Regrading eight deals from the 2025 NFL trade deadline - ESPN

I'm a firm believer in evaluating trades the moment they happen. But we should check in on the results after they've played out, too. One year removed from a trade, how does it look in retrospect? Let's look back at the 2025 NFL trade deadline one year later. We're including blockbuster trades for Quinnen Williams and Sauce Gardner, along with other deals that sent players like Jaelan Phillips, Jakobi Meyers and Rashid Shaheed to playoff teams.

In this exercise I'm grading trades like I always do, taking into account player quality, draft pick compensation, contract details and team time horizons. But in this case we have results of a year of play, too. These grades are descriptive of the past 12 months — meaning they reflect the results of how they panned out — along with my expectations for the remaining effects of the trade going forward.

How should we feel about the Williams deal now? How about the Odafe Oweh for Alohi Gilman swap? Or the Shaheed deal, especially considering the Seahawks' Super Bowl LX victory? Before this year's trade deadline hits on Nov. 10, let's finish up our evaluation of the last one.

More trade deadline content:
Trade tracker | Trade grades

Jump to a 2025 regrade:
Gardner/Mitchell | Williams/Smith
Meyers | Oweh/Gilman | Phillips
Shaheed | White | Campbell/Newsome

Colts got: CB Sauce Gardner
Jets got: WR Adonai Mitchell, 2026 first-round pick, 2027 first-round pick

Original grade for Colts: D
New grade for Colts: F

Original grade for Jets: A
New grade for Jets: A

I had a sliver of empathy for the Colts when this trade was made given the situation they were in. At that moment, ESPN's Football Power Index gave Indianapolis an 11% chance to win the Super Bowl. Here's what I wrote, «Not only is