Trade Deadline LIVE: Jets Load Up, Colts & Cowboys Swing Big, and MORE!

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Speaker 4 Time is not a massive trade in.

Speaker 5 What's happening with the Jets? This is how the day goes.

Speaker 4 They certainly have made the trade. Just an absolute blockbuster of a deal.

Speaker 2 Moments after this trade came down, we heard another one coming.

Speaker 7 We've not talked about that a lot as part of this deal. And we were shocked moments ago here in the newsroom.

Speaker 4 You are shit.

Speaker 4 What are you going to do about it?

Speaker 7 See, I'm going to get your thoughts on the game.

Speaker 7 I hate this team.

Speaker 7 I was born into this and I'm not going to ever, I'm always a Jets fan, but like,

Speaker 7 I just, I hate this team.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 welcome to Heed the Call, the trade deadline, live, spectacular.

Speaker 1 Heeding that call. on a Tuesday at exactly 4 p.m.
Eastern, 1 p.m. Pacific, or close to it.
Dan Hands is here, Mark Sessler, Connor, or congratulations, Connor. Right off the top,

Speaker 1 the Grinch who stole Jetsness,

Speaker 1 that poor boy that struggled so much with his fandom in life, that Quinnen Williams jersey, which might be the jersey he also uses as a blanket at night. He's the only thing he could afford.

Speaker 1 Now that's not even out. That's not even something he could wear with pride because Quinn Williams is one of superstars that Jets traded away today.
Quinnen Williams and Sauce Gardners dealt away.

Speaker 1 They are the centerpiece moves in a massive trade deadline in the NFL. Congratulations, buddy.
I'm sure he's really upset, which is right up your alley.

Speaker 10 Yeah, no, I don't think there could be a better capper to what has been an awesome day.

Speaker 1 I mean, let's go, baby.

Speaker 10 This is what it's all about, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope he's okay.
And I hope one of these...

Speaker 1 the collection, three first-round picks that Jets have picked up today, and we're going to get into all of this.

Speaker 1 And of course, the Colts who land Sauce Gardner and the Cowboys who land Quinnen Williams, what that means for them, and then the other trades that went down as the deadline just passed. And Mark,

Speaker 1 again, live stream. We got a lot of people on the stream.
I see it already. Very cool.
We'll try to hit up

Speaker 1 some questions and comments at the end of the hour here. But Sess Dog, I know you're a little bit of a live wire in general.
Live wire plus live plus

Speaker 1 some saucy trades. I know you're feeling good about this show.

Speaker 2 It It was, it seemed like a quiet day. And then it suddenly like two nuclear bombs landed.
And they came straight from our friends, the Jets.

Speaker 2 You know, Quinn and Williams had been whispered about, but the Sauce Gardner trade to me was wild. And I don't know where you're at with it, Dan.
We'll dig into it.

Speaker 2 But I saw a comment from Connor that he didn't like it for either team. I love it for the Jets.

Speaker 2 I don't think you have to look back at like Jalen Ramsey as the last cornerback that you trade for two firsts. Like it just doesn't happen that often.

Speaker 2 And I get that you're giving up a little bit on this current version of the Jets, but I'm willing to take this current version of the Jets and float it down a dead river.

Speaker 2 Like it's it's tricky and it's complicated to start over and hope that the draft assets work out, but they've got great value for a player that I kind of question

Speaker 2 from a cultural standpoint. Were they on board with Sauce Gardner and in reverse, like despite the extension?

Speaker 1 Let me now throw it to Connor because Connor, I saw you tweet it out. I know you made a bunch of phone calls, talked to people close to the to the Jets around this deal and wrote about it on SA.com.

Speaker 1 Please check it out.

Speaker 1 And your tweet was that, is this a trade that you can't like for either side potentially? I would like to hear your thoughts.

Speaker 10 Okay, so they're multi-layered. So stop me from rambling when it gets to mundane.

Speaker 10 But the first thing is that this all centers around the 2027 NFL draft, not the 2026, because because the Jets now have three first-round picks in the 2027 NFL draft.

Speaker 10 The evaluators that I spoke to today are saying this is a generational class, maybe one of the better draft classes that we've seen in the last couple of decades.

Speaker 10 And the Jets are probably not going to get their quarterback next year. They're going to wait for this class that's going to have Dylan Rayola from Nebraska, probably C.J.

Speaker 10 Carr from Notre Dame, and yes, maybe Arch Manning. And so in that way, I think that showed a shrewd bit of business.

Speaker 10 But the flip side of it is, if you're Moogie and if you're the Jets, you have to do better than Quinnen Williams and Sauce Gardner.

Speaker 10 And I texted an executive who interviewed for a few jobs during this last GM cycle. And I said, okay, you're giving a first-time kid.

Speaker 10 all these draft picks, five first-round draft picks in the next two years, and then the two second round picks. What are your thoughts on this?

Speaker 10 And the executive texted me back the meme from Dodgeball that just said, that's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it works out for them.

Speaker 10 And so that's the problem here is that it's cool to do this and to tear apart what could be a top five defense because it doesn't fit what you're doing now.

Speaker 10 But you have to do better now than top five players at two tentpole positions, which like, I mean, that doesn't come around a whole lot. And that's.

Speaker 1 Well, that's subjective saying that Quinn Williams and Sauce were top five at their positions. They were very, very good players.

Speaker 1 And at times, they felt like like they could be transcendent type players. And I guess that would be my, and now they're gone.
And now they're both gone. And why I'm of two minds on this Tuesday

Speaker 1 is this is a sad day for the New York Jets because it is an acknowledgement and admission that. They failed once again.
And Mark, you and I were there in Vegas when

Speaker 1 Sauce Gardner was drafted. He came onto the set when we were doing an ATN.
And the first question I asked asked him was,

Speaker 1 You know, it's been pretty bad here. It's been pretty bleak.

Speaker 1 Are you aware of that? And how do you feel about it? They said, I don't care about that. I don't care about any of that.
This is a new era for the Jets.

Speaker 1 And like all other Jets fans, we were so hopeful. He goes on to become defensive rookie of the year.

Speaker 1 Garrett Wilson, taken in the same draft, becomes offensive rookie of the year. He is not traded, as far as we know right now.

Speaker 1 Quinnan Williams had been around longer and had been a great Jet and played at a high level for many years.

Speaker 1 And when Sauce came into the league with Garrett Wilson, with Quinnen Williams there, with the other pieces around the team, eventually Aaron Rodgers and everything that happened there, it felt like the next era of Jets Contention was coming and it never happened.

Speaker 1 So when you make these moves, it is an admission. You just punt it on another half decade or so and you're going to restart.
And do I trust Darren Moogie? Is it Moogie or Moogie?

Speaker 1 Moogie. Moogie.
And do I trust Aaron Glenn? Because I think this has Aaron Glenn's fingerprints all over it.

Speaker 1 I thought it was very interesting when you go back to

Speaker 1 this summer, even.

Speaker 1 They gave Sauce Gardner a big extension. They gave Garrett Wilson a big extension in the same week.
And it was a statement of intent.

Speaker 1 It's like, under this new leadership, you guys remain the building blocks.

Speaker 1 And Aaron Glenn, a former first-round pick cornerback himself, I don't think there was something with Sauce Gardner and Aaron Glenn.

Speaker 1 That would be my guess here, because you may remember or you may not remember that when the Jets named team captains, Sauce Gardner coming off a mega extension, former top three pick, wasn't even a team captain.

Speaker 1 And I thought Sauce played well this year, better than last year. But let me just tell you something.
Sauce, who gets sent to the Colts for two first-round picks and A.D.

Speaker 1 Mitchell, the former second-round pick wide receiver that had fallen out of favor there,

Speaker 1 the two first-round picks is more than career interceptions he had. Okay.
And he wasn't. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 1 The problem I had with this Jets defense, and Sauce and Quinnen were both part of the problem. It's like, where are the playmakers on this defense? And that could be Scheme also.

Speaker 1 And I understand that, but there weren't enough splash plays. And for what you were paying Sauce and what you were paying Quinnen, this wasn't working.
And so

Speaker 1 while I'm sad to see it get blown up because it is an admission of failure, I also look at it from a positive standpoint. And this is the spin that I have in my head.
Like

Speaker 1 from the day that those players were drafted,

Speaker 1 Sauce and Garrett, to today, when they traded Sauce and they traded Quinnen Williams.

