More from the MMQB: Trade grades | Winners and losers | Fact or fiction
My Tuesday notes were a bit delayed this week, waiting for the trade deadline to pass. Now that it has …
• The New Orleans Saints–Washington Commanders trade, the headliner of deadline day, is really a mark of two teams pivoting and changing direction at midseason. Two months ago, New Orleans would have been the far more likely of the two to be buyers at the deadline, with a veteran roster and a staff coaching for its survival. Washington, conversely, was there with a first-year staff and what felt like a significant rebuild ahead.
Yet, now, 28-year-old, four-time Pro Bowler Marshon Lattimore is headed for the supposed rebuild. So much for all those narratives.
This deal makes sense for both teams. For the Saints, if they want to start cleaning out a salary cap that’s needed it for years, offloading well-paid veterans is a necessity. And in this case, they do so while getting a significant return to start building back up, landing Washington’s slotted third- and fourth-round picks, plus the sixth New Orleans gave them in the John Ridgeway III trade (with a fifth going to Washington with Lattimore). Volume of picks will, for sure, help to remake the roster long-term.
Meanwhile, the Commanders fill a crying need with a guy who still has prime years left. They get him at the minimum this year and have, essentially, team options on him at $18 million next year and $18.5 million in 2025, which takes him just past his 30th birthday. Part of Washington’s issue coming out of this year will likely be that the team’s biggest needs are at premium positions—and it’s hard to address needs in multiple premium spots in one offseason (because of the scarcity of answers). This gives them a head start.
Is Lattimore the same guy he was earlier in his career? Talking to execs who’ve watched him, the answer is no—he’s still good, but not what he was a year or two ago. Although one mentioned to me that he hasn’t looked as engaged this year, so it might simply be a matter of turning up his effort, which Lattimore presumably can do for his new team.
It’s hard to know exactly what the final tally for this deal will read a few years from now. But today? It does look logical for both sides, if in a way that no one would’ve seen coming.
• While we’re there, the Saints are in a spot that is, well, not normal for them.
Relieving Dennis Allen this week marked the first time they’ve fired a coach since the Katrina-ravaged season of 2005, and you could argue that this will be the first real coaching search they’ve conducted since then—Allen had been earmarked internally as a potential Sean Payton successor a long time ago, and was cemented as the guy when Dan Campbell left after 2020.
So whether the Saints go with the familiar, such as Detroit Lions DC Aaron Glenn, or someone in which they don’t have a connection, I’d expect that they’ll look at a lot of things over the next couple of months to come up with a plan for how to attack the market.
One nugget I picked up the past couple of days is that this decision was very much driven by ownership, with Gayle Benson reaching a breaking point with the team’s struggles over the past few weeks. GM Mickey Loomis, I’m told, didn’t want to pull the plug on Allen yet, but Benson and her group was hearing from the fan base in a way they hadn’t before, and their resolve was strengthened through that, to the point where perception inside the building holds that Allen might’ve been fired Monday even if he’d beaten the Carolina Panthers.
Either way, it’s done now, and highly regarded special teams coach Darren Rizzi will get a half-season audition. And though Rizzi’s now in his sixth season in New Orleans, having spent three under Sean Payton and the past two and a half under Allen, there will be change. Veteran assistant Joe Woods will take over as defensive play-caller with Allen gone, and there will be other changes at Rizzi’s direction.
One is that the players will arrive to a remade locker room Wednesday, with position groups clustered together inside it, to push messaging that it’s time for different units across the roster to pull together and pull the Saints out of their 2–7 hole.
Rizzi does have head coaching experience, albeit at the college level. He led the University of New Haven’s Division II program from 1999 to 2001 and his alma mater, Rhode Island, in ’08. He left both places to be an assistant at an elevated level, going from New Haven to Rutgers to be special teams coach at his home state’s flagship school, then from Rhode Island to the Miami Dolphins, which got him to the NFL, where he’s been since.
• Pittsburgh Steelers GM Omar Khan has been more aggressive with trade discussions in general this year, negotiating with the San Francisco 49ers on Brandon Aiyuk to the very end, and engaging with the Las Vegas Raiders on Davante Adams (Pittsburgh was convinced that one was in the bag for the New York Jets from the start). On Tuesday, finally, the Steelers broke through a bit, adding Mike Williams from the Jets and LB Preston Smith from the Green Bay Packers.
