NFL trade deadline winners, losers: Which teams struck out?

For the NFL’s 32 teams, Tuesday was Election Day – i.e. electing whether or not to make a move ahead of the league’s 4 p.m. ET cutoff to execute trades for the 2024 season. Predictably, several clubs sat out the event entirely, while others rendered their decision(s) well in advance.
There wasn’t a flood of marquee talent changing addresses over the final 24 hours – most of the available stars had already moved ahead of Week 9’s games – yet there was a fair amount of significant activity on the last day to tweak rosters, the potential future additions of free agents notwithstanding.
Who got better? Who didn’t? With all precincts now reporting, here are the winners and losers from this year’s trade deadline:
Davante Adams, Amari Cooper, DeAndre Hopkins, Diontae Johnson and Mike Williams all moved on from suboptimal situations, at least from their personal perspectives – though Adams supplanting Williams with the New York Jets tells you something about how things have unfolded there. However if the NYJ continue to gain altitude, it’s certainly possible all of these players wind up in the playoffs – and Hopkins’ two-TD breakout Monday night for the Kansas City Chiefs suggests he could be the biggest difference-maker of all to switch teams midstream this season.
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The coach’s undefeated, two-time-defending Super Bowl champions have had their issues – including injuries to WR Rashee Rice and RB Isiah Pacheco, to say nothing of somewhat underwhelming production from an offense that ranks 10th in points scored and yards gained. Did we mention K.C. is 8-0? And in addition to acquiring Hopkins and LB Joshua Uche, signing RB Kareem Hunt has had a huge effect. Props to Reid and GM Brett Veach for making it all work in the ongoing quest for the first-ever Super Bowl three-peat.
Recently installed as QB1 for the Pittsburgh Steelers, he’s definitely injected life into the passing attack of the AFC North leaders. Tuesday, GM Omar Khan brought in Williams, a 6-4, 218-pounder who could be a much better fit in this scheme than in the Jets’ – and the kind of big body who could benefit from the 50-50 balls Wilson willingly lofts to his receivers on the boundaries. Only a year removed from ACL reconstruction, Williams might not exactly be ready to draw coverage from WR1 George Pickens, but he does offer a needed alternative to Wilson’s arsenal.
There’s no denying the results in the standings haven’t been reflective of the level of talent the Jets general manager has amassed in recent years, and it remains to be seen if he’s in his final months on the job. But to pry a fifth-rounder from Khan in exchange for nine regular-season games with Williams, who’s on an expiring deal, seems like something of a coup – especially given, for example, Hopkins only cost Kansas City a conditional Round 5 selection.
The Washington Commanders’ rookie general manager let go of a third- and fourth-round pick, among other draft capital changing hands, but that might wind up a bargain given the exchange with the New Orleans Saints for Pro Bowl CB Marshon Lattimore, who’s under contract for two seasons beyond this one. Seems like a forward-looking move given the regularity with which Peters’ ascending squad face receivers the caliber of Philadelphia’s A.J. Brown, Dallas’ CeeDee Lamb and the Giants’ Malik Nabers … to say nothing of the lurking potential playoff problems in Detroit, Atlanta and San Francisco. Nice move by an up-and-coming personnel guy who leveraged his stockpile of picks to help a team that’s become a contender more quickly than most NFL observers imagined. And to think it’s only been a year since there was a Washington fire sale …
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ No. 1 receiver should be back from his hamstring soon-ish. More importantly, he can smile knowing the Bucs already faced Washington – meaning it’s going to be a long while before he has to see his longtime nemesis in New Orleans, Lattimore, again.
The three-time Pro Bowler and owner of 65 career regular-season sacks moves from perhaps the league’s worst team, Cleveland, to maybe its best, Detroit. Lions GM Brad Holmes parted with a pair of Day 3 picks but really needed someone to try and replace injured DE Aidan Hutchinson’s production, if only partially. Currently the NFC’s projected No. 1 seed, the Lions only have five sacks in the three games since Hutchinson broke his leg – and just one over the past two weeks.
Expectations for this team, at least nationally, were quite muted ahead of what was expected to be a quarterback relay from departed Kirk Cousins to temp Sam Darnold to future co-face of the franchise (with Justin Jefferson) J.J. McCarthy. But not much has gone to plan, from McCarthy’s season-ending knee injury in the preseason to the Vikes’ stunning – at least externally – 5-0 start. But GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah sent a clear signal to the locker room that the organizational expectation is to win, not merely enjoy success in what seemed like a transitional period. LT Cam Robinson was rented from the Jags, perhaps for a fourth-rounder after Christian Darrisaw went down with a knee injury – and that was after a lesser move to bring back RB Cam Akers in a swap with Houston. Have to admire going for it when the battle seems decidedly uphill.