Speaker 1 It's a book. And that is a book that closes with Aaron Rodgers, many of the chapters in the between, right? And it didn't work out.
You close that book.

Speaker 1 It's another testament and a tomb to failure for the Jets.

Speaker 1 It's over. And I think that if you want to spin this in a positive way, Mark, and I'll get out of the way now, but if you want to spin this in a positive way,

Speaker 1 it is a fresh start that this team badly needed. And I know Justin, for instance,

Speaker 1 as

Speaker 1 he wants his team to kind of go all in on a full-on rebuild.

Speaker 1 I know the Browns and the Miles Garrett decision they made this summer, like you, part of you likes this excitement and this idea of, okay, this is not working. Let's blow it up.
And it's exciting.

Speaker 1 It's going to be a very exciting draft come this spring for the Jets and the one after it as well. But there's no promises.

Speaker 1 At least to me, you close this book and it does feel like a fresh start, even if it is a big failure that you close the book on.

Speaker 2 And to Connor's point, because my argument would be that they got great value for Sauce Gardner in what is a tough, it's an unusual trade in 2025 because you don't see.

Speaker 2 a player like that garner two first-round picks, a cornerback often. So the Jets, at least, we're not, the story isn't they got fleeced and we're laughing at them.
It's the opposite. You're right.

Speaker 2 It's a fresh chapter. But as someone who glommed onto the Sashi Brown, Cleveland Browns,

Speaker 2 you can garner all the draft picks you want. It comes down to the front office, the coaching staff nailing those picks.

Speaker 2 Because to your point, like they had two awesome players that they drafted, drafted well. And so you've got to now hope that you go do it again.
And nothing is for bad teams.

Speaker 2 Nothing feels more of a a variable dice roll than trying to build through the draft when you aren't functionally sound from an organization.

Speaker 2 It was an organizational like message, but what is their message? I don't feel any closer to knowing what the Jets are.

Speaker 2 You just have to hope that over the next two years, they absolutely hit A-plus in these drafts, or this looks like a comprehensive meltdown on some level. It's just going to take time to see.

Speaker 10 I'm excited to talk about the Colts end of this, but I'll put a bow on the Jets end of it on my end just by saying this.

Speaker 10 I agree with you, Dan, that it seemed like they lacked that panache as playmakers, but this almost reminds me of, I think it was two years ago, when right before the trade deadline, people were wondering if the Broncos might flip Pat Sertan, right?

Speaker 10 And if they might put him out onto the market. Sauce Gardner actually trails opposing number one wide receivers at a higher rate than even Sertan does.

Speaker 10 And Sertan is kind of universally believed as that Rivis Island cornerback that's the number one cornerback in the NFL and shuts them down. I mean, it's like a 50% or less completion rate.

Speaker 10 Quinnam Williams is the best double team beater as a defensive tackle since 2022.

Speaker 10 And while those things don't often maybe generate hype or headlines, like to me, if you're Aaron Glenn, like those are things that you would want moving forward.

Speaker 10 And that's what scares me is like, if you can't make that work, because the Lions rebuild was not necessarily one where it was like, okay, we're going to trade a bunch of stuff and get picks.

Speaker 10 It's just like, we're going to coach up the guys that we had.

Speaker 10 And Glenn got that job on the strength of like, hey, at the end of the season, I can take a couple guys off the scrap heap and I can beat the crap out of the Vikings or whatever it is.

Speaker 10 And the fact that he couldn't make that work with those guys kind of worries me because they have had elite years and they have had elite performances over that time. So I don't know.

Speaker 10 I'm kind of at a loss for that personally.

Speaker 1 Let's get, let's get another.

Speaker 1 a viewpoint on this. And this is one of the

Speaker 1 my number one guys. Like, you know, everybody that when you have a favorite team, like who are the guys whose voices you trust that know the team inside and out?

Speaker 1 Joe Caparoso, he is the founder of Badlands, which is, if you're, if you're not following Badlands, if you're a Jets fan, what are you doing? On Patreon, check it out.

Speaker 1 He's already got one episode up today, an emergency podcast. I'll be joining the show.
Another episode he's doing a little bit later today. And now Joe hops on.
Heed the call. Joe.

Speaker 1 How you doing, buddy?

Speaker 1 As the number one Jets fan, how you doing?

Speaker 8 It's a triple emergency podcast day. Also, ignore this Sauce Gardner picture here.
We don't need to look at that right now.

Speaker 1 That's got to go. That's got to go.

Speaker 1 Let me show you something, Joe, because for my son's birthday.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. Not the Jets.
My son's birthday, it was, it's hard to see, but this is a Sauce Gardner t-shirt. Oh, you got to know better.
You got to play it safe.

Speaker 1 His birthday was in August, and then the Jets lost relentlessly. So he was too embarrassed here in L.A.
to wear a Jet shirt. Stayed in the packaging.
Daddy gets to send this back to New York.

Speaker 1 Excellent shop. Excellent.
Very not everything is lost

Speaker 1 in Jetsland. Your thoughts on obviously

Speaker 1 a franchise shifting day for the Jets?

Speaker 8 I'm still shocked.

Speaker 8 I think, you know, you remember the day they traded for Favre, the day they traded Aaron Rodgers, but for Aaron Rodgers, but to trade away two guys like this within 25 minutes of each other,

Speaker 8 it's just one of the more transformational days that I can remember. Now, is it going to work? Is it for better or worse? We don't honestly know yet.
We don't have enough data on Glenn and Bougie.

Speaker 8 But the fact that they have the juice to convince Woody Johnson and ownership to trade Sauce Gardner this soon after that contract in particular is shocking to me and shows that Woody is in with this regime.

Speaker 8 And I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon for all that one and done chatter. The Quinn and one in a vacuum is a little less surprising.

Speaker 8 I'm actually really pleasantly surprised by the value they got back there considering his age and his relative lack of production the last year and a half, even though he's a great football player.

Speaker 8 I think this regime wants a quarterback come hell or high water. They knew they didn't have the resources or assets to do it.

Speaker 8 They know they're headed to three and 14 this year with or without Sauce and Quinnen. And I'll tell you, the next two drafts are going to be pretty damn interesting.

Speaker 8 You know, could this be 2000 all over again when they had the four first-round picks and they set the table to be good for a decade?

Speaker 8 Or is it going to be a few years ago where they effectively had four first-round picks with how high Brees was taken in the second?

Speaker 8 And there were a couple nice moments, but ultimately they've just been bad. So I'm still a bit shocked.
I do think they got fair value back, if not slightly more than I expected for Quinnen.

Speaker 8 It's just, what do you do with the assets now? And I think to what you were saying before, why didn't a guy like Jermaine Johnson get traded?

Speaker 8 I think Aaron Glenn has a type of guy and type of player, right or wrong. And I don't think Sauce Gardner is that type of guy or player.
Or he found that out over the last two months.

Speaker 8 And I think Jermaine Johnson is, especially if he can stay healthy.

Speaker 8 I also think they really like Azaria Thomas, and it's a very small data size, but they think they could win with the corners as currently constructed without sauce.

Speaker 8 And they did win their only game this year without sauce. But man, I got to tell you, I'm absolutely stunned still.
Stunned.

Speaker 10 This, you mentioned the 2000 draft. I'm thinking back to the last Jets draft that I covered when I was a beat writer for the team.

Speaker 10 And that was after the new GM, John Idzik came in, and the prerequisite for that job was to trade Dorrell Rivas. You had the D.

Speaker 10 Milner, Sheldon Richardson draft, which then spun to that massive 13-player draft the next year with, I mean, it was like Jason Morrow and Calvin Pryor and like that just dead man walk of guys.

Speaker 10 And that is kind of, you know, that's what was brought up to me. You know, when I'm calling around today, it's like, okay, yeah, it could be cool.

Speaker 10 It could be transformational, but also like, remember those two years?

Speaker 10 And it does feel like kind of a similar transfer of power from Tannenbaum into this regime as it does into the Idzik regime where it's just, or, you know, into the Muji regime where it's like, hey, we're, we're asking you to do some different things.

Speaker 10 We're asking you to generate some draft capital. We'll get young and fast and cheap again.

Speaker 1 But like it could go wrong.

Speaker 10 It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be great.

