Regrading 2023 NFL offseason’s biggest signings, trades, player moves as playoffs draw near

You don’t win championships in the offseason, they say. But is that true? Didn’t the Buccaneers and Rams recently win Super Bowls in back-to-back seasons by spending big in the spring? Well, sure, but in the bigger picture, the biggest and boldest spenders don’t always turn out to be the most balanced contenders. And there’s no greater example than the 2023 offseason, which saw several clubs pull off big-name blockbusters, only to get sour results once the games begun.

Things can still change between now and the end of the season, but here’s how we’d regrade some of this year’s top veteran moves as the 2023 campaign draws to a close — specifically, the 10 free agents who got the largest contracts to change teams, and five of the most notable veterans to be traded ahead of Week 1:

Jets got:

QB Aaron Rodgers (Packers), 2023 first-round pick swap, fifth-round pick

Jets gave:

2023 first-round pick swap, second-round pick (x2), sixth-round pick

“Incomplete” sounds better considering New York only got four snaps from the longtime Packers star before he went down with an injury, but then again, the Jets shouldn’t necessarily be excused for betting on a nearly 40-year-old QB behind a visibly shoddy O-line. Rodgers still has the drive to rewrite his Jets legacy, but any hunt for a Lombardi will have to wait until 2024. And his celebrated arrival arguably deluded team brass into thinking their fallback options were sufficient.

Current grade: D-

Contract: 4 years, $150 million

Can the starting QB for a team knocking on the door of a playoff berth be flunked? We’re not going that far with Carr, who’s currently the 14th-highest-paid among QBs in terms of average annual earnings. But the production hasn’t necessarily even justified that, delaying a full-on Saints rebuild for mostly conservative, inefficient results. His gutsy leadership could end up sneaking them into the postseason, but New Orleans’ defense is…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/regrading-2023-nfl-offseasons-biggest-signings-trades-player-moves-as-playoffs-draw-near/

Author : Cody Benjamin

Publish date : 2023-12-22 13:59:15

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