Well, if you thought NFL free agency was ho-hum, it only took a few days for the future of the league to flip dramatically. The Dolphins used the latest first-rounder they received from the Texans in the Laremy Tunsil trade to move around the draft board. First, they sent the No. 3 overall pick to the 49ers for the No. 12 overall selection and a third-round pick in 2022, plus San Francisco's first-rounders in 2022 and 2023. Next, the Dolphins sent the Nos. 12 and 123 picks and their own first-rounder in 2022 to the Eagles for the Nos. 6 and 156 picks in next month's draft.
To recap the pick changes in Round 1 of April's draft: The 49ers moved up nine spots (to No. 3), while the Dolphins dropped three spots (to No. 6) and the Eagles six (to No. 12).
Whew. This impacts a handful of quarterbacks and just about every team in the top 15 of the draft, so no big deal. Let's run through the ramifications of the NFL's busy Friday, see why each of the teams involved made these trades, and what it means for the impacted players and organizations:
Jump to a section:
How the Dolphins could help Tagovailoa
The Eagles could make a run ... in 2022
The 49ers clearly have a plan, right?
How the Patriots could improve now
Five more teams that are affected
Miami Dolphins
Let's start with the Dolphins, who were the primary drivers of today's action. Their decision to trade down tells us a few things about their plans for the future and how they view this draft ...
1. Tua Tagovailoa is their long-term solution at quarterback. If the Dolphins had any doubts about him as their quarterback of the future, the time to address those concerns would have been now. They're unlikely to pick as high as third overall in the years to come and won't have any more high picks coming back from the Texans. Miami could have followed in the footsteps of the Jimmy Johnson-era Cowboys by taking a quarterback near the top of the draft in back-to-back years, but that sort of deal seems very unlikely after these trades.
2. The Dolphins are thinking intelligently about the big picture in terms of helping Tagovailoa. Once a quarterback was out of the picture, it seemed likely that the Dolphins were going to add a key weapon to help their quarterback with the No. 3 pick. With the Jags and Jets expected to draft quarterbacks in the top two, it seemed like the Dolphins would be choosing between offensive tackle Penei Sewell, wide receivers Ja'Marr Chase and DeVonta Smith and tight end Kyle Pitts.
Well, having moved down from three to six, the Dolphins are ... still going to be picking one of those guys! With the 49ers (almost) unquestionably moving up to draft a quarterback, the Dolphins can only miss out on a maximum of two of the guys from that list. Sewell is likely to go to either the Falcons at No. 4 or the Bengals at No. 5, and as I'll get to later, there's a decent chance the Falcons don't take any of the players on this list (or trade down to a team that wants a quarterback).
So, if the Dolphins want to add a receiver and don't have a clear preference between Chase, Smith, and Pitts, they were able to move down and still ensure that they'll get a key weapon for Tagovailoa. Really, unless the Dolphins desperately wanted Sewell, they're not missing out on all that much by moving down three spots. They might miss out on having their first choice between Chase, Sewell and Pitts, but history tells us that the league is often overconfident in its ability to pick the best player (or players) at a given position in the draft.
As a simple example, take the two positions the Dolphins were targeting and what happened with them in the 2020 draft. The Giants were the first team to take a tackle and chose Andrew Thomas with the No. 4 pick. The next three tackles off the board were Jedrick Wills Jr. to the Browns (at No. 10), Mekhi Becton to the Jets (11), and Tristan Wirfs to the Bucs (13). Each of those three tackles had significantly better seasons than Thomas. Wills is a left tackle and Wirfs is a right tackle, and it's only been one year, but the Giants don't appear to have gained any sort of significant advantage by being the first to pick.
At wide receiver, the first picks off the board were Alabama products Henry Ruggs and Jerry Jeudy. Justin Jefferson, the fifth wideout off the board (22), is the one who had a historically great season. In the 2017 wideout class that just became eligible for free agency, Corey Davis, Mike Williams, and John Ross were drafted in the top 10, but midround picks JuJu Smith-Schuster, Cooper Kupp, Chris Godwin and Kenny Golladay have been better at the next level. The Dolphins have had a meaningful analytics department for the past couple of years, and they're playing the percentages here.
