1 blockbuster trade all 32 NFL teams can make to improve in 2024
NFL teams are setting their sights on free agency and the draft to set themselves up for success in 2024. Another often overlooked path to improvement still exists, though: trades! Today we'll look at one trade each team can make to instantly improve.
The NFL season sure does fly by, doesn't it? One day you're preparing for fantasy football drafts and looking at your favorite team's September schedule, then you blink and the Kansas City Chiefs are winning the Super Bowl again.
For many of us, the post-football hangover has already begun. College basketball is nice, but the real action doesn't begin for another few weeks. Baseball is on the horizon, but the season is still more than a month away. Many people don't tune in to the NBA or NHL until playoff time.
What we need is more football (and with all due apologies to The Rock, I don't mean the United Football League). Since we can no longer watch NFL games, we'll engage in the next best thing: thinking about and talking about all the moves we'd like our favorite NFL team to make.
The NFL is set up in a way that it never truly leaves our minds. The league just released the new 2024 salary cap number (a whopping $255.4 million), and free agency is mere weeks away, with the draft following soon after. Then comes the schedule release, and before we know it, training camp will begin. All football, all the time.
The Chiefs may still be celebrating after winning their third Super Bowl in five years, but the rest of us can have some fun of our own. Let's talk trades, shall we? What follows is a blockbuster trade for each team that can improve them for 2024 and possibly beyond. We'll try to keep each move within the realm of possibility (so as much as Steelers fans would love to trade Kenny Pickett for Josh Allen, that's not going to happen), and who knows, maybe some of these will even come to fruition.
One last thing to note: most teams will appear more than once, because we're looking at 32 different trades. All efforts have been made to make each trade fair and plausible for each team, but we'll be going team by team in alphabetical order, so think of each deal as something the first team would like to initiate. Let's dive in!
Arizona Cardinals trade for Haason Reddick
At 4-13, it would be a stretch to say the Arizona Cardinals were good in head coach Jonathan Gannon's first season in command, but they played hard and pulled off three upsets against playoff teams, a positive sign that this team is trending up as we get ready for 2024. One area where they sorely need help, though, is in getting to the quarterback.
Arizona ranked third-to-last in the league in sacks, with just 33 on the season. They hold the fourth overall pick in the draft, but with Marquise Brown a free agent and no edge-rushing prospect carrying a top-five grade, all signs point to a receiver like Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Nabers, or Rome Odunze being the pick.
If the Cardinals want to give their pass rush a boost, Haason Reddick of the Eagles is a natural fit. He played his first four years in Arizona, and though he chose to leave in free agency, the presence of Gannon, his former Eagles defensive coordinator, could make him more amenable to a reunion. With double-digit sacks in each of his last four years, Reddick would make an immediate difference on the Cardinals defense.
The Eagles reportedly gave Reddick, who is entering the last year of the three-year, $45 million deal he signed with Philly in 2022, permission to seek a trade, but Reddick has said he wants to stay in Philadelphia. Still, a trade could make sense, especially as the Eagles look to shake things up after last year's horrid finish.
The Eagles ranked in the bottom five in passing yards allowed, so getting back six-time Pro Bowl safety Budda Baker makes a ton of sense. Like Reddick, Baker is entering the final year of his contract, and his acquisition would reinvigorate new defensive coordinator Vic Fangio's secondary.