NFL winners and losers from the DJ Moore trade: Bears and Eagles are well-situated

Buffalo Bills GM Brandon Beane has heard your criticisms. He heard you say that he built a mostly talentless offense. He heard you blast him for not getting a wide receiver last offseason. He heard you say that he should’ve been fired along with Sean McDermott. 

He heard all of that and traded a 2026 second-round pick to the Bears for D.J. Moore and Chicago’s fifth-round pick. If that seems like a lot for a wide receiver who’s had two straight down seasons… that’s because it is. When you have a potential fleecing like this, you have to look at the winners and losers around the NFL — and buddy, there are a lot of them.

Loser: Buffalo Bills

There are a handful of wide receivers who are trade candidates this offseason. George Pickens just had 1,429 receiving yards and nine touchdowns. A.J. Brown just had one of the worst seasons of his career and still had 1,003 receiving yards and seven touchdowns. Brian Thomas is young but has a lot of promise. D.K. Metcalf is a dominant X-Receiver who probably doesn’t actually want to catch passes from Aaron Rodgers.

So the Bills spent significant draft capital on D.J. Moore, who played all 17 games last season in one of the NFL’s most creative offenses and only had 682 receiving yards.

Obviously, receiving yards and touchdowns don’t say everything about a player. Still, it’s a decent enough measure when it comes to talking about elite-level wide receivers… and if you’re sending a second-round draft pick to a team for a wide receiver, they should at least be on the verge of being elite, and Moore just isn’t there.

Winner: Chicago Bears

The Bears traded the 2023 first overall pick, and in return, they got Caleb Williams, Darnell Wright, Tyrique Stephenson, Tory Taylor, Luther Burden, and the Bills’ second pick in the 2026 draft. That’s a huge win. 

They also freed up some money with this trade, which could end up being pretty massive since their center, Drew Dalman, just retired. There aren’t a whole lot of good centers available, and a lot of teams need one. 

With the Bears' postseason window being as open as it is, making sure they get one of those good centers is going to be huge. 

Loser: Future Bills

Bad general managers just need to be fired. If people go into a season knowing that they’re on thin ice, they tend to make moves to save their jobs. If the moves go wrong, then they won’t have to deal with the aftermath. 

That is exactly what the Bills and Beane are doing right now. If this goes wrong, then the Bills are out a young player, and they’re stuck with an older wide receiver for a couple of years. If this goes right, then Beane is still the GM next year, and he’s out a young player and stuck with an older wide receiver. 

Winner: Philadelphia Eagles (and Buffalo, again, by proxy)

A.J. Brown trade talk is hot in the streets, and the two front-runners in these hypothetical trades were the Bills and the Patriots. Not only has the Moore trade taken the Bills out of the running for Brown, but it’s also made his price go up… AND that price has gone up for the Bills’ division rival, which is a pretty clever move.

Now, if a team is going to trade for Brown, we’re looking at a pick that’s definitely going to be in the top 40, and potentially a first-rounder. 

Both Winner and Loser: Rome Odunze

It’s Rome Odunze time in Chicago. The Bears drafted him ninth overall and as the third wide receiver in the 2024 draft. With that kind of a draft pick, you’re really banking on the guy being a hit... but he just hasn’t been that yet.

His 2024 season wasn’t great, but it's hard to blame him because that Chicago offense was an abject disaster.

In 2025, he started super hot. In the first seven games, he had 31 catches on 56 targets (55%) for 474 yards and five touchdowns. In the next five games, he only had 13 catches on 34 targets (38%) for 188 yards and one touchdown. That’s not only a significant drop, but he also missed the last five games of the regular season with a foot injury.

It’s win-or-die time for Odunze. He’s Caleb Williams’ new WR1. If he can handle it and help give the Bears their first-ever 4,000-yard passer, he’ll be a deity. Otherwise… woof.  

Winner: D.J. Moore

I wrote about this earlier in the offseason: Josh Allen having a certified WR1 is huge. Take a look at his leading receivers each year of his career:

By no means is Moore the same level of wide receiver as 2020 Stefon Diggs, but he’s a whole hell of a lot better than Khalil Shakir. If Josh is throwing to a real threat, that guy’s going to produce. Moore is a real threat.

For what it’s worth: As of Thursday, March 5th at 3 pm, DraftKings Sportsbook has the over/under for  D.J. Moore’s receiving yards set at 724.5. 

Winner: Joe Brady

Besides winning, Joe Brady’s job this year is to show that the Bills’ lack of success over the past five years has all been due to Sean McDermott. If he’s going to prove that he’s the guy, then he needs to get his guys, and it seems like Moore might be one of his guys… or at least hopefully he is, because it would be hard to justify that price tag. 

They were together with the Panthers in 2020 and 2021, and in that 2021 season, Moore had a career-high 163 targets (fifth-most in the NFL that season).

If Moore can handle that kind of workload (specifically, if his hand bones can structurally hold up to 163 passes from Josh Allen’s rocket arm), then Brady will have made the right decision.

If he can’t? Well… then what are we doing here?