As Sunday Splash! reports go, this is more Captain Obvious than Corporal Cannonball, but it’s worth mentioning.
Adam Schefter of ESPN.com reports that multiple teams have asked the NFL to push back the trade deadline, in the aftermath of the closing of the window this week.
It’s news, but it’s hardly new. Teams have wanted the deadline to go deeper into the season for years. It should have happened automatically when the regular season was extended by a week in 2021.
Per the report, teams want it to move to the Tuesday after Week 10 or Week 12. It should be even later than that, as we argued earlier this week.
The league presumably hopes to avoid full-blown, tank-job December fire sales, once teams know they’re done and start flipping players for picks. But, again, why not let them? If it’s already over, let them try to improve their future fortunes by shifting draft selections from the haves to the have-nots.
If teams are going to tank anyway (and they will), this gives them a more legitimate reason to strategically give younger players a test drive by not simply benching a better player but by giving him a fresh start with a contender.
Really, the players generally should want this. As the separation between good and bad teams continues, and as a good player who knows he’s playing out the string on his stint with a bad team, why not give him a chance to finish the year with a chance to play in the postseason?