Speaker 8 Yeah. I mean, look, you got to draft the right guys.
And that, man, the IDZIC 13 or the IDZIC 12.

Speaker 8 I try to erase it from my brain at this point because it's so true.

Speaker 1 Remember when Manish Mehta said I was going to walk like Manhattan if he made everything?

Speaker 8 Hello, hail the sign-up, like hike home, basically.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 8 to try to be optimistic and positive on a day where my brain is truly swimming, because I'm actually surprised post-Quinnen, they didn't make another deal and they did hold on to Brees and Quincy Williams and some of the other guys being rumored.

Speaker 8 The early returns on the first and second round pick this year look very good for Membu and Mason Taylor.

Speaker 8 Now, regardless of what happens with the rest of the draft, if they do well with their first and second round picks, since they have a combined nine now over the next two years, that should be enough to build something to go with Membu, Mason Taylor, and hopefully Thomas as a third round pick.

Speaker 8 but you got to do it, right? And how many of those assets are they going to have to use to potentially trade up if they're not picking first?

Speaker 8 Because they do what the Jets do and win a few games in December and drop from two to seven in the draft order. That remains to be seen, but they certainly have enough assets and flexibility.

Speaker 8 And if they could do what they did this year, which is, I don't know if it was a slam dumb pick to take Membu when they did, but they did, and it looks like it was the right decision.

Speaker 8 Same with Mason Taylor. So far, it looks like the right decision.
Can you do that again? And as always, it will always come back to who's the quarterback? And can they pick the right quarterback?

Speaker 8 And can they set the quarterback up for success?

Speaker 8 Because that, it's not an easy year to pick a quarterback. I think there's plenty of interesting options, but there's no Andrew luck in this class, right?

Speaker 8 You're going to have to make a discerning decision among three to four different guys.

Speaker 8 And that will sink or swim ultimately what these transactions resulted in.

Speaker 2 That's kind of what I love about what the Jets did from a positive angle is they compiled a tremendous amount of ammunition for the next two drafts.

Speaker 2 So you don't have to desperately swing at the next failed draft quarterback this offseason necessarily. But let me just ask you this because, you know, I'm a Browns fan.

Speaker 2 We've all been through these waves and these cycles of terrible sports teams that, you know, the hope comes when the football stops and the offseason begins.

Speaker 2 That's when your hope begins if you're a Jets fan or a Browns fan. But what do you do with the locker room?

Speaker 2 Like, to some degree, because I kind of agree with you, the Sauce Gardener thing felt a little bit like a cultural split with Aaron Glenn.

Speaker 2 Maybe we will probably find out more about that, but it's still a living, breathing organism that needs to go play football, and you're still investing in young players' careers. Like, this is a,

Speaker 2 you're just waving the flag here. You've ended your season, and

Speaker 2 it was over to begin with. But how do you, if you're Aaron Glenn, keep the momentum and the message going that this matters, I matter, I'm the right leader for this team.

Speaker 8 I mean, look, it looked like coming out of that win against the Bengals that he sounds like he still has the locker room.

Speaker 8 It feels like he still has the locker room with how that day played out and how you hear certain players who were recently brought here talk to the press about him.

Speaker 8 I am sure we're going to get leaks galore about what was going on with Sauce behind the scenes. And if he clashed with Aaron Glenn, like that will happen.
This is New York.

Speaker 8 The Athletic will have some massive article on it soon.

Speaker 8 So that's going to happen. And

Speaker 8 it's going to be be a real challenge. And I'll still say, how do you come out of the buy against Cleveland, even without Quinnen and without Sauce?

Speaker 8 Like, are you going to do what the Jets do after a bye week and lose 20 to nothing at home to Dylan Gabriel?

Speaker 8 Are you going to come out and be tough and scrappy like you were to an extent against Denver and like you were in the second half against the Bengals?

Speaker 8 Because you still have Jermaine, you still have Brees, you still have Will McDonald, you still have Quincy Williams, and you just won a game without Sauce Gardner.

Speaker 8 And I think Glenn is going to say, and Glenn and Moogie, what they're selling to Woody is like, look, like, yes, we have our draft draft picks we also made three pretty smart trades so far for harrison phillips juwan briggs and brownlee at nickel like these are our guys and you mix them with jermaine who's a culture fit for us you mix it with our draft class like we're starting to turn this over and sauce is a great player but sauce was a robert solid player and robert solid lost a lot of games here and it was just time to move on and quinnen you know he's done his time let's put him in a better situation where before he's 30 maybe he can win a couple games and i i think that's how they'll try to frame it and I'm curious to hear what they have to say to the press.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 8 I think they're going to say, look, we just won without Sauce. We can find a way to win a few more games with or without him.
And now next year, man, could we go get a quarterback and a receiver?

Speaker 8 And with this extra draft capital, we can draft another defensive tackle.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 Badlands podcast, Badlands, one of Bruce's great songs, that new movie. I saw the movie.

Speaker 1 Didn't work for you.

Speaker 1 But Bruce had a great line in

Speaker 1 the live from 75 to 85 triple record from the 80s.

Speaker 1 He's talking about blind faith in your leaders or anything will get you killed. But that's all we have.
Like, the only thing we can hope now is that this leadership

Speaker 1 will make the right moves. And yes, I like some of these little accent moves they've made this season.
I do worry about the Glenn side of it.

Speaker 1 I do worry about the Glenn side of it because I think if Sauce and Glenn butted heads, some of the Aaron Glenn stuff has been on my radar this year about kind of how he's kind of been a little,

Speaker 1 some of his media dealings have seemed a little rough. Like he's taken some of the wrong lessons from a Bill Parcells type upbringing.

Speaker 1 And if he's like playing the tough guy card and deciding Sauce Gardner is not one of my guys, like, can I trust? Aaron Glenn to be part of this architecture? Like,

Speaker 1 that's what I worry about the most, Connor. Like,

Speaker 1 I love the excitement around the team again, even though it's the wrong time of year for excitement in the spring.

Speaker 10 but can i can i trust can i trust this regime to get this right when it they never do they never do okay so i'll i i respond to that with a statement and a question the first is i reached out to some people who were there with the regime that drafted sauce gardener and i said would you have done this trade Would you have sent him there knowing everything that you know about him?

Speaker 10 And their response was unilaterally, fuck yeah. Like, I mean, you're going to get two number one picks.
And that's not a reflection of the player. It's just the fact that that's two first-round picks.

Speaker 10 And you don't know what's going to happen with Daniel Jones next year. You don't know what that 2027 pick is going to look like.
And as we talked about before, the 2027 class is going to be a monster.

Speaker 10 But the follow-up to that is, and you kind of alluded to it now.

Speaker 10 I mean, Mark, I remember you and I being so enraptured back when I was a Browns fan with the Sashi Brown thing, with the tenants of this, like, oh, we're going to do this NBA style and we're going to get all this draft equity and it's going to look like this.

Speaker 10 And my question is, it got popular for a little while in the NFL and it went through cyclically. When has this worked? Really?

Speaker 10 I mean, and we can go back to Jerry Jones and we could talk about the Herschel Walker trade ad nauseum.

Speaker 10 But after that, gutting young talent, youngish talent on your roster and loading up for draft capital and building like a roster core of like 22, 23, 24-year-old kids, when has that worked out?

Speaker 10 Like a team that you can point to and be like, that's the blueprint. Because that's what I don't see.

Speaker 10 Like most of the success stories are guys coming in and working with what they already have and being like, okay, I got some good players here. I got some good players there.

Speaker 10 Let me draft one or two good guys. And then boom, we're in the playoffs.
Like that seems more like the blueprint in the modern NFL than this like forever runway of tanking and rebuilding and gutting.

Speaker 10 And I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm missing a team.
I'm not thinking of one right now.

Speaker 2 No, it's John Elway recruiting.

Speaker 1 Well, the payment. 2000 Jets would be would be an example for Jets fans.
They traded Keyshawn Johnson. It was a major trade, and then they kind of nailed that draft.

Speaker 1 And that there were two eras where, as bad as the Jets have been the last 50 years, when Parcells came and quickly rebuilt it on the fly, they get to the AFC title game in 98. He steps down.

Speaker 1 You have the transition Al Gro year. And then they trade Keyshawn, who's unhappy.

Speaker 1 And then they draft, they have a big draft where that sets them up for the next seven or eight years, nine years, where they became contenders again.

