Desmond Trufant, Vic Beasley among the oddsmakers favorites to move at the NFL trade deadline

Who is going to be traded before the Tuesday deadline?

In years past, that would be a purely academic sort of question, because the Falcons were not a team that shipped guys out or brought them in at the deadline. That’s changed this year, because the Falcons are dismal and they’re headed for the kind of cap crunch that necessitates moving out salary and getting back draft picks. That means there are a number of veterans who could be dealt, even if some are a bit unlikely.

Who are the favorites to move, though? Per Sports Betting Dime, Vic Beasley and Desmond Trufant line up as the 11th-most likely and 14th-most likely players to be moved before tomorrow afternoon, respectively. Beasley is an unsurprising name, but Trufant still does raise my eyebrow every time I see it.

So why these two in particular? Beasley’s an obvious choice because the Falcons are motivated to move him, because he has a contract that lets a team get a look at him during the stretch run before deciding whether they’ll re-up him, and because teams are starved for pass rushing help in any form. Trufant’s a less obvious choice because his contract is pretty unwieldy, but there are multiple teams (the Eagles, the Vikings, the Chiefs, and the Jaguars, to name a few) who would probably put him to good use as an above average veteran who should still be a good player a couple of years from now.

The Falcons would probably welcome both the cap space and the opportunity those moves would free up, particularly at cornerback where Kendall Sheffield and Isaiah Oliver have been getting a ton of run lately anyways. Whether they actually pull those moves off remains to be seen.