A tale of two third-round picks

As the NFL’s great roster purges start at the end of the preseason, we start getting a bevy of small potatoes trades. That’s not to say that everybody acquired is going to be bad or a non-contributor, but most of the players that change hands are not valued more highly than a late-round pick swap or maybe a sixth-round pick.

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The most interesting trades to me, though, are ones where a team spends heavily right before the season to upgrade their unit. As a survivor of the Laremy Tunsil and Jadeveon Clowney pre-season trades coming back-to-back in 2019, I think we can agree that most trades aren’t quite that level of traumatic. If a Brandon Aiyuk really happens, instead of being something it feels like insiders are trying to will into existence, it will have that level of impact.

But at the same time, if you’re moving Day 2 picks, you’re expecting something to happen. We’ve had two of those trades so far in August. Let’s talk about them.

Falcons trade a third-round pick to the Patriots for EDGE Matt Judon

This is the more cut-and-dry of the two trades. It’s very obvious to see the need for Atlanta: they don’t have much pass rush. They were a bad pass-rush unit last year. They came to camp with new head coach Raheem Morris and clearly he decided it wasn’t good enough. I don’t know that a 32-year-old Matt Judon is redefining your ceiling to the top of the league or anything, but it’s a step towards the range of outcomes in any given game becoming better. This team clearly has a mandate to compete from both an ownership and an imminently winnable division perspective. And, as a bonus, they didn’t have to upgrade Judon’s contract at all when they acquired him.

(The Athlete Ego (non-specific) is a fascinating thing to me and one of the most underrated things teams have to deal with in a league where contracts are rarely honored for more than the current year we live in. Judon doesn’t want to play for the Patriots without an extension … but he will join a totally new team without one, for only a mid-range $6.7 million cap commitment? I think that more than anything may have sparked the bidding war that got the Patriots a third-round pick.)

So the Patriots pick up a third-round pick, and, I think if we’re being honest, they already know this will not be a quick turnaround. They have reasons for optimism on the defense after losing so many games to injury last year, but they have no sure thing at quarterback, no sure thing at wide receiver, a big question mark hanging over Christian Barmore’s future, and now not much of a sure thing as an edge rusher. This season has become a temperature check for their recent picks. And in that case, to get a third-round pick for a guy who may not even be a productive NFL player in 2025 is a home run move for them.

The incentives clearly align. My prior is to give the win to the Patriots because I don’t think the Falcons have a legitimate chance to win the Super Bowl. But they are distinctly more non-zero than the Patriots are, and what success is to Arthur Blank and Raheem Morris may not equal what success is to you and your Championship-focused subsidiaries. Perhaps the only thing Blank wants is a team successful enough to draw fans.

Philadelphia trades a third-round pick and two seventh-round picks to Washington for WR Jahan Dotson and a fifth-round pick

Here’s a more complex deal. So right off the bat, the fifth-rounder coming back devalues the third-rounder a little bit. If you assume the third-rounder is a mid-rounder (An Eagles floundering scenario) and the Commanders are awful (high fifth-rounder) you’ve cut about 30-40% of the return already.

Then you need to get into the fact that the Commanders a) need a wide receiver, b) drafted this wide receiver in the first round, and c) decided they’d rather trade him than keep him despite two more years on his rookie deal at a reasonable scale, along with his fifth-year option.

I don’t think Dotson is going to be a star in Philadelphia. Maybe that’s somewhere on the probability chart, but at this point I think we probably would have seen more concrete flashes of his talent in what felt like seven million Sam Howell dropbacks last year. Matt Harmon is who I trust on wideouts, because I know he puts in the work. Here’s his Dotson review from last year’s tape (subscription required), and I’ll quote a small bit of it:

He isn’t a YAC threat, as he’s been brought down on first contact on 90.9% of his “in space” attempts in both NFL seasons. So he doesn’t get many layup targets underneath, despite his size.

…

So all together, again, he looks like he can be a solid complementary No. 2 starting receiver in the NFL. Those guys are pretty susceptible to being products of their environments and that Commanders’ offense was a mess last season.

A solid No. 2 receiver, I’d argue, is a huge win for the Eagles since their roster was leaning towards guys like sixth-round rookie Johnny Wilson and former first-rounder and vagabond John Ross playing as their third receiver. Dotson is probably best utilized in the slot, but you definitely can’t say you’re not buying low on him after last year and the Eagles happen to have a glaring need for a third receiver.

For the Commanders, I’m reminded of the NFL truism that new regimes come in ready to shake things up. The coaching staff obviously did not like Dotson’s vibes, even as we don’t have a way to see that from the outside, because they talked down on him all throughout camp. It’s possible that they’ve given away an asset (a starting wideout on a two-year cost-controlled rookie deal) without getting much of a return, because third-round picks are not guarantees to do anything in the pros.

I definitely lean more towards the interpretation that Dotson is a discarded asset than a functionally broken player or someone without worth. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say the Commanders will regret this, but if you asked me to paint the probabilities, I’d say it’s more likely they regret it in a year than they’ll be ecstatic.

You’ve now provided your rookie quarterback with a rookie starter at left tackle, almost nobody on the roster with appreciable experience as a separator outside of Terry McLaurin, and the coordinating stylings of Kliff Kingsbury. I want to like Jayden Daniels. It already feels like it will almost be impossible to judge him off the group around him in year one because I can’t count on most of what is around him to deliver.

Howie Roseman doesn’t need me to stump for him — he is the only GM Cult of Personality in the NFL at this point — but I think he did a nice piece of buy-low business here.

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