Halloween is one of the most beautiful holidays of the year. Who doesn’t love candy, the opportunity to get creative, put on a fun costume, and have a great time with friends? An added bonus of Halloween in 2023 is the NFL trade deadline at 4:00 p.m. ET! With the deadline just over two weeks away, now is as good a time as ever to take stock of the players who need to be moved to revive their careers and/or get out of a bad situation to free.
Here’s a look at 10 NFL players who would be better off trading in their current jersey for a new one, not as a Halloween costume, but as a full-time swap.
Davante Adams is one of the best wide receivers in football. His 17 receiving touchdowns are the most in the NFL since the start of the 2022 season. He has also been named First-Team All-Pro each of the last three seasons. However, his goal is not just to be one of today’s great receivers. Adams wants to be known as one of the greatest wide receivers of all time and complete his football journey in Canton, Ohio as a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In his first nine NFL seasons, Adams recorded 769 receptions for 9,637 receiving yards and 87 receiving touchdowns. Only one other player in league history has recorded more than 750 catches, 9,500 yards and 85 touchdowns in his first nine seasons: Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver Marvin Harrison.
However, Adams’ Hall of Fame career could be in jeopardy if he stays in Las Vegas much longer. He went three straight games without a touchdown or 100 yards in Weeks 4-6. This also happened in Weeks 13-15 last season, his first with the Raiders. The last time anything happened to him as a Green Bay Packer, his NFL home for his first eight seasons from 2014 to 2021, was in Weeks 14 to 17 of the 2015 season, his second year as a pro.
Adams also wasn’t particularly pleased with the Raiders’ team performance during their 3-3 start this season, saying via KSNV News 3 Las Vegas: “You can win a game and look like shit, and we’ve done that too many times. ” just.”
He originally came to the Raiders to win and continue putting up numbers to prove he could do both without Aaron Rodgers. Adams made one of his points clear with First-Team All-Pro season in 2022. If he really wants to win and keep his Hall of Fame dreams alive, he would be better off somewhere else.
The Carolina Panthers are the NFL’s last winless team at 0-6 and need plenty of help on offense, wide receiver and in the secondary, to name a few areas. The problem is that they traded their 2024 first-round pick and their 2025 second-round pick to the Chicago Bears as part of a package to move up eight spots and move quarterback Bryce Young to first overall in the 2023 NFL Draft set.
Two-time Pro Bowl outside linebacker Brian Burns, 25, deserves better. He has been one of the NFL’s top disruptors since the turn of the decade in 2020, but Burns has yet to reach the postseason.
Brian Burns stats as of 2020
QB pressure | 191 | 10 |
bags | 34.5 | 9 |
Tackles for loss | 45 | T-5 |
A year ago, the Los Angeles Rams reportedly offered several first-round picks to team Burns alongside three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald on their defensive line, but the Panthers chose not to accept the deal. Now it’s time to shop Burns, who is in a contract year. It would be a win-win situation considering Carolina could get much-needed draft capital and Burns could play for a team that has a win in 2023.
Everything can change in the NFL in two years. In 2021, Hunter Renfrow totaled 103 catches for 1,038 receiving yards and nine receiving touchdowns, earning the first Pro Bowl selection of his career. Then the Raiders rewarded him with a two-year contract extension worth $32 million in the 2022 offseason. However, he has simply not been fit in head coach Josh McDaniels’ offense since 2022. His best attribute is his ability to create his routes at will and drift into open spaces to make himself available to his quarterback.
McDaniels’ offense is based on structure, and it just didn’t fit. This season, Renfrow has just six catches for 59 yards on nine scores despite appearing in all six games. He has only been targeted twice in the last two weeks, including not at all in the Raiders’ 21-17 win over the New England Patriots in Week 7, a game in which he had just seven offensive snaps. It doesn’t help that Las Vegas signed former New England Patriot Jakobi Meyers to a three-year, $33 million contract last offseason to play a similar role to Renfrow.
Renfrow is only 27 years old and could still add a lot of value to another team’s offense if given a chance to succeed, which is not the case with McDaniels right now.
Chase Young earned NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year honors in 2020 after leading his rookie class in sacks with 7.5, but his career has been rocky since then. He played nine ACL games in the 2021 season and only returned to action in the final three games of the 2022 season. This uncertainty since 2020 led the Commanders to decline the fifth-year option on their former second overall draft pick, positioning him as a free agent after the 2023 season.
Another year removed from injury and the 24-year-old Young is back in form. His 31 quarterback pressures this season are the fifth-most in the NFL and his 6.2 pressures per game are the second-most in the league, behind only Raiders Pro Bowler Maxx Crosby (6.3 pressures per game). However, a trade would do wonders for him as it would get him out of a predicament. Before the Commanders’ 24-16 win at the Atlanta Falcons, Washington had allowed 33 or more points in each of the last four games.
In Sunday’s win over the Falcons, they outgained the team by 209 total yards (402 to 193), more than any team has in a win this season. A big part of that has to do with Washington’s leaky secondary, as its 248.2 passing yards allowed per game this season is the sixth-most in the league. The Commanders’ 2023 first-round pick, cornerback Emmanuel Forbes, is having trouble adjusting to the NFL with his 6-foot-1, 180-pound frame. He had no snaps in Week 6 and his 401 passing yards allowed in coverage were the second-most yards allowed in coverage in the NFL in Weeks 1 through 5, ahead of only the 423 yards allowed in that span by only the Arizona cornerback Cardinals, Marco Wilson, were granted.
