The Las Vegas Raiders‘ good feelings stemming from their Week 4 win over the Cleveland Browns have quickly dissipated. Star wide receiver Davante Adams has requested a trade and it appears the team could be willing to grant his request.
There should be no shortage of teams around the NFL that are interested in Adams but according to an October 1 X post from ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Raiders are looking for a second-round pick and more. That asking price will only be palatable to contending teams.
Kristopher Knox of Bleacher Report pitched a trade that would send Adams to the Dallas Cowboys for quarterback Trey Lance and a conditional second-round pick.
“In this hypothetical scenario, the threshold for flipping a conditional second-round pick into a first might be high,” Ballentine wrote in an October 1 column. “Dallas has shown that it can get to the playoffs. Winning multiple postseason games is now the goal—making an appearance in the NFC title game a sensible condition for the first-round pivot.
“To sweeten the deal, Dallas could include third-string quarterback Trey Lance.”
For the Raiders, the Cowboys make sense as a trade partner as they’d get Adams out of the AFC. Lance doesn’t sweeten the pot much as he still hasn’t shown he can be a starting quarterback in the NFL.
Will Raiders Actually Trade Davante Adams?
At this point, there’s really no reason for the Raiders to keep Adams. Even if they can earn a wild card playoff spot, they aren’t competing for a Super Bowl with Gardner Minshew at quarterback. Adams’ salary cap hit jumps to $44.1 million next season so the Raiders were likely going to move on from him after the season.
If they were to trade him in the offseason, his value would likely be lower. In fact, the longer the team waits, the lower his value will be. The Raiders should be highly motivated to get a deal done quickly. They don’t need Adams to be a distraction. He’s a very good player who has broken 1,000 receiving yards for the team in back-to-back seasons but a young rebuilding team doesn’t have a need for a wide receiver who will be 32 in December.
A Failed Experiment
When the Raiders traded for Adams during the 2022 offseason, they were coming off a playoff berth and had just hired Josh McDaniels as head coach. Quarterback Derek Carr was coming off a strong season and the hope was that reuniting him with Adams would be a recipe for success.
That wasn’t the case. The Raiders won six games in Adams’ first season and the team decided to release Carr. They decided to sign Jimmy Garoppolo to be the starting quarterback, which turned out to be a disaster.
Las Vegas could only muster eight wins last season. This season hasn’t gone much better as the team is 2-2 and was recently blown out by the Carolina Panthers. Adams didn’t suit up against the Browns in Week 4 and the Raiders won, which shows they don’t need the wide receiver to win. This was a failed experiment from the beginning and it’s best for the Raiders to cut their losses right now.