3. The Tunsil trade is quickly approaching all-timer status. The Dolphins got two first-round picks and a second-rounder for sending Tunsil to the Texans, who thought the young left tackle was the last piece they needed to compete for a Super Bowl. Houston won a wild-card game over the Bills in overtime before collapsing. For the second time in a row after the Deshaun Watson trade, the Texans sent two first-rounders to a team for a player and had the later of those first-rounders fall in the top five.
As Field Yates noted on Twitter, the Dolphins have now turned that Tunsil trade into four first-round picks and a second-round selection. Miami had to package its own first-rounder in the Eagles deal to move back up to No. 6, but even if it had just stayed put at No. 12, the only player in the league who would have attracted this sort of trade haul in a one-for-one deal is Patrick Mahomes. Remember that the Dolphins likely only got Tunsil because of his dramatic draft-day fall as a result of a Twitter hacking; that bizarre fall has been a transformative victory for the Miami organization.
Of course, the Dolphins still have to nail the picks, and they used the first of those selections last year on corner Noah Igbinoghene, who didn't do much in his first season. Even if the San Francisco picks in 2022 and 2023 fall in the 20s, though, this would be a huge victory for the Dolphins. And as we've seen with the Texans, there's no guarantee of where the chips will fall.
Philadelphia Eagles
The Eagles dropping from No. 6 to No. 12 tells us ...
1. They're (probably) not drafting a quarterback in the first round. If you have Jalen Hurts on your fantasy team, the decision to sign Joe Flacco and then make this trade tells you what you need to know. The Eagles seem set to start Hurts in 2021, hoping that the return of most of the offensive line and a full offseason of work as the starter will help him grow into the role. I thought the Eagles would be open to a quarterback at No. 6 and might even have traded up if they had fallen in love with a prospect -- as they did with Carson Wentz even after re-signing Sam Bradford in 2016 -- but this move almost surely takes a quarterback off the table.
At No. 12, the Eagles should still be able to add a receiver or help on the defensive side of the ball. It takes them out of the running for Pitts, but with general manager Howie Roseman expected to sign Dallas Goedert to an extension this offseason, Philly would have been investing too much of their limited assets at tight end. The Eagles, who are sorely lacking in cheap talent, needed the extra first-round pick in 2022 more than they needed any one individual player this season.
2. Philly is positioned to move in 2022. This season will realistically be a transition year for the Eagles, who will be evaluating Hurts and trying to figure out what their core is going to look like in the years to come. The NFC East will be wide open, and there's always a chance that a healthy Philly team surprises, but once it traded Wentz and decided to eat nearly $34 million in dead money on its 2021 cap, it signaled that the first priority this offseason was righting the ship.
Now, next offseason, the Eagles could be in business. They're projected to have more than $31 million in cap space and will have both their own first-rounder and Miami's first-round pick. If Hurts plays well, the Eagles will be in great shape to build around their new quarterback. If they struggle, the Eagles should have a high pick and an extra first-rounder to throw around if they want to move up. They could also have a third first-rounder from the Colts if Wentz plays well in Indy.
San Francisco 49ers
The 49ers moved up from No. 12 to No. 3. What's their plan?
1. They're almost definitely drafting a quarterback. Teams don't trade three first-round picks unless they're moving up to take a quarterback. We've seen teams trade two first-rounders and more for established young stars such as Tunsil and Jamal Adams, but three first-rounders is another level up. I think there's approximately a 99.9% chance the 49ers made this move because they want a franchise quarterback.
With that being said, if any team serves as an outlier in terms of how they value certain players, it would be the 49ers. They've paid over the odds in free agency for Kyle Juszczyk, Jerick McKinnon and Kwon Alexander, handing out deals well beyond what would have been expected to grab "their" guy. When the 49ers had the No. 2 overall pick in 2017, they traded down one spot with the Bears in the hopes that they would be able to still draft the guy they wanted, Solomon Thomas. If the Bears drafted Thomas with the second overall pick, the 49ers were reportedly prepared to draft inside linebacker Reuben Foster with the third pick. In addition to passing on future stars Watson and Patrick Mahomes, the 49ers were clearly not concerned about positional scarcity in drafting Foster so highly. (They eventually drafted Foster at No. 31.)
