2018 NFL trade grades: The 30 most impactful of the past 365 days
Bill Barnwell
ESPN Staff Writer
10 minutes ago
Let's evaluate the 30 most impactful trades from the past 365 days and give some perspective on what happened next. Some of those deals seemed significant at the time before petering out, while others that seemed innocuous yielded tangible, immediate results. I'm ordering and grading them in terms of how they impacted the 2018 season as opposed to picking one side or the other, so even though the Smith trade didn't really work out for Washington for reasons it couldn't have expected, the move had a significant effect on what happened to both teams.
10. Buccaneers finally get a productive edge rusher
Giants trade: DE Jason Pierre-Paul, 4-102
Buccaneers trade: 3-69, 4-108
Tampa didn't do much of anything right on defense in 2018, but the trade for JPP netted the Bucs their best single season from an edge rusher in more than a decade. Pierre-Paul finished with 12.5 sacks, becoming the first Buccaneers defender to top 10 sacks in a season since Simeon Rice in 2005. The 30-year-old hadn't topped the 10-sack mark himself since the 2014 campaign. He also chipped in with 16 tackles for loss, and while the Bucs' defense was a horrific mess, Pierre-Paul wasn't to blame.
Impact grade: B
2. The Cowboys transform their offense
Raiders trade: WR Amari Cooper
Cowboys trade: 2019 first-round pick (1-27)
When I wrote about the Cooper trade in October, the best arguments I could find to justify Dallas' outlay were the idea that the Cowboys needed to evaluate Dak Prescott and that the 3-4 Cowboys still had a reasonable shot at winning a wide-open NFC East.
I don't think the Cowboys could even have imagined things would go as well as they did, though. Cooper had one of the best three-game stretches in recent memory, racking up 473 yards and five touchdowns in a crucial series of victories over Washington, New Orleans and Philadelphia. Prescott posted a passer rating of 104.6 with Cooper on the field, with that mark falling to 86.8 when Cooper was on the Raiders or on the Dallas sidelines.
The division then broke for the Cowboys after Alex Smith went down with an injury. The Cowboys lost their first game with Cooper and then went 7-1 down the stretch, including a 4-0 mark in the NFC East. Cooper added 166 yards and a touchdown in two playoff games. The move seemed curious at the time, but it's difficult to imagine Cooper leaving Dallas anytime soon. This one worked out for Jerry Jones & Co.
Impact grade: A
1. The Bears go all-in for a dominant edge rusher
Raiders trade: OLB Khalil Mack, 2020 second-round pick, 2020 conditional fifth-round pick
Bears trade: 2019 first-round pick (1-24), 2019 sixth-round pick, 2020 first-round pick, 2020 third-round pick
What else could top this list? The Bears were better than you thought on defense in 2017 and extremely likely to improve in 2018, but Mack took the defense to another level. He thoroughly dominated in the first half of the Week 1 opener against the Packers, and while the Bears ended up losing that game, he was a game-changing force for most of the season. Mack finished with 12.5 sacks and six forced fumbles. The Bears would have been a good defense without him, but when he wasn't 100 percent, Chicago allowed 31 points to the Dolphins and 24 points to the Patriots before unsurprisingly dominating Sam Darnold and Nathan Peterman while Mack rested his ankle. I don't need to tell you Mack was great.
The Raiders, meanwhile, finished the year with just 13 sacks on defense, the second-worst total of the past 20 seasons. Mack wouldn't have saved the Raiders from an obscure 2018 campaign, but they had absolutely no solution in his absence. They will almost certainly have to use at least one of the picks they get from the Mack trade to go after a pass-rusher, and the chances of that defender coming close to Mack's impact aren't particularly high.
Judging a trade like this after one year isn't really fair in most cases. The Raiders haven't even drafted any of the players who would form the return of this deal. Given that the Raiders reportedly chose Chicago's offer because they expected the Bears to return high draft picks, though, it's hard to argue that they scouted their possibilities well. It also served as the white flag for Oakland's season before it even began. The most impactful trades in a typical season will transform one team. This trade transformed two.
Impact grade: A+
For a look at all 30 trades....
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25864947/2018-nfl-trade-grades-30-most-impactful-365-days
