FanPost

Trade Deadline Primer

I wanted to write a quick summary of deals we may see as we approach the trade deadline. I'm not going to speculate too much on what compensation we would receive, as if there's anything I've learned about trade compensation is that fans are clueless to what adequate compensation is. So I'll put my best guess in terms of a day 1/2/3 pick. I'm also going to talk about the cap ramifications of these trades. All of the cap savings I mention will assume they're traded at the deadline, so we will have already paid half of their annual salary.

We won't see any blockbuster deals until we get input from our new GM and HC, which obviously won't happen this season. So I'm not going to mention Ryan/Julio/etc. But we do have a number of players who are in a contract year who could potentially fetch a pick.

C Alex Mack - $4m savings, early-mid day 3 pick

Mack has been pretty solid this season. He's been anchoring our OL for the last half-decade, but we do have his replacement lined up. Any team trading for him would only incur a cap hit of $4m, so it would be a pretty enticing rental for teams with problems at C.

RB Todd Gurley - $1.75 savings, late day 3 pick

Gurley has had a couple of pretty good games. But I find it very unlikely that a team gives up anything of value at all to take a chance on him. The only team that I can see him succeeding on is the Patriots, where they have terrible RBs and a strong OL. Gurley may not have the same burst or speed that he once did, but he's shown that he's a smart enough player to hit a hole when it's there.

S Keanu Neal - $3.2m savings, mid-late day 3 pick

Safety is the kind of position teams will take risks on if they're poised to make a run and are lacking talent. Neal has been very mediocre since returning from injury, but he's still able to do his job. A trading team may accept the risk of him continuing to play poorly in the hopes that he can be coached up on a team with more defensive talent.

EDGE Takk McKinley - $900k savings, early-mid day 3 pick

The person who would like this trade the most is Takk himself. I can see a team taking a chance on Takk to see if he can be more useful on a team with more defensive talent. And for only $900k in additional cap, he's a very cheap rental. Takk may be one of the few FA players that a new regime will try to keep, but I doubt we'll offer him enough money to satisfy what he thinks he's worth.

That's it in terms of veterans with trade value, in my opinion. You can maybe toss in Hill or Harris, but I don't think a team would spend a 7th on either of them. Would you like to see any of these? I'm a strong disbeliever in tanking, but acquiring picks for a new front office and relieving a tiny amount of cap may be worth doing in a lost season.

<em>This FanPost was written by one of The Falcoholic's talented readers. It does not necessarily reflect the views of The Falcoholic.</em>