Speaker 1 But we don't know. We don't know if that will will work.
Joe,

Speaker 1 you said it all. We're going to say it more together.

Speaker 8 We got more venting to do tonight. So we're going to talk about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, on the Badlands podcast. So make sure head over to Patreon.
You're already on Patreon for Heed the Call. Sign up for Badlands.

Speaker 1 And we thank you very much for joining us. And if you're listening to the podcast right now, we're going to take a quick break.
And on the live stream,

Speaker 1 we're going to continue right now.

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Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Let's move off the jets.

Speaker 2 Can I make one quick comment?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 In the middle of, and Justin, I appreciate you and your talents to no end.

Speaker 2 But popping up in the middle of our conversation with Joe, and you know, it's Justin's job to find comments that engage the listener and entertain us and them just like a gravedigger is the goat.

Speaker 1 I know. He can't help it.

Speaker 1 We want you to be part of the conversation.

Speaker 1 Are you an only child, Justin?

Speaker 15 No, I have a younger sister. It's just wallpaper.
Like, I'm not expecting you guys to respond. Like, we'll get to a point.

Speaker 1 But you know, it's flying up on the screen. We're in the middle of an in-depth conversation.
We have a guest on the show, and all of a sudden it flies up. Justin is the goat.
Like, that, you know,

Speaker 1 we don't need it.

Speaker 15 I mean, that was one of like 55 comments that I flew up that are all just like, you know, live reactions.

Speaker 15 For the people who are watching this back after the stream ends, they can get a little taste of what the chat is.

Speaker 1 And I love Justin. But we know Justin.
You know, We know by flying up that comment, he's thinking more comments are going to come. And guess what? He's a mad genius because now that we brought it up,

Speaker 1 there's more Justin comments coming in.

Speaker 1 And now, in this part, I don't mind as much. He's going to fly up some more, and then you're going to see smoke coming out of Sessler's ears.
And that's, you know, that's not bad. But like,

Speaker 1 it's all a cycle, just like the Jets, a perpetual cycle. It's a cycle.
It's the gravy cycle of

Speaker 1 gravy content.

Speaker 2 Self-admiration.

Speaker 2 I will say one other quick thing connor your hat is getting a lot of positive heat in the comments section i noticed that too the people are loving your old school look there well we don't we don't see any of those comments because they're all justin related but um

Speaker 10 not not to not to tattle on him but it wasn't just that one there was like nine in a row at one point and i looked over and we got a very handsome guest on i love that he's got that the real feel accent for where i live he's got the real jersey Yeah, it's hypnotizing and it's beautiful.

Speaker 10 And I will say I was taken slightly out of my zone. There was one that was like, Justin saved my son from a burning fire.

Speaker 10 And it's just like.

Speaker 1 He's trying to do professional shit. Yeah, this is a live stream.

Speaker 2 Justin is just attempting to keep other men off his lawn from mowing his lawn. Like, let's work on, let's start with the bass.

Speaker 1 And, you know, speaking of the Patreon, we let him do.

Speaker 1 two rap verses and now you see where the ego he's just floating into the stratosphere all right let's get back on track here on the live stream and again thank you to everybody on there we know it's not you're not only talking about justin even if it seems that way if you have anything to add to the discourse we'll hit some questions uh we should move and talk about what these trades mean um in general uh let's start with the colts side of things um

Speaker 1 Because the Colts, obviously, are a team, they're the opposite of the Jets in so many ways.

Speaker 1 I mean, they are a team that very low expectations when the season started, immediately came out of the gates fast. Daniel Jones found a home here with Shane Steichen.

Speaker 1 Obviously, a setback this past weekend against the Steelers, but overall, vibes are great.

Speaker 1 They internally identified that they were a player short in their defense and in the back end of their defense. So they go and they get.

Speaker 1 Whether or not you think Sauce Gardner was... As a rookie, it seemed like he was a generational talent.
And I think he hasn't gotten better since then, but he's still a very high-level cornerback.

Speaker 1 Connor, what does this trade do for the Colts back end of their defense?

Speaker 10 I think that it prevents them from, I think, the one thing that they're worried about.

Speaker 10 And we mentioned before that Sauce is one of the few players that will trail and shut down elite number one wide receivers.

Speaker 10 And I went back and I charted all the number one wide receivers that the Colts have faced this year. And it's not necessarily a murderous row, right?

Speaker 10 You had Tyreek Hill, who played in a bad offense, Cortland Sutton, Calvin Ridley, Jacoby Myers, Marvin Harrison, Lad McConkey.

Speaker 10 I mean, whoever Justin considers the Titans number one wide receiver and DK Metcalf.

Speaker 10 The one game where they had an unquestioned top five wide receiver that they faced was Puka Nakua, and he had 13 catches for 170 yards on this defense. Okay.

Speaker 10 And then on the back end of your schedule, you still have Rashi Rice to come. You still have Jackson Smith and Jigba to come.
And you still have Drake London to come.

Speaker 10 You want to hold on to that number one seed. And I think that this is a move to basically solidify that and to not worry about what a number one wide receiver is going to do to you.

Speaker 10 And Sauce, you don't need to know about the scheme. You can plug and play him and just say, hey, follow that guy.
And I'm not worried about him anymore.

Speaker 1 And here's the other part of it, Mark, that if there is a part of you, and this is a little bit of part of me, I have to say, that has been wondering, are the Colts really, really for real?

Speaker 1 Perfect timing for this deal because you're coming off that Steelers loss where Daniel Jones has five interceptions or five turnovers, and you know that they had the top five easiest schedule in football in the first half.

Speaker 1 And now it's the top five hardest schedule in the second half.

Speaker 1 So I think it's not an admission. It's just smart understanding your roster.
I think Ballard said, maybe we're a player or two short here. And they will go and get an elite young talent in Gardner.

Speaker 1 And now I think they're way better equipped to handle this back half of the schedule and see what happens in January.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because they put money into Chavarias Ward, banged up Cam Bynum as well in the offseason. This was, they're a very complete team.

Speaker 2 It's sort of snuck up on all of us to some degree. And part of it is the success of Daniel Jones, that that's worked out.

Speaker 2 But the secondary to Connor's point was one area where like, this is where you'll be challenged. And it's a completely different looking situation now.
I give like honestly.

Speaker 2 Like Carly Ursa Gordon, the whole ownership group, like this is a different franchise than it was a couple years ago when you're pulling Jeff Saturday off of ESPN to be your head coach.

Speaker 2 And one of the craziest things we've ever seen, like, they're a very complete roster. And I think part of the message here is: whether you do,

Speaker 2 viewer or not, we believe in Daniel Jones because this takes away your power to go draft one of those quarterbacks to some degree.

Speaker 2 You're putting everything onto the plate for this season and next season. It's not just this season, but you believe in Daniel Jones as your quarterback, too, because that's the that

Speaker 2 he's he's kind of in a good place for them, too.

Speaker 10 He's not gonna require insane cash to re-sign them i would tend to think but you're basically saying we're good where we're at and we're just gonna add and fortify and like from a cults angle this is a completely different team than i thought they were in july or august you made a perfect point this to me is the underlying bold italics strikethrough whatever your uh microsoft word font stylization of choice thing is about this trade the colts are now locked into daniel jones next year because you've given up your 2026 first-round pick.

Speaker 10 You've probably given up the ability to move up or down the board for a quarterback. And a lot of these veteran bridge guys are locked into where they are, right?

Speaker 10 Sam Darnold had it out in his contract, but he's not going anywhere. Maybe you get Geno Smith, but do you really want that? And Daniel Jones comes full circle to where he has another team.

Speaker 10 It's Kirk Cousins-esque. He has another team over a barrel with his contract up.

Speaker 10 And if you compare him to Darnold or to Baker Mayfield or to Geno, I mean, what Daniel Jones is making like, what, 12 or 13 million this year?

Speaker 10 Next year, he's going to get a raise to between 33 and 45 million because that's the Baker to Kirk Cousins range. And he's going to have to come in there and he won't probably settle for less.

Speaker 10 And so good for him. But if you're the Colts, do you really want to make the same mistake that the Giants did and go down that path? I don't know.

Speaker 1 That is the fascinating storyline, right? Because this isn't the first time. that Daniel Jones did have a hot streak that lasted.
It was even shorter.

