The NFL trade deadline hits this afternoon at 4 pm ET, and a few Patriots have had their names come up in trade discussions as the clock winds down.
From a financial standpoint, no moves would help the Patriots more than being able to deal away offensive lineman Isaiah Wynn or wide receiver Nelson Agholor – two underperforming players carrying around onerous contracts for a team operating on a tight budget.
Unfortunately, the window to trade those two in particular might already have closed.
As NFL Media’s Tom Pelissero noted on Twitter, the deadline for teams to restructure contracts – “eating money” for example, to facilitate trades passed on Monday afternoon at 4 pm ET. That means every trade that happens between then and 4 pm ET on Tuesday will require teams to take on a player’s salary “as is” when they make a deal.
That’s a big problem for the Patriots if they have any designs of selling off Agholor and Wynn for draft capital.
Agholor carries a $9 million base salary with $5 million guaranteed, and Wynn’s fully-guaranteed fifth-year option is worth $10.4 million – not the worst in terms of what offensive tackles could make, but definitely too much for the production he’s put out on the field this season. Neither can be cut without a significant financial penalty, either.
In other words, a team would have to really like those players in order to take that money on. On top of that, due to the major discrepancy between production and price tag, teams aren’t likely to want to fork over the kind of draft capital New England would want in return for them.
Stranger things have happened, but this would be quite a coup if Belichick could move either Agholor or Wynn now.
On the other hand, Kendrick Bourne has become one of the Patriots’ more tradeable assets because his deal is much more team-friendly. The Chicago Bears, who beat the Patriots two Mondays ago in Foxborough, are among the teams who have reached out to inquire about Bourne after already trading for N’Keal Harry earlier this season.
The likes of Jabrill Peppers, DeVante Parker and Jakobi Meyers have also come up in trade talks.
We’ll see if Bill Belichick can pull off a surprise move by this afternoon or if he’ll have to play out the string with a couple of ill-fitting pieces he couldn’t offload.