Nov 5th is the NFL Trade Deadline this year..
But every year we see trades after the deadline including throughout the playoffs (which is bonkers to me).
What’s the deal here? How does it work?
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There aren’t *trades* after the trade deadline where teams send players and their contracts and draft picks to other teams.
But there’s no rule again just firing a player in December and letting him go find a job somewhere else. This is not a “trade” since you get nothing in return, but it does happen.
Maybe the team sucks and the player sucks and the owner doesn’t want to pay the non-guaranteed salary for another month just to suck. Fire him.
Maybe the team is bad but the player is good but his contract is expiring anyway and he’s asked management to cut him so he can go to a winning team to audition for his next contract.
Teams do this to build goodwill with players and agents in the future even though it doesn’t really benefit them much in the short term. Star players will be more likely to sign there later if you tend to “make good” on player contracts and requests.
And of course some teams are tanking – cut all your good players with expensive expiring contracts so you don’t accidentally win a game in December and mess up your draft picks.
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