Speaker 1 The one that got Daniel Jones paid was even a shorter hot streak than he just, you know, thrived in September and October.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I feel like that was, and we, on this show, we talked about not overreacting to one bad game in Pittsburgh.
But, you know, that there's teams study tape.

Speaker 1 They study ways to get after a quarterback, to scramble them.

Speaker 1 Pittsburgh, did Pittsburgh just give something of a roadmap to messing with the Colts offense and specifically the quarterback who in his past proven not over just a year or seasons, but half a decade almost in New York that he can really get into these

Speaker 1 places where he's just throwing the ball for grabs and not feeling pressure and fumbling the ball like crazy. Like

Speaker 1 it's absolutely fair to wonder that. And now, honestly, like I think about that, you know, going back to the trade and, you know, the picks over the next two years.

Speaker 1 It's very possible that that Colts pick that goes back to the Jets is 27 to 31 or whatever.

Speaker 1 But, you know, if the wheels fall off Daniel Jones and this is more like a Cinderella thing, we look at next year where the Cults are, you never know.

Speaker 1 Like, it's, he is not the guy that you necessarily trust all the way. But ultimately, it's not really about Daniel Jones today.
It's about what Sauce Gardner does for that defense.

Speaker 1 And you got to love it. Chris Ballard, who we all thought, you know, we did a flashpoint focus on the Colts.
Like, Chris Ballard, like, what does this guy have to do to get fired? Like,

Speaker 1 I mean, you must have most of what he was doing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Like

Speaker 1 to make a deal like this, to take on that, this contract that he's taking on, to give up those assets, you don't let your general manager pull the trigger on that unless you believe fully in the vision.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think like one other little note here, like that A.D. Mitchell goes to the Jets as part of this too.

Speaker 2 I don't know if one of the most boneheaded plays of the year caused that separation from the Colts. It seems very possible, but he's basically like the Jets number two.

Speaker 1 Not basically.

Speaker 1 I mean, he is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Somehow he's managed to leap

Speaker 1 frog the corpse of Alan Lazard in the Jets step chart.

Speaker 2 Somehow he has. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He was a second-round pick last year.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 obviously it's a little bit of a reclamation project for the Jets there, but he had kind of fallen out of favor to the point where he wasn't seeing much playing time.

Speaker 1 So the Colts, you know, it does, there is the other part of it too. Like now you don't have a first-round pick for multiple years.

Speaker 1 Mark, you just lived through it with the Browns, with the Deshaun Watson fallout.

Speaker 1 It makes it a little bit harder to build on this roster, but they're happy with it. And if I'm a Colts fan, I love the trade.
I love it.

Speaker 1 It's my team off a really great start in a wide open AFC this season going and getting one of the best defensive players in the league. Let's go.
Let's run.

Speaker 10 And after what, next year, I think, or the year after that, you can cut them. I mean, if it doesn't work out, the dead money is not prohibitive after a year or two.

Speaker 10 And so it really is a nice disaster.

Speaker 1 That would be a disaster if that's how it plays out just because you gave up too first to get a guy that you would cut. But unlikely that will happen barring something unforeseen.

Speaker 1 All right. Do we want to move to the Cowboy side of it?

Speaker 1 Sure. So the Cowboys, and Mark, you and I.
We certainly have made a trade.

Speaker 2 We look a little, I think we look a little.

Speaker 2 We're not bullies, but we were a little bit rough on Jerry Jones roughly 14 hours ago.

Speaker 1 Jerry Jones has been bullying people since like 1961.

Speaker 1 The world needs people like us, Mark, that could stand. God knows we weren't allowed to do it at the NFL, where if you even

Speaker 1 breathe around an owner, you might get a red letter of condemnation.

Speaker 1 We're okay. Jarrett can handle it.

Speaker 2 I called him a dangerous narcissist, which I'm not saying is untrue. It just like I kind of went off a little bit on him.

Speaker 1 Well, you know what?

Speaker 1 He might be dangerous, but he also did follow through on his promise or prediction that they were going to make moves because the big one is they do acquire Quinnen Williams from the Jets.

Speaker 1 To get him, they give up a 2026 second-round pick, a 2027 first-round pick, and defensive tackle Mazzie Smith to complete the trade.

Speaker 1 The 2027 pick going to the Jets will be the better of the Cowboys two first-round picks that year, which is an interesting note.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 does that mean that the pick is not the Micah Parsons pick?

Speaker 2 It's not.

Speaker 1 It's the Cowboys pick, which I like, obviously, for those reasons.

Speaker 15 It's going to be the earlier

Speaker 15 of their two first-round picks in 2027 is what the report was.

Speaker 1 So it could be the Micah pick. It depends.
Yeah, it depends on the pick.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure. Got it.

Speaker 1 All right, but that still makes sense. It's whatever, yeah, the better pick of those two.

Speaker 1 Thoughts on this trade, Connor? Like, this is a Cowboys team that Troy Aikman said it himself, and it's Troy Aikman, so it comes with a little bit more cachet. He said it during Monday night football.

Speaker 1 He doesn't think the Cowboys should do any trades because they're not one player away. But Quinn Williams is a really, really, really good player and a good locker room guy.

Speaker 1 I'm happy for him because he gets at this point in his career a chance to

Speaker 1 get a fresh start. But he's also, he's going to another team that has a lot of problems and not a lot of winning in recent years.

Speaker 10 So I think a lot of this was how quickly guys like Donovan Ezaraku came around for the Cowboys because Jerry Jones is first, he's talking about it like it's a youth rebuild, and we're going to use these picks and spin them forward.

Speaker 10 And then all of a sudden you realize, like, my God, this defense is historically bad. And our offense is one of the best, if not the best offense in the NFL.
And so

Speaker 10 his words were kind of getting tied in knots to the point where I think he just had no choice but to start dealing at the deadline and to bring in another veteran to pair with Kenny Clark.

Speaker 10 It doesn't make a whole lot of sense on its face, right? Because you're trading a 24-year-old former first-round pick in Smith to the Jets and then a 26-year-old Micah Parsons for a 28-year-old

Speaker 10 and a 30-year-old Kenny Clark. And

Speaker 10 that thing, like, okay, I guess

Speaker 10 my rookies like Ezraaku are coming around a little bit quicker than I thought. And Dak's window, and we talked about this a million times on the show, his elite window is right now.

Speaker 10 So you either have to make a run this year and next year, or you lose Dak and none of these younger guys even come up and help you. So it's a little bit of a whirlwind.

Speaker 10 And with Jerry, I don't know how much of it was brilliantly thought out and how much of it he just sauntered into the office and kicked in the door and was like, get a couple people on speakerphone and let's see what we can light on fire.

Speaker 10 But that's what it's all about. He's what a showman, you know?

Speaker 2 It's you said what I would have said to some degree because it's like, I don't know what the plan is

Speaker 2 with this defense or with the Dallas Cowboys. And it's, it's, I think, with the Cowboys, you have to be okay with the concept that they're a bit of a mythological fantasy.

Speaker 2 Like, they don't need to have a plan. They're going to go pull the trigger on these things anyways.

Speaker 2 And I think part of it was like Jerry catching flack in the media and hearing his favorite quarterback of all time saying maybe a trade doesn't even make tangible sense for this team the way that they look right now.

Speaker 2 And so you go and do the biggest thing you can do all day long. And like, that's the Cowboys' brand.

Speaker 2 Like, I think it's a good player. He's a great run stopper.
Like, it does help help their defense, but what does it do for them right now, this year?

Speaker 1 I don't think there's anything. It makes them better.

Speaker 2 It does.

Speaker 1 The question is, does it,

Speaker 1 to Troy Aikman's point, like the Cowboys have so many holes on that defense that leveraging and giving up future draft capital, premium draft capital, is it smart? You could debate that.

Speaker 1 But does Quentin Williams address a major issue in the middle of their defense? We saw the way they ran the football against Dallas yesterday.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, that wasn't Tony Dorset running through the Dallas front. That's their fourth running back.
Yeah, like that was something had to be done.

Speaker 1 And either you, the two options, and we know why they did the option they do, because it's Jerry Jones that's running the team.

