The hottest and heaviest rumor at the beginning of the NFL offseason was that the Las Vegas Raiders and New York Giants both wanted to trade for Matthew Stafford, but also that the Los Angeles Rams were listening and letting the quarterback negotiate contract terms with other teams. That’s not just clickbait made up for drama, it really happened. Tom Pelissero reported in February that the Rams gave Stafford permission to talk to other teams, which we all know included the Raiders and Giants.
The Raiders were reportedly prepared to give Stafford a two-year, $90 million contract extension and the Rams were allegedly willing to accept a second round pick this year and a first round pick in 2026 if Stafford wanted to leave.
It shouldn’t take longer than two games to look at the state of the Raiders and say that Las Vegas dramatically overrated their ability to draft players who make sense for their roster and pick starting quarterbacks who would help them get back to the playoffs. I’m not afraid to say it already:
The Raiders should have offered their top-10 pick this year for Matthew Stafford and the Rams would have probably accepted.
That would have been a better use of their resources than drafting a running back at 7 and then not being able to block for him, then trading a third round pick for an overpriced former Jets bust who just had one of the worst starts in recent memory for any NFL team on Monday night.
What if the Rams and Raiders agreed to a trade?
The Raiders ended up drafting Ashton Jeanty with the sixth overall pick, but he’s off to a bad start in his NFL career through two games:
- 30 rushing attempts
- 81 rushing yards
- 2.7 yards per carry
- 43.3% success rate (38th)
A lot of people have noted that the Raiders don’t seem to be blocking well and Jeanty has more yards after contact (84) than he has actual rushing yards. Well, if you can’t run block maybe don’t use a top-10 pick on a running back?
So far, Pete Carroll has given Jeanty 70% of the snaps at running back, compared to 23% for Zamir White and 9% for Dylan Laube.
If the Raiders had drafted QB, we might preach patience. But when you draft a running back in the first round, you’re expected to treat the next 5 years as if they are the prime of that player’s career. Jeanty’s first season will be a waste of his good years if the Raiders don’t find a way to make him productive. One could even argue that drafting Jeanty is a waste if he doesn’t become a top-3 running back in the entire NFL by 2026.
So between drafting a RB that you can’t block for or trading for a QB, should the Raiders have done something different?
Especially given how bad Geno Smith was this week.
Instead of trading a first round pick for Stafford, the Raiders traded a third round pick for Geno Smith and then immediately gave him a new contract worth $58.5 million fully guaranteed at signing. That implies that the Raiders were probably seeing Geno around 80-90% of the value of what they would have given up to get Stafford, which is a massive miscalculation in the value of both quarterbacks.
The Raiders didn’t want to trade a 2 and a 1 for Stafford, but they wanted to trade a 3 for a quarterback who has 0 career playoff wins in 11 seasons.
Is it really worth being stingy to not want to trade for Stafford because you think you’re going to have a chance with Geno Smith? If the Raiders don’t regret these moves already, they’re being willfully blind because they don’t want to accept that the Rams OPENED THE DOOR for them to steal Matthew Stafford and Las Vegas was the ones to let it slam shut.
Would the trade have been a huge mistake for the Rams?
Let’s say hypothetically that the Rams give Tom Brady a crystal ball and the Raiders end up offering pick 6 for Stafford. Would that have been a trade that the Rams need to accept?
Let us know if the Rams should have taken the 6th overall pick for Stafford, if it was offered.
The Rams eventually ended up trading down with the Falcons to get Atlanta’s first round pick in 2026, something that was clearly very important to them if Les Snead was trying to get the Raiders first round pick in 2026.
Who would the Rams have drafted at 6?
Players on the board include Jeanty, tackle Armand Membou, receiver Tetaoiroa McMillan, tackle Kelvin Banks, and tight end Colston Loveland.
Can you imagine if the Rams had taken Membou to try and solidify a tackle spot for the next ten years? Or what if McVay had his shot at McMillan as the heir apparent to Davante Adams? McVay has always wanted an elite tight end, the Rams could have taken Tyler Warren or Loveland.
But be that as it may, the Rams ended up trading down and picking Terrance Ferguson. In fact, if the Rams had traded Stafford for pick 6, maybe that’s still what they end up doing given that there were no good QB prospects after Cam Ward.
However, there were also no more teams trading up after the Jaguars went up from 5 to 2 to get Travis Hunter. The next trade wasn’t until the Giants moved up to get Jaxson Dart at 25. Is there any chance Snead could have convinced the Giants to trade from 34 to 6 to get Dart and then stole a 2026 first round pick from them too?
Probably not.
So would you trade Stafford at age 37 for some salary cap relief and Armand Membou? It’s not that enticing to be honest because then L.A. would need to get the quarterback. That would leave them open for Kirk Cousins or Sam Darnold maybe, but where would the Rams be after 2 weeks without Stafford?
Probably not 2-0.
It would have been a very risky move for the Rams to trade Stafford, even for a top-10 pick. But not nearly as risky as not trading that pick for Stafford, taking a running back you can’t block for, and trading for a quarterback who isn’t half as good.
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