Trading Julio Jones to the Patriots would be the most Falcons move possible
Also: four other potential landing spots for Jones
It makes sense, except for all the parts that make no sense. The Falcons, pressed up against the salary cap and stocked with young talent at wideout and tight end, are reportedly looking to trade away future Hall of Famer Julio Jones. Bill Belichick, a man who has heaped praise on Jones throughout a dominant career, spent his 2021 loading up on veteran talent but still needs an alpha dog wide receiver.
So when reports surfaced that Jones wanted to play with Cam Newton in New England, Patriots fans embraced the opportunity to bring another Randy Moss-type veteran to the passing game. Falcon fans went screaming in the opposite direction.
A trade to New England would give the Patriots a true WR1 to either spark Newton’s professional comeback or Mac Jones’ rise from Alabama backup to NFL starter. It would also be an ideal Falcons-ing from a franchise cutting bait with one of the greatest players in its history for no obvious reason.
Jones’ stock is currently as low as it has ever been after he missed seven games to injury. Dealing him would save more than $15 million in cap space — more than the estimated $13m it would take to sign this year’s draft class, including No. 4 overall pick Kyle Pitts — but the club could also create a reasonable chunk of savings by releasing or trading guys like Matt Gono and Russell Gage. You know, guys who aren’t top 10 players at their position all-time.
Restructuring Matt Ryan’s contract to create cap space in 2021 while locking him in for at least two more years in Atlanta and then drafting Pitts over a QB prospect (Jones and Justin Fields were available) was a win-now move. Jones is a win-now player. Trading him would be a bizarre about-face seemingly designed to antagonize what is possibly the most antagonized fan base in the NFL.
That makes it a very Falcons move. Dealing him to the team that made March 28 the international day of Atlanta roasting would only make it more legendary. So let’s dig deeper into a potential Jones-Patriots trade.
2019’s Mohamed Sanu deal sets the Falcons up for possibly their best trade value
New England has swapped draft assets for a veteran Falcon wideout before. It did not pan out.
The 2019 Patriots were in dire need of receiving help for a 42-year-old Tom Brady. The club’s second WR option behind Julian Edelman was Phillip Dorsett. This forced Belichick into a deal that will go down as one of his worst as an executive. He shipped a 2020 second-round pick — a selection that later became Ravens tailback J.K. Dobbins — for 30-year-old Mohamed Sanu.
It was an overpay at the time; the 49ers pried Emmanuel Sanders from the Broncos (and a fifth-round selection) for the reduced cost of third- and fourth-round picks. It looks even worse in hindsight. Sanders played a pivotal role for a San Francisco team that won the NFC, averaging 50 receiving yards per game and dropping 100-yard performances in crucial wins over the Cardinals and Saints. Sanu, on the other hand, struggled to find his place in the New England offense, suffered a high ankle sprain right as he appeared to hit his stride, and had 26 total receptions as a Patriot. He was released well before the 2020 season.
Sanu was a consistent complementary piece before the wheels came off in Foxborough. Jones is a legitimate star whose shine is only slightly dulled by last season’s injury-marred campaign. Even though he played just nine games, he still had 51 receptions for 771 yards — a 91-catch, 1,371-yard season. While his declining average depth of target paints him more of a possession guy than the versatile deep threat he was in the 2010s, his 11.3 yards per target last fall were a career best and third-highest in the NFL.
So if the Patriots come calling, it’s going to cost them a lot more than it did to land Sanu, even if Jones is older and more expensive than his former teammate. This very much suggests New England may not be in the running and instead used as a boogeyman to drive up offers from other teams — kinda like how the NFL used the threat of relocating to Los Angeles to pressure cities into funding new stadiums for their local franchises.
But just like LA finally jumped back into the mix, as unlikely and potentially stupid as it may be, the Patriots may pull off a similarly surprising move. 2021 saw Belichick buck several trends. He spent big in free agency and stood pat with his first-round pick instead of trading back. It’s possible he hears Atlanta’s opening bid, haggles for a bit, and decides to cough up a first-rounder anyway. While rare, there’s actually some precedent there!
Belichick shipped a Day 1 pick to the Saints in 2017 for Brandin Cooks, giving Brady a field-stretching deep threat en route to a Super Bowl appearance. But Cooks was also only 24 years old and set to earn approximately $2.5 million that fall thanks to his inexpensive rookie contract. The Patriots offloaded him to the Rams for a first-rounder one year later, avoiding his $8.5m fifth-year option in the process.
Jones, on the other hand, is due $15.3 million if he’s traded after June 1 ($7.75m would remain on the Falcons’ cap as dead money, according to Over the Cap). The Patriots have enough space, even after dropping unprecedented cash on other teams’ free agents, to make that work in 2021. It could be a problem in 2022 since the bulk of this spring’s new deals get much more expensive against the backdrop of next year’s inflated salary cap, though reworking the wideout’s contract via extension would fix that for the time being.
Where would Jones fit in the Patriots’ lineup?
New England awarded Jonnu Smith and Hunter Henry nearly $88 million in contract value to shift their base offense to a two-tight end setup. Belichick also handed Nelson Agholor $22 million (!) after he reinvented himself as a vertical threat for the Raiders last season and signed Kendrick Bourne for $5 million annually. That gives the Patriots a versatile TE who can move across the lineup and occasionally into the slot (Smith), a more traditional tight end who can thrive in crossing routes and up the seam (Henry), a safety-taunting deep guy (Agholor), and a quick-strike yard-after-catch machine (Bourne).
Those are all very useful pieces, but there’s no reliable, do-it-all presence in that lineup (unless N’Keal Harry makes a massive and very unlikely leap or Jakobi Meyers is the next Julian Edelman). Jones’ declining target depth is a function of the fact he’s now in his 30s and no longer the man of 4.34 40 speed he was in 2010, but he’s still capable of roasting cornerbacks downfield.