Speaker 1 They either rip it down to the studs and start trading themselves and take another angle at this, or you keep loading up and you add another star and

Speaker 1 hope that that transforms the defense. Now, as much as I really like and respect Quinnen Williams,

Speaker 1 and I've talked about it on the show, and I think I even said it a little earlier today, like some of the playmaking aspects of Williams

Speaker 1 left something to be desired. I know he does a lot of the dirty work and a lot of the unseen things that you want from an interior lineman and a guy that's versatile,

Speaker 1 but he's not a guy that's going to get you 15 sacks. He's not a guy that's going to go make the big strip sack fumble recovery with regularity like a TJ Watt.

Speaker 1 I think he is a great addition to their front, obviously, but is he a guy that's going to be a difference maker and a game record?

Speaker 1 I don't rule it out only because this is what happens when teams like the Browns and the Jets make trades like this.

Speaker 1 Like, look at Leonard Williams and what he's doing in Seattle, and DeMario Davis, what he did in New Orleans, like, or Jonathan Vilma, what he did. Like, these guys can take a step up.
But

Speaker 1 I think that the move, this is a move I think made a lot of sense for the Jets. For the Cowboys, it's a roll of the dice, but that's what Jared does.

Speaker 2 Well, you've just acquired a player that sneezed and blessed himself on live television. So,

Speaker 2 and I like that for Dallas.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Well, you remember that moment?

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, yeah, I do remember that. Oh, you're talking about Quinn.
I thought you were talking about Jaro. Yes.
No, Quinn when he was in the draft.

Speaker 2 Yeah, when he sneezed and then blessed himself, said God bless you to him.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Yes.
You saying that makes it a better trade or a worse trade?

Speaker 2 Well, it was a playful comment.

Speaker 1 I don't think it wasn't based in analytics or anything.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Let's see. Should we check? Why don't we take a break for the audio show? And when we get back, we'll go through the remaining trades that happened at the deadline, which is now passed live.

Speaker 1 Live, baby. And then we'll maybe get a couple of questions from the audience if Justin can comport himself enough to just not make it all pro-Justin propaganda.
Let's see. All right.

Speaker 1 Let's take a look at that. No promises.

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Speaker 6 What's good, y'all? It's Von Miller, Super Bowl MVP, SAG Master, and now your host of Free Range. This is where NFL meets real talk.

Speaker 6 Every week, I'm bringing you inside the game, from locker room stories to league-wide headlines. You want football IQ, locker room insight, and real conversations with the people shaping the league?

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Speaker 1 All right, the stream rolls on. If you're on the live stream right now, what a ride.

Speaker 1 All right, let's see. Let's see.
What else happened? Okay.

Speaker 11 All right, here we go.

Speaker 1 Other trades, other trades, other trades. That happened today.

Speaker 1 Let's start with the Saints. Okay, the Saints suck.
We know that.

Speaker 1 All right. So they, I like when teams that suck understand that and make moves.
And they make two moves today. They trade lineman Trevor Penning to the Chargers for a sixth-rounder in 2027.

Speaker 1 That's the same Chargers team that just lost Joe Alt for the year. So they get an immediate plug-and-play starting tackle.
They also traded wide receiver Rashid Shaheed to the Seahawks.

Speaker 1 The Seahawks send a fourth and fifth round pickback. A little bit, I think Shaheed is a guy in a fresh start that could thrive in Seattle.
I like that one, Connor,

Speaker 1 for the Seahawks.

Speaker 1 You know, you can maybe be a little Joker type dude in that offense and cause some havoc.

Speaker 10 And when he was with Clint Kubiak last year, you remember over the first like three weeks of the season, it was just week after week. It was Derek Carr just bombing it to this guy.

Speaker 10 I don't know exactly what it says about Cooper Cup and whether Cup, you know, the injury at this point or whether his fit in the offense just doesn't work.

Speaker 10 But this is, and Kubiak's from the Shanahan tree, and they need either really physical, aggressive Julio Jones type wide receivers who can beat on cornerbacks, or they need guys like Shaheed who can get down the field in a hurry and they can streak and they can take a top off of defense.

Speaker 10 And I think that was kind of a missing ingredient on an offense that oddly, like, I mean, this is crazy.

Speaker 10 They're like the best 20-plus-yard explosive passing offense in the NFL already, and they just doubled down on that. And how much better can they be by the end of the season? That's scary.

Speaker 2 And speaking of like an ex-jet, like, if you're Sam Darnold, you're watching them build around you. And I really thought Torrey Horton was an interesting developing player for that offense as well.

Speaker 2 This probably diminishes his time share a little bit, but Shaheed, you're so right. Like he was a really interesting fit in that Saints offense, and

Speaker 2 he can burn you deep. I mean, that might be the difference in a playoff game for these guys.
So it's a nice trade, and Seattle is going for it.

Speaker 1 And remember, JSN has really blossomed as a downfield threat in this offense with Sam Dardle this year after being more of a slot guy

Speaker 1 earlier in his career. And so they can attack you from a bunch of angles.

Speaker 1 That's in there. What are they, number two in our power rankings now? They are making a hard march, and they just added another talented player.
All right. I mentioned the Cowboys.

Speaker 1 One more move they made. They had linebacker Logan Wilson from the Bengals.
Wilson had requested a trade amid a recent decrease in snaps.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you're playing defense on the Cincinnati Bengals and you're losing snaps, I don't know if I, if I need you, if I want you, but the Cowboys send a seventh-round pick to get that trade deal.

Speaker 1 Jacoby Myers,

Speaker 1 he gets his freedom. He wanted out of Las Vegas, had kind of fallen out of favor under the Pete Carroll regime.
So he gets sent to the Jaguars. You're heading to Duval.

Speaker 1 The Jaguars send a fourth and sixth-round pickback.

Speaker 1 By the way, on that note, Travis Hunter is not expected to be out long-term for the Jags, but he is in IR. So that's three more missed games

Speaker 11 there.

Speaker 1 Any thoughts on these moves? Thank you.

Speaker 2 Also, Brian Thomas is dealing with like a

Speaker 2 high or low ankle. It's been kind of muddy, but like some sort of high ankle sprain situation as well.

Speaker 1 Sophomore slump for the ages.

Speaker 2 Yes, it is. I think Jacoby Myers is a really, like just from my read, like an awesome teammate, a very smart wide receiver.
And I think this is going to work for the Jaguars.

Speaker 2 I think he's immediately productive.

Speaker 10 I was just thinking about how funny, like my prayer was that something like this Quinn and Williams thing wouldn't happen because Jerry Jones goes on Stephen A.

Speaker 10 Smith's show, teases a trade on Monday night football, and then it ends up becoming the captain of the only defense in the NFL that is worse than the one that he already has.

Speaker 10 And what a just lovely thing that would have been just to just snack on all day. I think that just would have been delightful.

Speaker 1 But you brought up. You guys have made a trade.

Speaker 1 Just like making a combined defense out of the Cincinnati Bengals and the Dallas Cowboys. Just like, just like objectively funny.

Speaker 2 It's like just a black hole, basically, to know some other part of the universe.

Speaker 1 Speaking of black holes, how about the Cleveland Browns, Mark? Defensive end Joe Tryon Schoenka.

Speaker 1 Well, this JTS traded from the Browns to the Bears for Bears send a sixth-round pick in exchange for JTS and a seventh-rounder.

Speaker 1 So you were thinking that maybe the Browns would trade your boy Njuko, Njoku, who I love. You know, I love that Njoku.
You thought they might trade,

Speaker 1 who else did you think might get traded? Wyatt Teller, maybe. Wyatt Teller might trade.

Speaker 2 Even Joel Batonio was whispered about.

Speaker 1 Nothing.

Speaker 2 They stayed pat. The Browns, for all their faults, don't like to get fleeced in trades.
So maybe the asking price was

Speaker 1 for the record.

Speaker 2 Well, I would say they generally have not outside of the hideous signing of the quarterback that no longer plays.

Speaker 1 I would say that didn't work out. Yeah,

Speaker 2 I don't think there's a lot of debate around that. JTS, I thought that trade sort of shook the foundation of the league when that was announced.

Speaker 2 He played 31 snaps for the Browns

Speaker 2 this year. So, like, who knows? The sky is the limit for Chicago.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like that. David Njoko, though.

Speaker 2 I thought he was going to get moved.

Speaker 1 Keep that Njoku in the building.

Speaker 2 You remember, like, how close some of these deals maybe came to happening, and then they just disappear into the mist.

Speaker 1 Do you think we could trust Justin to fly up some comments without this turning into a newspaper? I think he can earn our trust back. How about that?

