Do trades for elite veteran quarterbacks work out?

In my previous post, I looked at the recent (21st Century) history of teams trading up into the top three in the NFL Draft to acquire what they hoped would be their franchise quarterback. For the most part, it wasn’t pretty for the trading-up team. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, though, if you’re not in position to draft one in the first round.

The New York Giants’ history of drafting quarterbacks is actually pretty amazing. I’ve been a Giants fan since 1960. Here is the entire list of college quarterbacks drafted by the Giants in Round 1 or 2 from then until the present (data from Pro Football Reference):

• 1979: Phil Simms
• 2004: Philip Rivers -> Eli Manning
• 2019: Daniel Jones

If we expand the list to include Round 3, we can add Jeff Hostetler in 1984 and Davis Webb in 2017. That’s it. The Giants have rarely taken a serious crack at getting a starting quarterback in the draft in their history. Partly that is the product of a couple of successful drafts that put long-term starters in place (Simms, Manning), but a lot of it has to do with the Giants’ historical tendency to use other avenues for finding starting quarterbacks.

They have only occasionally signed veteran free agent quarterbacks to either start long-term or serve as a bridge to a newly drafted quarterback. The most notable ones were Kerry Collins in 1999 and Kurt Warner in 2004. Mostly, though, the Giants have made trades to bring in established QBs to start. That list is much longer: Charlie Conerly in 1948, Y.A. Tittle in 1961, Earl Morrall in 1965, Fran Tarkenton in 1967, Norm Snead in 1972, and Craig Morton in 1974. Still, it’s been almost 60 years since the Giants took a big swing at a premier veteran quarterback in a trade (Tarkenton). Now, rumors are swirling that Matthew Stafford might agree to a trade if his contract is not renegotiated to be in line with those of other top starters, and that the Giants might be interested.

Should the Giants do it? What does history have to say about whether trading for a franchise-caliber veteran QB is a good idea? Here are some notable examples in recent years, working backward in time:

Aaron Rodgers (Packers -> Jets)

Photo by Elsa/Getty Images

Cost: Two second-round picks, sixth-round pick, first-round pick swap (13 <-> 15)
Age when traded: 39

If you look up the phrase “unmitigated disaster,” this picture should accompany it as an illustration. It wasn’t Rodgers’ fault that he tore his Achilles tendon in his very first series as a Jet. And to his credit, he took a voluntary cut in pay to give the Jets room to sign other players. Statistically Rodgers had a pretty good 2024 season according to traditional metrics. In fact it was almost identical to his last season in Green Bay:

Courtesy of Pro Football Focus

Still, you can see that in both seasons, he performed at an above-average but not elite level – lower passing grade, fewer yards, fewer big-time throws, lower ADOT. Combined with all the drama off the field, not getting it done on the scoreboard made this a bad investment by the Jets, costing Joe Douglas and Robert Saleh their jobs.

Russell Wilson (Seahawks -> Broncos)

Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images

Cost: Two first-round picks, two second-round picks, a fifth-round pick, plus Noah Fant, Shelby Harris, Drew Lock; Seattle also got a fourth-round pick
Age when traded: 33

Speaking of disasters, Russell Wilson had a falling out with the Seahawks over their offensive philosophy and his supporting cast. He was traded to Denver, but under two different head coaches he was never able to recapture his early career magic. Wilson was released after two seasons and signed on the cheap by Pittsburgh, but he is once again a free agent.

Courtesy of Pro Football Focus

You can see that Wilson is still an above-average quarterback, but like Rodgers in Green Bay, his last season in Seattle he showed signs of decline, and that has carried over to his Denver and Pittsburgh tenures: fewer yards, TD passes, and big-time throws, and lower ADOT.

Matt Ryan (Falcons -> Colts)

Jenna Watson-Imagn Images

Cost: Third-round pick
Age when traded: 37

Indianapolis, forever in search of a QB since Andrew Luck’s premature retirement, took a low-risk gamble on aging Matt Ryan, giving up only a third-round pick to get him. Ryan was benched by mid-season, returned to starting, and then retired at the end of the year.

Courtesy of Pro Football Focus

Ryan was clearly washed by the time he got to Indianapolis, throwing almost as many INTs as TDs, with almost no big-time throws. You could see it coming, though, as two of his final three years as a Falcon were a notch below the quality he had shown previously. Again, fewer yards and a declining ADOT seem to be the smoking gun.

Deshaun Watson (Texans -> Browns)

Troy Taormina-Imagn Images

Cost: Three first-round picks, a third-round pick, and two fourth-round picks; Cleveland also got a sixth-round pick
Age when traded: 26

Possibly the worst quarterback trade of all time was Cleveland’s acquisition of Deshaun Watson from Houston. Never mind the 11-game suspension for charges that he was eventually cleared of and the awful completely guaranteed contract. The Browns gave up a king’s ransom in draft picks, and Watson has just been a bad QB since joining them in addition to not playing a full season of games in any of his three years there:

Courtesy of Pro Football Focus

The INTs are now as frequent as the TDs, the ADOT is down in two of his three years there, and only this year will the Browns finally have a pick again in the first round.