The Williams trade was a swing that Khan had been looking to take, at different levels, at receiver over the past few months, as the discussions on Aiyuk and Adams would indicate. When I asked around on what Williams has left on Tuesday, one exec swiftly responded, “not much.” Now, that doesn’t mean he can’t summon more—at this point of his career—than some of the other Steelers receivers can right now. He should be an upgrade.
As for Smith, his playing time was on the decline in Green Bay (he played 71% of the defensive snaps in the opener and just 37% in the team’s Week 9 loss to the Lions), and he wasn’t a great fit for Jeff Hafley’s attacking 4–3 front. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh had its depth behind T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith depleted a bit, so Smith should provide a better fit, and plenty of snaps in the rotation.
• In the end, since the start of the season, just two Day 1 or Day 2 picks were moved in trades: the third-rounder that Lattimore brought home for the Saints, and the third that can become a second that the Raiders got for Davante Adams.
Some will say this is teams being cautious. The reality is, it’s not.
You have some big names out there. But the reality is there weren’t truly great players out there this year. Both Adams and Lattimore are good, but this wasn’t Brian Burns nearly getting moved at 25 years old or Jalen Ramsey getting traded smack in the middle of his prime. This was, for the most part, role players, guys who aren’t what they once were or salary dumps. People (including those on Park Avenue) badly want this to be like MLB or the NBA.
It never will be. The sport’s not set up that way. So we get days like Tuesday, when folks are getting all worked up because they’ve heard of a guy who got moved, or someone who was great was traded. The truth, of course, is not where the hysteria is.
• That brings us to the Tre’Davious White trade. The return on that one was probably the most miniscule I’ve ever seen. The Baltimore Ravens traded a 2026 seventh-rounder to the Los Angeles Rams for White and a ’27 seventh-rounder. You can’t trade picks more than three years out, so this was, for the Rams, moving a pick from the last round of the most far-off draft possible up a year. And that kind of stinks, just because it’s an example of how injuries impacted White.
White, by all accounts, is a fantastic dude, and he was a really, really good player, making two Pro Bowls and winning Defensive Rookie of the Year honors over his seven seasons with the Buffalo Bills. It was tough for the Bills to trade him. But, for obvious reasons, particularly when you looked at his contract, it had to be done—injuries had ground his game into dust.
So this is a roll of the dice for the Ravens at a position of need. They were looking for corner help. It probably won’t be, but they basically gave up nothing to make it happen.
• The Chiefs love where they are right now with DeAndre Hopkins, as Monday night illustrated. They hoped, in trading for him, they’d get a revitalized version of the former All-Pro, and that’s exactly what he’s delivered. No, he’s not what he was five years ago. But the hands, catch radius and football IQ are all there. JuJu Smith-Schuster should be back soon, and, with some better health, that Kansas City offense should get better.
Also, for what it’s worth, Chiefs GM Brett Veach and his staff did go to the coaches and ask whether Hopkins and Smith-Schuster can play together, given that, at this stage of their careers, both are probably better playing inside. The coaches assured them they could, which was one piece of pushing the trade over the goal line a couple of weeks back.
• The Cam Robinson trade might be my favorite deal. It shows that Kevin O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who’ve been meticulous in flipping the Minnesota Vikings’ roster the past three years, are willing to do something to help give the current group a chance in the aftermath of the Christian Darrisaw injury. That kind of move resonates with players.
• The Lions landing Za’Darius Smith is up there for me, too. He’s still a solid pass rusher, and Detroit won’t ask the world of him—with depth to keep him fresh and at his best in key situations. And the thought of pairing him in the Super Bowl with Aidan Hutchinson … well, I probably shouldn’t do that to Lions fans.
• Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon has a good history, going back to his time in Philadelphia, of getting the most out of pass rushers, so I’m really interested to see what Baron Browning can do in Arizona. The athletic traits have always been there with Browning. But in college, and now in the pros, he’s never quite found the right place with the right role. Maybe this will be it.
• One thing that was pretty unanimous among NFL folks I talked to Tuesday: Dallas overpaid for Jonathan Mingo. In case you missed it, the Cowboys gave up a fourth-rounder for Mingo and a seventh-rounder.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Marshon Lattimore Deal Makes Sense for Commanders and Saints.