The fact that a franchise that rarely engages in player acquisition outside of a draft-and-develop approach swung a deal for backup RB Khalil Herbert also has to buoy a team that’s recovered from an 0-3 start to win four of six. And Herbert, who’s had plenty of explosive plays during his three-plus seasons with the Bears, could make a real difference here after being buried on Chicago’s depth chart.
The Green Bay Packers’ first-round pick in 2023, the highly regarded pass rusher has five sacks in 26 career games – none of them starts. But Tuesday’s fairly surprising offload of Preston Smith to the Steelers should create a major opportunity for Van Ness to play far more snaps for one of the league’s most opportunistic defenses.
Six of the eight teams currently in first place did something to bolster their respective rosters. The Bills (Cooper), Steelers (Williams, Preston Smith), Chiefs (Hopkins, Uche), Commanders (Lattimore), Lions (Za’Darius Smith) and Cardinals (OLB Baron Browning) all seem at least incrementally better than they were just a week ago. 
The Carolina Panthers rookie GM somehow extracted a fourth-round choice as part of the deal with the Dallas Cowboys for underperforming WR Jonathan Mingo, a second-round pick in 2023. (More on this later.)
They gave up almost nothing in exchange for well-known players like Johnson and former All-Pro CB Tre’Davious White, who came over from the Los Angeles Rams on Tuesday afternoon.
Yet it’s worth wondering how much return they’ll actually reap from a fading player like White or a seemingly extraneous one like Johnson, who wasn’t targeted by QB Lamar Jackson on any of his 17 snaps in Sunday’s Baltimore debut. However, if nothing else, landing Johnson does mean he won’t haunt the Ravens by winding up with another AFC contender. But given pass rush help apparently was available, seems a bit of a miss that GM Eric DeCosta didn’t more aggressively try to upgrade what appears to be his team’s biggest flaw.
Conversely, he only got a Round 5 pick and had to surrender a sixth-rounder while jettisoning Johnson – a former Pro Bowler and far more established commodity than Mingo. Given the respective trajectories of Carolina’s and Baltimore’s seasons, this could amount to no more than moving up a dozen spots in the latter part of the draft. Why not hold out a little longer to see if anything better materialized?
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For example, the current AFC South leaders really could have used a player of Johnson’s caliber – particularly given the obviously exposed deficiency of their passing game in last Thursday’s loss to the Jets, Houston’s first after WR Stefon Diggs’ season-ending ACL tear. Yes, WR Nico Collins is close to returning from a hamstring injury, but it’s worth wondering why GM Nick Caserio – he made so many high-profile moves in the offseason, including the trade for Diggs – didn’t do more to help his team and second-year QB C.J. Stroud keep pace in the AFC arms, er, hands race.
Why is a team languishing at the bottom of the NFC – and pretty obviously continuing its reset in the coming months – holding onto assets like OLB Azeez Ojulari and WR Darius Slayton, who are both on expiring contracts and could probably bring much more long-term value to this team by no longer working for it in the present? If only there were a bonus episode of “Hard Knocks” (Joe Schoen version) to explain the thought process …
They’ve fallen to last place in the NFC West – after a 3-0 start – despite October trades for LB Ernest Jones IV and DT Roy Robertson-Harris. A belated attempt to find the right players to thrive in rookie HC Mike Macdonald’s defense, or even patch it, has not bolstered a team that’s surrendered at least 26 points in five of the last six seeks while allowing an average of 412 yards over that stretch.
Dude. After repeatedly saying for months that you and your team are “all in” on the ’24 campaign – but doing next to nothing to replenish the roster – you pay a premium Tuesday for an unproven player like Mingo … which coincides with the news that Dak Prescott, the franchise quarterback of your – checks notes – 3-5 team is about to be sidelined for at least a month with a bum hamstring? Yes, the Dallas scouting department likely deserves some leeway given the many impactful players this organization has drafted over the years … and maybe they see something in Mingo that no one else does right now. But lighting fourth-round picks on fire doesn’t need to become an annual tradition after the Cowboys did the same thing last year for current third-string QB Trey Lance.
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Follow USA TODAY Sports’ Nate Davis on X, formerly Twitter, @ByNateDavis.