Speaker 1 All right. Let's check in with the comment board on this live stream at the trade deadline.
The Jets making news and waves.

Speaker 15 All right. First question from Alex.
If you were trapped on a desert island, would you choose to have Justin there with you or freshwater? I'm just kidding, guys.

Speaker 1 I have real questions. Goodness gracious.

Speaker 1 Justin or freshwater.

Speaker 1 Here's the one. Scott Bits.
Scott Bits.

Speaker 15 From Engine.

Speaker 15 Dan, Connor, Graver, all the guys. How do the Packers fill the void?

Speaker 1 That was like like the first time you've ever pronounced Engine before. That was great.

Speaker 15 Well, I wasn't expecting, I was looking for like a name, like an

Speaker 15 Eugene.

Speaker 15 How do the Packers fill the void left behind by Tucker Kraft?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Did they trade for somebody?

Speaker 15 No, that's the question. People expected them to maybe move for a tight end, and they didn't.
That's Joku.

Speaker 10 I'll take this one because here's why I think there was like a very under-the-radar move that was made last week that had major ramifications.

Speaker 10 In my trade deadline preview, I said that I thought that the Broncos were going to go more 12-personnel. That's why they had them trading for Njoku in my dream trade scenario.

Speaker 10 But they ended up getting Mercedes-Lewis out of retirement, who's like 41 now, okay?

Speaker 10 But what Mercedes-Lewis was before being a member of the Denver Broncos this year was the quintessential number two tight end in a Matt LaFleur offense. He's exactly what LaFleur wants for years.

Speaker 10 He was Rodgers' guy as that number two tight end role. He's He's the blocker.
He understands everything they want to do there.

Speaker 10 And I guarantee you, had the Broncos not done that, Green Bay would have called him and dragged him out of retirement and put him right in that role.

Speaker 10 Now they're a little bit of a loss for that position. And that's a really, really important position for their run game and getting them to go the way that they wanted to.

Speaker 2 Doesn't signing like a 41-year-old Mercedes-Lewis out of retirement sound like a Connor Madden move? And base the entire attack around it? Like that, that just feels.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the My Not team, just, you know, getting that leadership in the locker room feels like the right move in a way. All right, what else we got?

Speaker 15 From Julian Ponce, are we going to revisit your guys' over-unders from preseason, Dan? We talked about doing that today.

Speaker 1 We were going to do it today, and then things got crazy, obviously.

Speaker 1 So instead, we're going to do it tomorrow. So you're going to get an extra episode of Heed the Call.
Everybody wins.

Speaker 1 Well, most everybody. Next, theme park giant.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 1 Is the photo of him on a roller coaster? I think it is. I got to check out this guy's content.

Speaker 1 I want to be,

Speaker 1 if I ever just walked away from the industry, right? Don't yet, but I'm going, I would do the thing where it's like, I'll start a YouTube page and I'll just start riding coasters, bro.

Speaker 1 And either I partner with Theme Park Giant or I become his chief competition.

Speaker 1 But that's my next move. It's a threat.
Nice. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's a very, a very juicy juicy idea.

Speaker 1 Theme Park Giants all pissed off. I was like, shit, why did I comment?

Speaker 1 Planted the seed of my own demise professionally.

Speaker 1 Were there any teams HTC was expecting to make a move that didn't? Okay, let's see.

Speaker 2 Well, we hit one, Cleveland.

Speaker 1 They did make a move, though, JTS.

Speaker 2 Well, I stand corrected.

Speaker 1 Oh, that was right.

Speaker 10 I think the Lions, man, I mean, that to me was the big one. Like,

Speaker 10 you need help on the offensive line. You need help in the secondary.
And I wonder if they knew that Sauce Gardner was going to go.

Speaker 10 You know,

Speaker 10 the Eagles got both Jair Alexander and Michael Carter the second.

Speaker 10 I wonder if they knew that if all these guys were going to turn over and they had absolutely no interest in them and reserve offensive line.

Speaker 10 We saw the Vikings beat up that left side of that offensive line in that win last week.

Speaker 10 And I had thought Trevor Penning might go there, but he ended up going to the Chargers, which I thought was a great move for Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'll throw throw the Dolphins out, too. I know they traded Jalen Phillips, but

Speaker 1 they, I think, really could have helped themselves by doing a similar path to what the Jets did and start thinking about life after Mike McDaniel, life after Tua Tunga Vailoa, life after Chris Greer, who was fired, obviously, after Sunday's

Speaker 1 or their week nine loss.

Speaker 1 They didn't trade Jalen Waddell. They didn't make any other big moves other than the Phillips deal.
And I thought that that could happen. Anybody else for you, Mark?

Speaker 2 There was a lot of heat around Waddle this morning, too. I kind of wondered if that might happen.
I thought the Patriots were a candidate to do something very spicy, maybe add like a wide out.

Speaker 2 Like there was a little smoke around A.J. Brown, like, you know, not true reporting necessarily, but the fact that a lot of these triggers just weren't pulled.

Speaker 2 I mean, outside of the Jets thing, it was relatively quiet today compared to some of the whispers out there.

Speaker 1 The Jets finally did something good this season. They made this episode interesting and worthy.

Speaker 10 On the Dolphins front, Dan, so Bradley Chubb, the concern, because I checked in on that was age and contract was making people a little bit worried. But the interesting

Speaker 10 kind of side note there is a couple people are like, actually really like the bedrock of that roster.

Speaker 10 And I think that that's something that Stephen Ross is like, okay, I mean, he's already in conversation with GMs now that he's fired his and can openly start at least having those baseline conversations about like, what does my roster look like?

Speaker 10 Who's on it in the future? And I wonder if some of the feedback he got was like, this might be a quick turnaround candidate.

Speaker 10 According to like, according to some people, I don't know if that's the case, but that's just something to think about on that end, too.

Speaker 1 You know, I also, I know it never happened. Gino remains with the Raiders, but I really thought Minnesota should have added another quarterback to the room.
They're not. So

Speaker 1 it's the kid or bus with Mac Brosmer, Max Brosmer as the backup. We have breaking news here.
We do have breaking news.

Speaker 1 How about that?

Speaker 1 Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon announced he's sticking with Jacoby Brissette as the starting quarterback on Sunday at Seattle.

Speaker 1 Kyler Murray is still getting healthy, Gannon said, but, and this is the important part, I do like how we're operating as an offense and so he's not waiting to say if brissette will be the quarterback going forward kyler's been benched that's it right and uh if jake craps his pants against a very good seattle defense perhaps it opens the door for murray but the way uh briskets playing connor it is uh it is his job now and that opens up doors for in the offseason for what happens next with kyler murray because it's possible he's played his last snap with the cardinals i'm not saying that this matters but i mean the the story on ESPN.com with Marvin Harrison Sr.

Speaker 10 was pretty stunning, calling out the efficacy of the Cardinals' offense and how bad it was going, and the fact that Harrison pops off.

Speaker 10 And again, if you're Jonathan Gannon, this is not why you make those decisions in a vacuum, but the fact that everything looks better, you're getting light boxes, you're running the ball better.

Speaker 10 And yes, Marvin Harrison is getting the ball more often, which is what you want from your number four overall pick. I don't think you can turn back.

Speaker 10 And while I don't think he's going to get moved at the deadline, this is a stunning turn for Dannon, who was very aggressive in staking his claim that Kyler was my guy from the minute that he got there.

Speaker 10 And you just wonder how that's all going to kind of shake out for him because at this point, they got to win games for him to stay.

Speaker 1 We talked about it on Monday night. You got to stay alive.
There's only 32 of these jobs.

Speaker 1 And Jonathan Gannon could either bring back Kyler Murray and get fired or roll the dice of Jake Brisket and maybe save his job. This is the only path to take.

Speaker 1 I'm glad that he did because they're more fun to watch with Brisket, too.

Speaker 2 And players love Jacoby Brissette everywhere he's been. And I know he moves from team to team, but it's a bit of a mystery what people think about Kyler Murray.

Speaker 2 I mean, in fact, some of the evidence would suggest that it's not a mystery.

Speaker 1 Well, what's the trade value? Like,

Speaker 1 you think you can get a first-round pick? Or is he now dipping out into

Speaker 1 day two?