Kyle Shanahan loves having weapons who mask his intentions before the snap while allowing him to create big plays after the snap, which is why he loves Juszczyk and receivers who can run after the catch. George Kittle gives him arguably the best tight end in football when healthy, and adding Pitts to that formula would turn the 49ers' offense into a matchup nightmare on every single snap. The Falcons would have been at least considering Pitts at No. 4, which would have forced the 49ers to move up to get ahead of them. It's incredibly unlikely, but with the 49ers at least publicly suggesting for now that they want to hold onto Jimmy Garoppolo, I wanted to at least mention the possibility, as slim as it is.
2. So, about that quarterback. While the 49ers can't guarantee that they'll get a specific quarterback at No. 3, they probably have a pretty good idea of what's going to be on the board. The Jags are taking Trevor Lawrence at No. 1. The Jets are likely drafting a quarterback at No. 2, and they just hired Robert Saleh and a handful of other former 49ers' coaches to run the organization. Those two teams are competitors, but with the Jets on the other side of the country and in the AFC, my guess is that the 49ers have a decent idea of what the Jets are thinking.
Depending on the player the Jets pick at No. 2, the 49ers will have at least three of Zach Wilson, Trey Lance Justin Fields and Mac Jones on the board at No. 3. Wilson seems the favorite to land with the Jets, which would leave Fields, Lance and Jones on the board. Lance is coming off a wasted season and was at a lower level of competition at North Dakota State. Jones is regarded as the more pro-ready option after spending last season as Alabama's starter, although he doesn't have the same sort of ceiling as Lance. Fields falls somewhere in the middle.
I'm convinced all of this means nothing. We aren't very good judges of who is and is not pro-ready; Daniel Jones was regarded as pro-ready in 2019 and still doesn't look like he's expecting the pass rush to come after him on any given snap. Josh Rosen was arguably the most pro-ready passer of the five first-rounders in 2018 and you know how that's gone. (If it wasn't Rosen, the most pro-ready passer of the five would have been Sam Darnold, and that hasn't gone much better.)
As for Lance, I'm still waiting for the team that actually takes a quarterback in the top five and sits him for a year. Remember that the Eagles talked about this with Carson Wentz, who preceded Lance at North Dakota State, while planning to use Bradford and/or Chase Daniel as their starters in 2016. Wentz fractured a rib in his first preseason game, sat out the rest of the summer, and ... the Eagles traded Bradford just before the season and immediately installed Wentz as their Week 1 starter. Blake Bortles and Josh Allen were supposed to be projects and they were in the lineup before the end of September. Mahomes is a very, very rare exception to the rule, and that was because the Chiefs were already in a comfortable position with Alex Smith. If the 49ers think Lance is the better long-term quarterback, they'll take him, regardless of who is deemed more pro-ready before the draft.
2. Going with a cheaper option at quarterback helps the 49ers go after talent now. I wrote about the value of quarterbacks on rookie deals all the way back in 2013, when teams transformed around guys such as Colin Kaepernick, Cam Newton and Russell Wilson. Nothing has changed over the ensuing few years, and as Wentz and Jared Goff have flamed out after signing extensions, the value of going cheap at quarterback and surrounding that passer with talent has grown even more obvious. One team will eventually cycle through cheap options at quarterback and use the picks from trading that passer to get the next prospect. The 49ers, with their offensive braintrust, could be that team.
More realistically, getting Fields or Lance for the next few years on a fraction of their actual value allows the 49ers to be more aggressive in building their roster. They already brought back Trent Williams on a massive contract, making the star left tackle the highest-paid lineman in league history. The Niners also re-signed Juszczyk and Jason Verrett, but they still have work to do. Richard Sherman is a free agent. Fred Warner is in the final year of his deal and about to get a massive raise. Nick Bosa and Deebo Samuel will be up for new deals after 2021.