Offensively, quarterback Sam Howell may have trouble staying healthy as he has absorbed 34 sacks in six games, the third-most sacks recorded in a team’s first games in the Super Bowl era since 1966. This inability to stay upright comes despite facing the Commanders with the sixth-lowest blitz rate (24.2%) in the NFL this season. Young is in a bad spot, but he could take a contender’s defense to new levels if given the opportunity.
Defensive end Carl Lawson was once considered a key figure in the New York Jets’ rebuild when they signed him to a three-year, $45 million contract in the 2021 offseason. He tore his Achilles tendon in 2021, and after starting all 17 games in 2022 and recording seven sacks, the second-most in a season of his career, he’s now on the outside looking in when it’s time to go about the playing time in 2023.
New York is the only team in the NFL to have three players with 25 or more quarterback pressures this season, but none of them are Lawson: linebacker Bryce Huff (33 pressures, fourth in the NFL), defensive lineman John Franklin- Myers (26, (tied for 13th in the NFL) and defensive tackle Quinnen Williams (25, tied for 16th in the NFL).
Lawson played a season-low 14 snaps (20% of defensive snaps) in Week 4 against the Kansas City Chiefs and was a healthy scratch in Week 5. In Week 6, Lawson played 21 defensive snaps in a 20-14 win over the Philadelphia Eagles, accounting for 30% of New York’s defensive snaps, his highest rate of the season. New York no longer has room for the 28-year-old, but he could still add some pizzazz to another team’s pass rush.
Antonio Gibson, Washington’s 25-year-old running back, appeared to be on his way to becoming a Pro Bowler after his first two NFL seasons. He totaled over 1,000 yards from scrimmage and double-digit scrimmage touchdowns in each of his first two seasons in 2020 and 2021, including the only 1,000-yard rushing season of his career in 2021 when he totaled 1,037 yards on the ground.
However, Gibson’s rushing opportunities have declined significantly since the Commanders drafted running back Brian Robinson Jr. in the third round of the 2022 NFL Draft. Robinson had 56 more carries overall than Gibson in 2022, despite Gibson playing in three more games, and that gap has only widened in 2023. Robinson has 61 more carries (77-16) than Gibson in six games this season.
Given his age and versatility as a pass catcher – 124 catches (11th-most in the NFL among running backs in 2020-2022) and 894 receiving yards (12th-most in the NFL among running backs in 2020-2022). In his first three seasons, Gibson could be a valuable contributor to a team whose backfield needs a little more dynamism. As long as he’s in Washington, he simply won’t have a chance to be a major contributor to an offense.
Zack Ertz was once one of the NFL’s best tight ends and was selected to the Pro Bowl three times in a row from 2017 to 2019. He even holds the record for most catches in a single season with 116 in 2018. While the 32-year-old has slowed down a bit since joining the Arizona Cardinals in 2021, Ertz could represent a strong target in the red zone for a team with its eyes on the playoffs.
That is not his current situation as a member of the 1-5 Arizona Cardinals. A reunion with the Eagles could make sense, as could joining forces with a number of other teams in need of another strong pair of hands.
Derek Barnett will forever hold a special place in the hearts of Philadelphia Eagles fans around the world after his strip sack on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady helped secure the franchise’s only Super Bowl victory to secure in the 2017 season.
In 2023, the defensive end has largely fallen out of the Eagles’ intense defensive line rotation. He suffered a torn ACL in Week 1 of the 2022 season and failed to play 20 snaps in all six of Philadelphia’s games this season. The Eagles’ defensive front is a strength as they employ Pro Bowler Haason Reddick, franchise star Brandon Graham, Pro Bowler Josh Sweat and 2023 first-round pick Nolan Smith at their defensive end/edge rusher positions.
The Super Bowl champion is just 27 years old after being selected 14th overall in the 2017 NFL Draft, and he could be a good rotation player for a team that has a little more playing time available on its defensive line.
The Denver Broncos are a mess in their first year under new head coach Sean Payton. They are off to a 1-5 start, which is the worst six-game start in team history. The defense has allowed 33.3 points per game this season, the most in the NFL. Even if their defense does well, they still lose. Denver lost 19-8 to the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in Week 6. They have allowed fewer than 20 points in 12 games since the start of the 2022 season, but have a record of 4-8 in those games.
While Payton said the Broncos “don’t want to make any deals with their players” before the trade deadline, they have already done so by trading defensive lineman Randy Gregory to the San Francisco 49ers and releasing outside linebacker Frank Clark.
Courtland Sutton (37 goals) and Jerry Jeudy (29 goals) have been the most frequently used pass catchers in Denver’s offense this season, but Denver would be wise to try to flip them to get more draft compensation. Sutton has already had four receiving touchdowns this season, the same number as in the previous two seasons combined. Jeudy was the 15th overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, so there could be some teams willing to take a bite on the 24-year-old given his draft pedigree. Both would be better suited elsewhere in a less dysfunctional environment.