Reunited and it feels so good ... or does it? Davante Adams has spent the last few years playing for the Las Vegas Raiders in relative obscurity. Relative, in the sense that he used to play for a far more successful NFL franchise in the Green Bay Packers. Then again, he left Green Bay to play with his former college teammate Derek Carr on their favorite teams from childhood. Then, Carr was let go...
Although Adams can still have success with Gardner Minshew II, Aidan O'Connell or whoever throwing him the football, Aaron Rodgers is over there in East Rutherford. In Kristopher Knox's article for Bleacher Report outlining a series of three-team trades that could break the league, he offered one between the Raiders, the New York Jets and the Cleveland Browns to send Adams to New York.
Here is a visual representation of the proposed trade that Knox put together for us earlier this week.
Obviously, this trade is not happening for several reasons. One, Adams to the Jets is not what is going to take this consistently underperforming team over the top. That would be a healthy Rodgers playing at an MVP level, among other things. Two, Tyron Smith just got to the Jets. Like, he hasn't even played a down for them. No way! And three, Amari Cooper is never going back to the Raiders...
Even if this extreme hypothetical is so unbelievably improbable, let's look at it from a football sense.
I think for the Jets, it raises the team's ceiling just as much as it lowers it. The first and third-round picks going to Las Vegas and Cleveland respectively, make this too much of a gamble for me to realistically get behind. While Adams does improve the passing game in some capacities, I cannot say the same for moving on from Tyron Smith in a three-team deal with the Browns and the Raiders.
For Cleveland, adding Smith would be a huge get, but the third-round pick does nothing for me. More importantly, the Browns will not have addressed losing Cooper in this three-team trade. I would say that the same principles apply for the Browns as they would with the Jets. You upgrade one key part of the offense with the trade, but make another substantially worse. Cleveland offers less variance.
And for the Raiders, they actually come out of this trade the best. The drop-off from Adams to Cooper is sizable, but getting a first-round pick and a player who used to star for y'all is not the worst thing in the world. Truth be told, I think there is a less than zero percent chance that happens because Mark Davis is still the Raiders owner. He traded Cooper to Dallas instead of giving him a new contract.
The pieces being moved in this trade are fascinating, but the optics make this deal near impossible.