Going with a cheaper option at quarterback allows them to bring back as many of those guys as possible. It also encourages them to go into the free-agent market for the pieces which remain; there are plenty of players still available at edge rusher and cornerback, the latter of which remains a need for the Niners. They should also be able to hold on to just about anyone they want who is coming up for a new deal in the years to come.
3. Garoppolo's days in San Francisco are numbered. When I wrote about the 49ers last fall, I mentioned that holding onto Garoppolo for 2021 at his current figure made no sense. He has struggled to stay healthy as a pro, with 2019 as his only full campaign without suffering a significant injury. When healthy, while he has been good, he hasn't been a transcendent talent. The 49ers were not typically a pass-first team in 2019 and didn't trust him in critical situations, most notably at the end of the first half in the Super Bowl two seasons ago.
Because the 49ers structured Garoppolo's deal with a huge roster bonus as opposed to a huge signing bonus, general manager John Lynch & Co. also left themselves with an easy out if they did want to move on from the former Eastern Illinois quarterback. Garoppolo is owed $25 million in 2021, all of which is unguaranteed. If the 49ers want to move on from him, they'll only owe $2.8 million in dead money, giving the team all the flexibility in the world if they want to make a deal.
Early reports have suggested that the 49ers won't trade him, which is the sort of thing teams say when they don't want a player's trade value to crater. I'm extremely skeptical. Saving that $25 million frees up cap space for the 49ers to build a Super Bowl contender around their first-round pick while retaining guys like Warner. Garoppolo wouldn't get anywhere close to that sort of money if he's released, which gives the 49ers leverage to try and force him to take a pay cut. I could see him returning on a reworked contract, one where he has a reduced price tag of around $10 million in 2021 before hitting unrestricted free agency in 2022.
Garoppolo has his own leverage, as a no-trade clause in 2021 precludes the 49ers from trading him without his approval. Naturally, he isn't going to want to be in a lame-duck situation and end up spending a year on the bench, but he's also not going to go somewhere for the sake of making the 49ers cap-compliant and happy. There's a middle ground that would satisfy all parties, as you already know ...
New England Patriots
Come on down! There are a handful of teams that don't have either an entrenched veteran starter or a clear path to drafting a new quarterback. That list includes: the Patriots, Broncos, Panthers, Eagles, Saints, and Washington. The Saints don't have the cap space to make a Garoppolo trade work, although they could try to restructure a deal. The Eagles didn't trade for Garoppolo as part of this deal when these teams could have done a three-way swap. Washington just signed Ryan Fitzpatrick, who might be better than Garoppolo.
Realistically, the Patriots and Broncos stand out as the two most obvious options for a Garoppolo trade, and with the no-trade clause, you can imagine where Garoppolo might prefer to go. The Pats did sign Cam Newton earlier this offseason, but Newton's deal only guarantees the former MVP $2 million, with another $1.5 million in base salaries with offsets. His deal isn't going to stop the Patriots from pursuing another option at quarterback.
The Pats have $14 million in cap space, but they can work on Garoppolo's contract to reduce his cap hit without forcing their former draftee to take a significant pay cut. (Given his options, he might also end up taking a pay cut if he wants to be with the Patriots, since the only other way for him to get there would be via release, at which point the Pats could negotiate a cheaper deal.) This long-rumored reunion makes too much sense for both sides not to get a deal done. The Patriots once seemingly did the 49ers a favor by sending Garoppolo to San Francisco for a second-round pick; I wonder if the 49ers will do the same by sending Jimmy G back to New England for a midround selection.
Atlanta Falcons
Suddenly, the Falcons -- who own the No. 4 pick -- find themselves in an interesting position. They reportedly had talks with the 49ers but didn't get a deal done, which could work to their advantage. With the 49ers expected to draft a quarterback at No. 3, the Falcons will have their pick of all the non-quarterbacks on the board. They'll also still have two of Fields, Lance, Wilson, and Jones to choose from, meaning that there will still be at least two promising quarterback prospects available with the fourth pick.
