2025 Nfl Trade Deadline Grades Sauce Gardner Quinnen Williams Rashid

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Nov 17, 2025, 12:20 PM

2025 nfl trade deadline grades sauce gardner quinnen williams rashid

Well how about that for a trade deadline? We had eight trades come in day-of before the 4 pm ET trade deadline yesterday, including one massive blockbuster that no one saw coming. More trades are always more fun than no trades, so it made for an exciting day for NFL fans. Below, I’ve broken down and graded every trade made at the deadline this year. This includes a pair of trades that came through on Monday, so 10 total for this article. There’s a lot to consider when grading trades, and it goes beyond the deal itself.

The surrounding context is also important to take into account. Let’s jump right in with that aforementioned blockbuster trade, one that included multiple first-round picks and a former All-Pro: Whoa. Talk about the unthinkable happening. Even though the Jets were a classic fire sale candidate, no one thought Gardner was touchable. He and WR Garrett Wilson were thought to be unavailable no matter what.

Clearly, though, every player has a price. Let’s start with what this means for the Colts. At 7-2, they’re tied for the best record in the NFL and have one of the league’s most efficient offenses in recent memory. However, their defense has been more hit-or-miss, due in part to some bad injury luck at cornerback. Colts CB Charvarius Ward is the second-highest-graded cornerback in football this year per PFF, but he’s currently on IR with a concussion, the second one he’s sustained this season. What impact did all the midseason deals before the 2025 NFL trade deadline actually have on the teams that acquired players?

With teams set to enter Week 10 of the 2025 NFL season, contenders are aiming to bolster their depth charts for a run at the Super Bowl, while those out of the playoff hunt... What trades stand out among the rest? Here's breaking down every move that's happened in Oct. 1 through Nov. 4, the final day to make trades: The Colts needed to think about going all in with a team capable of winning the AFC with a conference-best 7-2 record after Week 9.

Cornerback was a glaring weakness with the Chiefs, Bills, Steelers and other top teams in mind for the playoffs. Gardner is a game changer and ideal fit for Lou Anarumo's aggressive defense. The Cowboys solved two problems with their defensive line by getting stronger vs. the run and more versatile with their pass rush while giving up on disappointing Mazi Smith. The cost in draft picks wasn't bad to lock up a linchpin up front. The Colts acquired premier cornerback Sauce Gardner from the Jets in exchange for a pair of first-round picks and wide receiver AD Mitchell.

Luke Hales / Getty Images The NFL trade deadline has come and gone, and it didn’t disappoint. The New York Jets stole all the headlines (including ours) by trading away two of their best players in cornerback Sauce Gardner and defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, in exchange for a haul of draft... It’s all about the future now for the Jets. The same, however, cannot be said for the Indianapolis Colts, who sent a pair of first-rounders to New York for Gardner. The Colts clearly believe the AFC is up for grabs, and they pushed their chips to the center.

Of course, the Gardner and Williams deals weren’t the only ones of significance made in the past 24 hours. There have been plenty of moves that could change the course of the season, and we’ve broken them all down here, providing some brief thoughts, analysis and, of course, trade grades for every deal... The New Orleans Saints traded offensive lineman Trevor Penning to the Los Angeles Chargers for a 2027 sixth-round pick, league sources told The Athletic. The Chargers have one of the best young tackle tandems in the NFL with Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt. Problematically, however, both are done for the season with injuries. With the 2025 NFL trade deadline firmly in the rearview, it's time to take a closer look at how the sides fared in 20 deals made between the start of the season and Nov.

4. With Charvarius Ward on IR, Indy's CBs needed help. So the Colts pushed all their chips into the middle, and now in comes Sauce to play savior. Gardner opened his career with smashing success, using his length and physicality to compile 31 passes defended and two INTs in his first two seasons, earning All-Pro honors in each campaign. The corner position being fickle, the past two years haven't been as kind; he's struggled some in coverage and dealt with a concussion earlier this year. When he's on, though, Gardner remains an upper-echelon cover man.

Per Next Gen Stats, he faced No. 1 receivers on 45.5% of his coverage matchups, the NFL's highest rate (min. 125 matchups). When targeted, he has forced tight windows (allowing less than 1 yard of separation) at a rate of 53.8%, also leading the league (min. 20 targets). The Colts are betting big that their Lou Anarumo-led defense will present Sauce with a better situation than he played under the past two seasons in New York.