Matthew Stafford/Jared Goff (Lions <-> Rams)

Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Cost: Jared Goff, two first-round picks and a third-round pick
Age when traded: 33

This is different from the others since it was a swap of starting quarterbacks. Arguably it helped both teams. You can say that the Lions won the trade because the draft picks they got helped them build a powerhouse team, and because Goff resurrected his career with Detroit. Still, the Rams got a ring from Stafford, which Detroit has not yet gotten from Goff, and they gave the Eagles a tougher fight than any other team in the playoffs.

Courtesy of Pro Football Focus

Excluding the 2022 season in which Stafford was injured, you might say that he has declined slightly in the most recent year from his best years just before and after the trade. In particular, his turnover-worthy plays were up last year compared to his better seasons and his ADOT was slightly down. Still, his yards and TDs were not far below a typical season for him.

Brett Favre (Packers -> Jets)

James Lang-Imagn Images

Cost: Conditional fourth-round pick
Age when traded: 38

This was different from most of the other trades of elite QBs. Favre had just had his Super Bowl hopes crushed by Lawrence Tynes’ field goal in the NFC Championship Game the previous season, and he had tentatively decided to retire. He then changed his mind, but with the Packers wanting to move on to Aaron Rodgers, who had been cooling his heels on the bench for three seasons, they had to trade Favre, getting only a conditional fourth-round pick from the Jets.

Courtesy of Pro Football Focus

Favre was not the same quarterback his last couple of years in Green Bay that he had been when he was younger. He’d always been a gunslinger, but the TDs were down while the INTs remained high. Favre played to his more recent form in his one season as a Jet, though in fairness he tore a tendon in his throwing arm late in the season, adversely affecting his numbers in his last few games. He decided to retire again, only to once again unretire and sign with the Vikings for two seasons. As per the New York Lottery saying, “You never know,” he had a tremendous 2009 season, tainted by his awful interception in the NFC Championship Game against New Orleans. He played one more year and then retired for good.

Warren Moon (Oilers -> Vikings)

Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images

Cost: Fourth and conditional third-round picks
Age when traded: 38

Houston traded Moon to Minnesota because they wanted to save money in 1994, the year the NFL salary cap was instituted. Though 38 by then, Moon was still playing at a high level:

Courtesy of Pro Football Reference

Moon had two excellent seasons with Minnesota but broke his collarbone halfway through his third season. The Vikings had drafted Brad Johnson several years earlier and wanted him to become the starter in 1997. Moon refused to take a salary cut, so Minnesota released him. Moon signed with Seattle, had a Pro Bowl season in 1997 and played one more as a Seahawk, and then signed as a backup with Kansas City before retiring at age 44.

Joe Montana

Photo by JEFF HAYNES/AFP via Getty Images

Cost: First-round pick; KC also got Steve Whitmore and a third-round pick
Age when traded: 37

After the Giants knocked Joe Montana out of a possible “threepeat” (figuratively and literally) in the 1990 playoffs, Montana had injury-plagued 1991 and 1992 seasons. Steve Young, acquired in a trade with Tampa Bay six years earlier, had been waiting in the wings for a long time. San Francisco thus traded Montana, safety Dave Whitmore, and a third-round pick to Kansas City in return for the Chiefs’ 1st round pick.

Courtesy of Pro Football Reference

Montana may not have been quite the player with KC that he had been with the 49ers (he didn’t have Jerry Rice, after all), but he was still an elite quarterback, taking the Chiefs to the AFC Championship Game in his first season there and getting them to the Wild Card the next year. He retired with a year left on his contract because of the mounting injuries, including a concussion he’d suffered in his final season.

What should the Giants do?

The Giants are in a difficult situation. Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll cannot afford another season like the previous two. Schoen’s “we’re not far off” claim may be ridiculous, or it may be valid once Dexter Lawrence and Andrew Thomas return to the lineup, *** IF *** they obtain difference-makers at edge defender, defensive tackle, and cornerback in the draft or free agency, and *** IF *** they solve the quarterback problem. That’s a lot of “if”s.

Depending on how many “if”s you think they are from contending, trading for an elite veteran quarterback may or may not be a good idea. The examples discussed above show that more often than not, an aging QB acquired in a trade doesn’t play as well with his new team, often because his age-related decline has already begun. At the moment, Matthew Stafford still looks like a QB that can take a team to a Super Bowl. The question is how many more years he can sustain that level of play, because in reality the Giants are probably neither as bad as many fans think nor as good as Schoen’s proclamation implies. Of all the examples discussed above, Stafford is the only one who brought home a title for the team he was traded to. That was four years ago, though.

The other question is the cost. Several of the quarterback trades discussed above gutted the draft capital of the receiving team, most notably the Russell Wilson and Deshaun Watson trades. Denver has recovered nicely from their debacle two years later because they finally did it the old-fashioned way by drafting a quarterback. Cleveland is still in quarterback hell, and only this year do they make a return appearance in the first round of the draft.

That, to me, is the key. If the Giants have to give up one or more first-round picks for a quarterback like Stafford, I’m out. If they don’t, and they draft a QB at No. 3 or No. 34 who will get to work with Stafford for one or two years, that could be a good situation. The $50M+ average annual value that Stafford wants? Not a problem, as long as Schoen embraces void year philosophy and keeps his cap space for signing free agents to strengthen the rest of the team. That’s the going rate for elite veteran QBs these days.

If the Rams do decide to trade Stafford, should the Giants go for it?

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