Speaker 2 What can the conversation, and Connor, you have some of these, but what can the conversation between team executives be about Kyler Murray? And what do they know that we don't know publicly?

Speaker 2 That I just think that this is not the dude you hang your star on.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, I just think if there was an option to move him at this point, I think that they probably would.

Speaker 10 The dead money isn't really prohibitive, especially after this season. I think it halves,

Speaker 10 if I'm not mistaken, I haven't looked that up in a while, but I think this following offseason is probably the time where you start thinking about moving it.

Speaker 10 Maybe the Jets are a candidate because again, I don't think they're getting that quarterback in 2026. I really don't think that they're getting him.
And I see you shaking your head.

Speaker 10 I agree that he would be a horrendous personality fit for that market and for that offensive line and for everything.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 10 I think that there's going to be a decent bridge quarterback market this offseason. And Kyler is certainly going to be up there.

Speaker 1 I do not want...

Speaker 1 A sub-six-foot quarterback who loves video games, has no track record of success in the league in six years and costs a lot of money. And I have to potentially give up assets to get him new.

Speaker 1 Now, and you make a good point. Will the Jets, would it be, would the Jets, would it behoove the Jets to hold off on the quarterback move in 26 in favor of 27? Perhaps, but can they hold off on that?

Speaker 1 Are they internally able to do that? Will the owner allow that after what?

Speaker 1 This is going to be a very painful rest of the season for the Jets, especially now that you stripped two of their three best players off the roster in the middle of the season.

Speaker 1 Another interesting subplot. A couple more, and then we're going to get out of here.
What do you got, Gravy?

Speaker 15 First theme park giant.

Speaker 1 He's back.

Speaker 15 He replied to your talking about the theme park giant.

Speaker 1 Oh, theme park giant. You know, Dan, next time you're in Orlando, we can ride some coasters.
Absolutely. Now, I have to wonder, and maybe this is the

Speaker 1 you know, New York cynical side of me, or, you know, I've watched too much true crime. Is this an opportunity for the theme park giant to potentially kill me?

Speaker 2 It's the first thing that, the first thing that came to mind was that your

Speaker 2 trip to Orlando would be your last trip.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 For many people,

Speaker 1 a trip to Orlando is the final trip.

Speaker 1 I was in Orlando this past year. Will I return to ride with Theme Park Giant? I have to vet him fully, and I have some people that will help me with that.

Speaker 1 So consider it a maybe, a definitely maybe. JP, how do these trades impact the power rankings of records?

Speaker 1 I mean, the Colts are better, for sure.

Speaker 1 The Cowboys, again, are better right now than they were yesterday, but will it be enough to make them actually a team that could to rise up? No. The Jets can't fall too much further.

Speaker 1 The Browns lost JSN or JTS, so. You've got to factor.

Speaker 2 Well, they were going to plummet after that

Speaker 2 hideous move that they made.

Speaker 1 We'll see. We'll see.
That's the fun part of the power rankings and football in general. JJ asks: question: Will Connor dish the dirt on Sean Payton?

Speaker 1 Yes, there is talk that Sean Payton, I didn't let the cat out of the bag because I don't know the story either.

Speaker 1 But I did tell the audience yesterday, Connor, that Sean Payton is one more dick move away from Connor announcing his juice, his juicy, unless his,

Speaker 1 what was the guy's name, Dakota, Luca?

Speaker 1 Unless the Luca Luca press conference incident counted as the one last

Speaker 1 dick bag move, in which case, unleash the Sean Payton story now, but let us know.

Speaker 10 I can tell my Sean Payton story.

Speaker 10 I think that's fine. Do it.

Speaker 1 You know what? Hold on it. Sit on it.
Okay. Sit on it.
Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.
All right. Think all these people.

Speaker 1 Hey, if you're in the stream right now and you're not subbed to this show, you know what? Let's set a challenge. You want to hear Connor Orr's Sean Payton story of high-level dick baggery.

Speaker 1 You have to bang the subscription number. In fact, we might need to get to 30,000 subs to get that Connor Orr story.

Speaker 1 So if you want to hear, and Connor, to build it up a little bit, this is like a real story that's been sitting in the chamber for a while that you think the audience would find very interesting.

Speaker 10 Let's give it like a moderate story. Yeah.

Speaker 10 I mean, it's a fun story.

Speaker 10 I think it.

Speaker 1 Does it involve you directly? Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure.

Speaker 1 If you want a Sean Payton, Connor Orr,

Speaker 1 you know, showdown at the old West outside the saloon, like two guys with their six shooters,

Speaker 1 get us the 30,000 subs. Got to subscribe.
Got to.

Speaker 15 And yes, there's comments coming in like talking about the irony of how, whoa, most people who are in this stream are already subscribed and we want the story yeah go tell a friend to subscribe go

Speaker 2 push the show on other people it's on you guys to get the number up whether you're personally subscribed or not right so they need an parental units into it exes um if you have a really troubled past romantic relationship have that male or female smash the like button and subscribe see i'm getting better at this dan

Speaker 1 i mean you are it does it goes in directions that no one ever

Speaker 1 so in this scenario you would you would have a bad bad breakup and then you duck back into this person's life again. Like, can you bang the smash a subscribe on this football podcast?

Speaker 2 Yeah, smash the like button and subscribe to this football podcast. She's like, I don't want to speak to you again.
And there's a reason we hadn't speak.

Speaker 1 Maybe it would be like, if you promise me to never call or text me again, I will smash the subscribe on Heed the Call NFL podcast. Whatever.

Speaker 1 Whatever it takes.

Speaker 1 Whatever it takes.

Speaker 2 Go the distance.

Speaker 1 All right. Last question.
One more.

Speaker 15 Can we have a pressure?

Speaker 1 Can we have the the Connor witch for? I don't know what that means.

Speaker 10 No, that was a sandwich.

Speaker 1 The sandwich.

Speaker 1 That's really in the hands of Connor's wife, and it's a touchy situation, as we addressed last week.

Speaker 10 I'm working on it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're not pushing it. We don't want to push too hard because

Speaker 1 Connor's wife already handled the

Speaker 1 photo shoot on top of the TNC. So we've kind of pushed her a little too hard there.

Speaker 1 In fact, I had asked for a second photo shoot. And now that I come to think of it, which it really had to rub her the wrong way.

Speaker 2 And we also, like, I'm sure it's one of the most delightful people around, but we don't really know her that well.

Speaker 2 So she's just getting these out-of-thinair requests that are probably tedious when you've just done a big month.

Speaker 1 Connor,

Speaker 1 when for an unnamed project that's actually coming very soon to the audience,

Speaker 1 when your wife was nice enough to take time out of her busy day with all those kids and her career and

Speaker 1 tending to you as a husband like when you asked and the sandwiches and you asked hey can you take photos of me sitting on the 2016 chrysler town and country and then a day later like oh those photos weren't good enough can you take more photos of me on top of the town and country like what was her reaction well so i think you have to understand that climbing on so i was sitting on the hood of a mini a used minivan that's a little over a decade old at this point okay and so.

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 1 It has a checkered history. Let's, again, let's underline that in terms of safety.

Speaker 10 Yeah. And so I'm about a roughly 175-pound man that's sitting on top of a fiberglass hood.

Speaker 10 And we barely made it up there in the first place. And it felt like a pretty tightrope walk to get the photo shoot done and to not permanently dent the hood.
And then I jumped off.

Speaker 10 And then I think it was you noted that the sunlight, something wasn't quite right for you and the landscape or whatever

Speaker 10 wasn't quite right for you so to to just be like uh hey by the way we got it we got to do a couple more of these and i gotta i gotta do the thing where i'm gonna re-aggravate you by climbing back up onto the hood i think that's really where it where it started to fall apart for me your ass cheeks are like permanently uh indented now

Speaker 1 All right. There you go.
The trade deadline live spectacular is coming to a close. We want to thank everybody who joined us live.
I think the numbers were pretty good, Justin, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 1 People jumping on. I know it's the middle of the day here in the States.

Speaker 1 It's getting later in the UK and surrounding territories. So thank you to everybody that joined us.
And we will be back tomorrow, Wednesday, with another episode, a fun one.

Speaker 1 We're going to check back in with our over-under draft that we did

Speaker 1 right before the start of week one. And

Speaker 1 maybe daddy's going to gamify it a little bit. That gets Connor fired up.

Speaker 1 Rule change! Heed the call.

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