As the video above shows, Jones still creates separation like one of the game’s top receivers. He’s also still a physical marvel at 6’3 and 225 pounds, so even if he does lose a step he still has the bulk to move defenders off the ball and truck his way to first downs. Few players in the league are better trackers. Only guys like DeAndre Hopkins, Allen Robinson, and Stefon Diggs can match him in terms of catch radius.
This all makes him a necessity for a team with major quarterback questions to be answered. Acquiring Jones after spending big on targets this offseason will be a boon for whomever is slinging passes but a bust for the team’s fullbacks, as single-person backfields would become the norm for offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. Jones, Smith, and Henry would be must-haves on the field with Agholor/Bourne/Meyers/Harry/heh, Gunner Olszewski why not? and a running back platoon headed by Damien Harris on 1st/2nd down and James White on 3rd.
This creates amazing versatility for McDaniels, who could suddenly create the league’s most dangerous one-WR offense. The Patriots’ top three targets would weigh 225, 250, and 250 pounds, which means their goal line offense and their deep ball offense wouldn’t look all that different. That’s cool as hell. And while safety and linebacker help is busy chipping those tough-to-stop guys, Agholor and Bourne should find the space to have their most efficient seasons as pros.
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Even if the Falcons don’t trade Julio Jones to the Patriots — and, again, they shouldn’t — they can still use New England and the Sanu trade from two seasons ago to drive up the price for the greatest player in franchise history. If Atlanta simultaneous ships off a legend *and* gets less in return than it did for a guy who hasn’t stuck with a team for more than eight games since being shipped out of town, it’ll be a failure simultaneously shocking, crushing, and completely reassuring for Falcons fans who, like Danny Glover before them, are getting too old for this shit.
And if he does wind up in New England for a selling price lower than Sanu’s, well, that’s either 100 times better or 100 times worse, depending on how you feel about Belichick. — CD
Four other teams not named the Patriots that could trade for Jones
If the thought of the Patriots trading for a future first-ballot Hall of Fame receiver (again) doesn’t sit well with you, then the good news is the Falcons are still the favorites to have Julio Jones on the roster when the season starts.
I don’t care all that much whether the Falcons deal Jones or not. If they decide to keep him, I get it — even at 32, he’s a top-three (at least) receiver in the NFL when healthy, and the Falcons haven’t exactly been in rebuilding mode this offseason. But I understand the salary-cap reasons the franchise might work out a trade, as much of a bummer as that would be for Atlanta sports diehards (and tbh, they don’t need more ammunition to try to win an imaginary game of misery poker against every other hard-luck fan base).
If the Falcons do end up shipping Jones to a new city, I hope for his sake he winds up with a contender. Below, I picked four potential landing spots for Jones, all of which are playoff-caliber teams that could also realistically get a deal done.
49ers
In both 2015 and 2016, Jones was a first-team All-Pro who led the NFL in receiving yards per game. That stretch also happened to coincide with Kyle Shanahan’s two-year stint as Atlanta’s offensive coordinator.
In San Francisco, Jones would join a solid young receiving corps without a true No. 1 wideout (not counting George Kittle, that is). The ready-made roster can contend this season, if all the major players can stay healthy.
The biggest issue preventing a Jones-Shanahan reunion is the 49ers’ lack of future draft capital; they don’t have a first-round pick until 2024 due to the move up to select Trey Lance. If the Niners (or another team) took on enough of Jones’ salary, though, then maybe the Falcons would be willing to accept a deal that doesn’t include a first-rounder.
Packers
The relationship between Aaron Rodgers and the Packers is still on the rocks, but if romcoms have taught us anything it’s that grand gestures can fix everything. OK, they can’t — your problems aren’t magically solved by pulling a Say Anything. But they can help get you on the road to reconciliation.
And what would be a bigger peace offering than giving Rodgers the best weapon he’s ever played with (well, except if they also threw Jordan Love into the trade package)? That’d show Rodgers that the Packers are serious about winning another Super Bowl with him, and it’d give Jones another shot at his first ring too.
One hurdle is the Packers’ 2021 salary cap situation isn’t much better than the Falcons’ right now. It’s doable, though, if Brian Gutekunst gets just a little creative (for example, Davante Adams could restructure his contract).
Titans
A.J. Brown has led the Titans in receiving in his first two seasons, but he won’t have Corey Davis and Jonnu Smith around anymore. Is he really ready to carry the receiving load by himself? Not literally, of course. There are other wideouts on the roster. You just couldn’t pick about 80 percent of them out of a lineup. (I’m pretty sure Mason Kinsey from Berry College is a character from an alien/superhero/supernatural show on The CW.)
Jones would help take some of that pressure off Brown and would also help the younger receiver’s development, all while being an excellent fit for that offense.
Brown and Derrick Henry would both be on board with the move, too:
With limited cap space, the front office would have to figure out how to make the numbers work. If so, the Titans could cakewalk to the AFC South title.
Ravens
The Ravens have never been hesitant to surround Lamar Jackson with playmakers, but they’ve never given him a bona fide No. 1 (sorry, Hollywood Brown). Although they did just draft Rashod Batemen in the first round, it’s too soon to tell if he can be one either. Jones is a proven commodity and his presence wouldn’t just give Jackson an elite, sure-handed target, but it’d also open things up for the other receivers.
On the other hand, the Ravens have to be mindful about their future salary cap. They have upcoming extensions to work out, including a pricey one for Jackson, to factor into the equation.
It sure would be fun watching Jackson and Jones play together, though. — SH