted with the acquisition from Adams.

The offense, which looked much better in Monday’s 23-20 loss to the Bills after the team replaced Nathaniel Hackett with Todd Downing as playcaller, will be better with Adams. According to ESPN’s Football Power Index, the Jets are ranked as the 11th best team as of Tuesday morning and have a 46% chance of reaching the playoffs. They have a 4% chance of reaching the Super Bowl. These projections will likely increase with the Adams acquisition.

The costs of acquiring Adams are not excessively high. A third-round pick who could only become a second-rounder if things go really well – Adams should be an All-Pro or be active for the AFC title game or Super Bowl. The Raiders won’t eat any of his salary, so the Jets will pay a prorated share of the roughly $17 million in cash he was owed this year. That’s a good price for him with eleven games to go.

Adams may not remain a Jet beyond 2024, but the organization has to be okay with making this deal as a rental because it very well could be. He’s scheduled to make more than $36 million in cash through 2025, so if the Jets can’t work out a new contract with him before then, they’ll likely cut him. That’s still okay: the goal of this deal is to improve the Jets now.

By far the most likely outcome of all this is that we end up looking back on this deal as a failed third-round pick for the Jets. But that’s not what this trade is about for them: they’re playing for the upside, the less likely scenario where a few breaks go their way. In the world where that happens, Adams could absolutely be the player they need to score.

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What do you think of the Aaron Rodgers-Davante Adams reunion?

Adam Schefter reports on the Jets trading for Davante Adams and reuniting him with Aaron Rodgers after the two previously played with the Packers.

As for the Raiders, I want to be clear that the B-minus grade is solely for their decision-making today. Their entire Adams trade saga deserves an F because of the obviousness of the team’s mistake. Adams has long been an aging and declining player on a bad team with a value contract, and it was nothing but stubbornness on the franchise’s part that they didn’t trade him before this season, or the last trade deadline, or the offseason before that. . The delay was costly: Vegas could have gotten a lot more in return 12 months ago. Instead, it kept him around to now be able to treat him for less, while earning zero playoff berths as a result.

That said, once the Raiders found themselves in the position they found themselves in on Tuesday — with a lackluster team and a 32-year-old star receiver wanting out — dealing him is obviously the right move. Whatever the best price they could get was the best price they could get. Still, they should have tried to take Adams’ salary in exchange for additional draft compensation (if it was offered to them).

The Raiders have $26 million in cap space for 2024 and $80 million in cap space for 2025, according to OverTheCap.com. They might not be able to use all that capital space efficiently, and this gave them the opportunity to acquire additional draft capital to convert Adams’ salary into a bonus they pay. I won’t overly criticize this point, because we don’t know if the Jets wanted to do that – their cap situation isn’t all that different, although big contracts for Sauce Gardner and Wilson are looming. We also don’t know if they would have offered fair compensation, but paying off Adams’ deal should have been Las Vegas’ preference. If the Raiders not picking up Adams’ salary kept other teams out of negotiations (Buffalo?), then making this deal was even more expensive.