Davante Adams trade could have a devastating impact on the Packers
Because time is a flat circle, we've got some Davante Adams trade discussion to get through. Adams was traded for the second time in four years on Tuesday, this time to the New York Jets in exchange for a conditional third-round draft pick in next year's NFL Draft.
It ends Adams' wholly-uninteresting run with the Las Vegas Raiders, and pairs him with ol' friend Aaron Rodgers as the two try and prove to everyone that, if we all squint hard enough, we can still pretend that it's 2019.
On the surface, it looks like the Packers fleeced the Raiders. Green Bay sent Adams to Las Vegas for an absolute haul – the Raiders gave up their 2022 first- and second-round picks, plus a bunch of cash for him – and it went terribly. The Packers used one of those picks on Quay Walker and the other in a package to trade up for Christian Watson. For the Raiders, that trade turned into six good months of production and 12 bad months of trade rumors. It's almost lopsided enough to make you feel bad. Almost.
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But, in a weird way, sending Davante Adams to the Raiders could come back to bite the Packers in a huge way. The good news is that this is all very hypothetical, so much so that I'm confident in saying it won't happen. The bad news is that it might happen, and that's enough to keep Packers fans up at night.
Davante Adams trade opens the door for the Lions to go after Maxx Crosby
The ripple effects of this trade could find it to the NFC North, and soon. The trade deadline is only a couple weeks away, and the Lions are almost-certainly out there making calls on edge-rushers after losing Aidan Hutchinson for the year last Sunday. Hutchinson was essentially Detroit's only good pass-rusher, and it's hard to imagine a world where they get back to the NFC Championship without a guy who accounted for over 50 percent of the team's sacks so far.
The Raiders are also in full tank mode, as if that wasn't obvious from the moment they benched Gardner Minshew 4.5 weeks after naming him the starter. With the rebuild starting to finally take place in Las Vegas, it makes a certain star pass-rusher from Michigan all the more available. I'm sorry for Inception-ing you with this, but the Lions would be smart to make some calls on Crosby's availability. And given the Raiders' apparent willingness to trade away their best players, I imagine the Lions already have.
So, to sum it up: the Packers sending Adams to Las Vegas could, in theory, have been the worst possible decision. If the move ends up facilitating Crosby's trade to the Lions, it will be the most bleak full-circle moment in Green Bay in quite some time. Maybe the Packers should just get ahead of it and trade for Crosby themselves; that way, no one has to worry about it. The best defense is a good offense!
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