Still, considering that the cost is similar to what Green Bay gave up for pass rusher Micah Parsons (two first-round picks and a player), it's a hefty price to pay for a corner. Even one as good as Sauce can be. On the Jets' end, it's a stunner of a move. They just handed Gardner -- drafted fourth overall in 2022 -- a sizable contract this offseason to be one of their building blocks, and four months later, said building block is headed for Indianapolis. Once we pick our jaws off the floor, it's not hard to see the logic for New York. The windfall was simply too good to pass up.

What good is a star corner when the rest of the operation is crumbling? The 2025 NFL trade deadline has come and gone, and with it, some stars have been moved. Some teams were extremely active, while others seemed to have fallen asleep. Here are the grades from the 2025 NFL trade deadline. The Cowboys sent a 2026 seventh-round pick to the Cincinnati Bengals for linebacker Logan Wilson. Wilson is 29 years old and in need of a change after being benched for rookies Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight Jr.

This trade feels largely insignificant for Cincy. Their defense won’t see any improvement this year, and it’s hard to imagine they’ll get any worse. This is a good trade for Dallas, which can certainly use defensive help, especially in the linebacker department. Wilson is a tackling machine and will likely complement Dallas’ other trade acquisition. The Bears traded a sixth-round pick in return for defensive end Joe Tryon-Shoyinka and a seventh-round pick. The Bears are 5-3 and need pass-rush help.

This kind of solves that? The 2025 NFL trade deadline was much more active than any of us anticipated, with the New York Jets providing us with a pair of surprising trades. New York shipped out star cornerback Sauce Gardner and defensive tackle Quinnen Williams in separate moves on Tuesday to give the Jets major draft capital. The Indianapolis Colts and Dallas Cowboys were the beneficiaries of the Jets' sudden fire sale, but did they give up too much for the defensive standouts? Let's dish out grades for each team involved in Tuesday's most notable trades on deadline day. Colts receive: CB Sauce GardnerJets receive: 2026 first-round pick, 2027 first-round pick, wide receiver Adonai Mitchell

This is a much bigger trade than most expected on Tuesday, and it's an all-in move for the Colts, even though their first-rounders are likely to be in the bottom 10 each of the... Coming off a six-turnover loss, it feels a little panicky for Indianapolis, but this is a solid longterm addition that will have major weight in the playoffs as it tries to make an extended... For once, the NFL’s trade deadline delivered. The league didn’t collectively execute more trades on Tuesday than it has in recent years (in 2022, a record 12 players were moved in 10 total deadline trades), but boy, did Tuesday’s deals move... We throw around the word “blockbuster” a lot when it comes to sports moves, but we got two that qualify, both involving the New York Jets, who dealt their two best defensive players, cornerback... In this year’s trade deadline period (we’ll include a slew of deals made in the last week), several Super Bowl contenders fortified their rosters, a couple of quality wide receivers found new homes where...

These are the winners and losers of the 2025 NFL trade deadline. Diante Lee: Every Cowboys fan had to have awoken with a knot in their stomach on Tuesday morning after Dallas’s two-score loss to a bad Cardinals team that was playing with backup quarterback Jacoby... Combine the team’s terrible defensive effort with Jerry Jones’s vague statement earlier Monday that he’d already agreed to a trade, while declining to reveal any details beyond it being a move that would “address... There’s been only one shortcoming in Dallas this year: the entire defense, which is on pace to be one of the worst we’ve ever seen. So when I woke up this morning to see that the Cowboys had traded for Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson, I had a sinking feeling that Jerry had sold us a false bill of goods,... Only Jones was far from finished.

Later Tuesday, he made a blockbuster deal to trade for Jets defensive tackle Quinnen Williams. The Cowboys are sending New York a 2026 second-rounder and a 2027 first-rounder along with defensive tackle Mazi Smith, whom Jones drafted in the first round in 2023. Now that we’ve passed the deadline, we assess all of Dallas’s big 2025 moves in the aggregate. Jones essentially traded edge rusher Micah Parsons and Smith for Williams, defensive tackle Kenny Clark, and a first-round pick. We may have mocked Jones for the Parsons trade in August (and were justified in doing so), but now it is possible that the net return helped Dallas ultimately break even.

2025 Nfl Trade Deadline Grades Sauce Gardner Quinnen Williams Rashid

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