Are the Falcons likely to pick a quarterback? It's always possible, but my instincts say no. Atlanta restructured Matt Ryan's deal this offseason to create short-term cap space, a move which makes moving on from their veteran in 2022 prohibitive. They would now owe $40.6 million in dead money on their cap if they let Ryan leave next year. They could spread that amount over two years by making Ryan a post-June 1 release, but why would they choose to put themselves in a difficult cap situation if they were planning on drafting a quarterback and letting Ryan leave one year after a restructure? I don't think drafting a passer and letting him sit behind Ryan for two years makes much sense, either.
Could they trade this pick to a team that wants a quarterback? Absolutely. The Falcons could go best player available and draft Sewell or one of the receivers at four, but none of those players fit Atlanta's needs. They already have an entrenched left tackle in Jake Matthews and just used two first-rounders on offensive linemen in 2019. With Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley around, wide receiver isn't a need. Pitts is a possibility, but the Falcons could lock up Hayden Hurst to take care of tight end.
This team badly needs to invest in defensive help, and that's a place they would be better served later in the first round. Trading down would get a top-heavy, cap-strapped team valuable draft picks while still allowing them to address their biggest positions of weakness. And with the first three picks now presumably locked in as quarterbacks, the Falcons are the team you have to call if you want to trade up for a passer.
At the same time, there just aren't many teams left who would be in line to make that trade. The Panthers and Saints are off the board as divisional rivals. The Patriots won't trade up if they get Garoppolo. The Steelers don't have enough in terms of draft pick capital to make it worth Atlanta's while. You're looking at the Broncos, Washington and the Bears as the only three viable trade partners for the Falcons at No. 4.
Cincinnati Bengals
Bengals fans who were hoping to help out Joe Burrow have to be delighted. Cincinnati is now well positioned to grab either Sewell or their pick of the receiving weapons at No. 5. Drafting Sewell would give the Bengals what they hope to be their cornerstone tackles of the future in Sewell and 2019 first-rounder Jonah Williams, with free-agent addition Riley Reiff kicking inside to play guard. Alternately, Cincinnati could reunite Burrow with his former LSU teammate in Chase. This trade helps the Bengals significantly.
Detroit Lions
The Lions could consider a quarterback at No. 7 behind Jared Goff, although that move is less likely today. Detroit is more likely to be in position to draft one of the star wide receivers at the top of this class with their first-round pick, which seems like a position of need after letting Kenny Golladay leave in free agency.
They also have a better shot of landing Pitts, who would give the Lions the highest-drafted tandem of tight ends in history with Pitts and former No. 8 overall pick T.J. Hockenson. Most teams wouldn't take two tight ends so high, but I'm not counting anything out with new coach Dan Campbell.
Carolina Panthers
On the other hand, the Panthers can't be thrilled about what happened here. They have been in the market for Matthew Stafford, Watson and Russell Wilson, and are presumably considering a quarterback at No. 8. With the 49ers moving up, the chances of someone like Lance or Fields falling to the Panthers decreases. We know that at least three quarterbacks will come off the board before eight now, and if the Falcons trade down, that number will likely become four.
Furthermore, while other teams could try to move up to four to get their fourth choice of the quarterbacks, the Falcons are division rivals with Carolina and unlikely to take general manager Scott Fitterer's calls. With no need to add a wide receiver and Pitts and Sewell plausibly off the board before No. 8, the Panthers could end up being forced to trade down solely because of how the board falls.
Denver Broncos
Likewise, the Broncos will have a tougher time landing the quarterback of their dreams with the ninth pick. If they want to upgrade on Drew Lock, they'll probably have to jump to No. 4 to get that deal done, and they would still have to be happy with letting three quarterbacks come off the board before settling for the fourth option. I wouldn't rule out that possibility, and the Falcons might not get a better offer from somebody else, but there's also a scenario where five quarterbacks are off the board before the Broncos come up at No. 9.
Having said that, a Falcons-Broncos deal would make sense for both sides. Denver could package Bradley Chubb as part of such a trade, although draft picks seem like the more likely capital. The Broncos have a playoff-caliber roster outside of the quarterback spot. Would it be worth sending the ninth pick, their 2022 first-round pick, and Lock to the Falcons to get Lance or Fields? We may not know until draft day arrives.