Last year was supposed to be the offseason of unhinged quarterback movement, and, yes, a few guys did change teams. Matthew Stafford’s a Ram, Carson Wentz is a Colt, and Sam Darnold was traded to the Panthers, spurring a deal that sent Teddy Bridgewater to the Broncos.
But the guys who rattled cages the hardest last spring? They went nowhere.
So it is, with the trade deadline having come and gone, that the supercharged offseason of the relocated star signal-caller may be coming after all, just a year later than many people forecasted it. Deshaun Watson wasn’t traded before Tuesday’s deadline, and Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers are still with the teams that drafted them, and all that’s setting up is what could a pretty wild winter in the NFL.
“Everyone’s preparing for that, we all know it could happen,” said an exec from a team that figures to be in the mix. “We’re planning for it accordingly.”
And there you have what would be my under-the-radar story of a week in which the news cycle was moving like a 5-year-old on a sugar high.
Watson’s legal situation made it tough for the Texans to get full value for him in a trade, but his desire to start over somewhere else hasn’t waned in the least. Rodgers reported to Green Bay over the summer with the promise that a reworked deal was coming. It did—cutting a season off the old contract and making 2022 a contract year for the league MVP. Meanwhile, Wilson showed up the earliest of the three, at the end of OTAs, with the agreement that he and the Seahawks would focus on ’21 with no promises past that.
All, at the very least, have set the stage for their exits a few months from now, and the probability that Houston, Green Bay and Seattle oblige is much higher than it ever was a year ago. And with the trade deadline in the rearview, the idea that all three will be on the market at the same time, ahead of the start of the league year, just got very real.
So buckle up for that—and a full recap of the week that was in this week’s GamePlan.
