Breaking down the Colts’ stunning trade deadline move for Sauce Gardner is a bit like being a high schooler at a bourbon tasting. There’s certainly a euphoria involved alongside tasting notes that get stranger and more complicated the longer you swill it around. The entire experience could be, all at once, stomach churning, totally awesome and something you may decide you never want to do again.
Within the first 10 minutes of the trade, while reaching out to a few folks around the league, I couldn’t decide whether to love the trade or despise it. In those moments, a good therapist might suggest writing your thoughts down to gain clarity. So, that’s exactly what we’ll do.
Here are five of them on what is by far the most shocking moment of this year’s deadline.
Jets needed the draft capital for a QB
Before seeing the compensation, I feared this was the act of a new Jets regime blaming its own failures on someone else’s players and using that long runway to create the illusion of a rebuild. After seeing the compensation—two first-round picks and receiver Adonai Mitchell—it was clear that the Jets’ front office was probably stifling screams on the other side of the phone. The return for Gardner makes this a “no-brainer” as one NFL source put it. Two first-round picks, especially for a coach who professes the ability to make a defense work with rotational scrap heap corners (although this seems to be a more Lions-specific trait and not an Aaron Glenn–specific one at this point), was an offer that was simply too rich to refuse for a team that is woefully out of contention and in line for the No. 1 pick in the 2026 draft.
The compensation gives the Jets far more than a heavy presence in the first round this year and next. It gives them flexibility, which will ultimately mean the difference between securing a quarterback for 2026 or missing out altogether. While there is a fear that Indianapolis’s picks in both years will be late in the first round, I do like gambling on the 2027 first-round pick, which will be highly dependent on the fallout of this season and what Indianapolis decides to do with Daniel Jones (for example, signing Jones to a long-term contract can complicate the team’s ability to afford other pieces critical for a year-over-year evolution).
Speaking of the rookie quarterback market, here’s another reason this move was almost essential for the Jets: There are three other teams that possess multiple first-round picks in 2026. Of those three, the Rams and Browns are obviously QB-needy. Before Thursday, it looked like Cleveland may have the best stable of picks to offer for the No. 1 slot if interested, but this is all about gathering equity at the moment. The last thing the Jets want to do is end up in second or third place while in need of a quarterback, just like they were in the Sam Darnold draft (pick No. 3) and the Zach Wilson draft (pick No. 2). The Jets also have a pair of 2027 first-round picks now, which can obviously be used as levers in the upcoming draft.
Comparing Gardner trade to Micah Parsons deal
The mechanics of the trade—two first-round picks from a playoff-bound team plus a player —now force new Jets GM Darren Mougey to be juxtaposed against some pretty dubious competition: Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Jones received two first-round picks and a player from Green Bay for Micah Parsons. Moughey got a slightly better version of that trade for Gardner, which is understandable given that Jones literally sat on his cellphone and butt-dialed the Packers right before the season opener and Mougey played on the desperation of a corner-needy GM coming off a revealing loss to Pittsburgh at the trade deadline.
To me, the deal illustrates both the advantage of timing and the steep price tag that teams will still pay for elite edge rushers and cornerbacks who can routinely be trusted to take on top-quality No. 1 wide receivers.
How Gardner will affect Colts’ defense
Sauce Gardner, above even Patrick Surtain II, travels with the opposing team’s No. 1 wide receiver. This is the Darrelle Revis Standard™ for top-flight cornerback play worth surrendering real draft equity for. And I think I understand it from the Colts’ perspective, which also reveals just how necessary the move was for a team that is 7–2 and has deep playoff aspirations.
Here’s how Indianapolis has fared against each team’s true No. 1 to this point in the season:
- Dolphins: Tyreek Hill (4 catches, 40 yards)
- Broncos: Courtland Sutton: (1 catch, 6 yards)
- Titans: Calvin Ridley (1 catch, 27 yards)
- Rams: Puka Nacua (13 catches, 170 yards)
- Raiders: Jakobi Meyers (4 catches, 32 yards)
- Cardinals: Marvin Harrison Jr. (2 catches, 32 yards)
- Chargers: Ladd McConkey (9 catches, 67 yards)*
- Titans: Chimere Dike (7 catches, 93 yards)
- Steelers: DK Metcalf (2 catches, 6 yards)
*Keenan Allen had a staggering 11 catches for 119 yards and a touchdown in this game.
What we see on that list is an amalgam of good receivers on bad offenses or with bad quarterbacks (Cardinals, Dolphins), teams without No. 1 wide receivers (Titans) and one team, the Rams, with what you may consider an unquestioned top-10 wide receiver in the NFL.
Ahead on the Colts’ schedule? Drake London, Rashee Rice, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and possibly either Ricky Pearsall or Brandon Aiyuk. It’s going to get harder, and the Colts absolutely took advantage of an opportunity to transform as a unit before the deadline. Instead of finding an elite pass rusher, the Colts got a corner who will give their pass rush more time to get home.
If you look beyond the regular season, this is as soft and vulnerable as the AFC has felt in about a decade. I suppose that’s as good a reason as any to strike if you’re the No. 1 seed at the deadline.
Colts likely tied to Jones now
One last Colts note: I think this almost certainly marries Indianapolis to Jones for the near term. The Colts have no draft flexibility now for a rookie quarterback, and with Darnold likely married to the Seahawks for the near term and Aaron Rodgers set for retirement after this season, Indianapolis will be in a position familiar to Giants fans who watched Jones get a near-top-of-market extension back in 2023. Their options are that, or kidnapping Joe Flacco again.
Jones will undoubtedly seize on this lack of musical chairs just like he did with Joe Schoen and the Giants, complicating a financial picture for GM Chris Ballard beyond the 2025 season. The market for passers of that age and experience level—we can call them the “comeback crew” of Kirk Cousins, Matthew Stafford, Baker Mayfield, Geno Smith and Darnold—ranges between $33 and $45 million per year. That would mean, at the very least, having Jones come close to tripling his pay from this season.
Impact of Gardner departure on Jets
On the Jets, there are impacts both mechanical and emotional. The mechanical: As Spotrac noted, the Jets’ restructure of Gardner’s contract yields pretty insignificant dead cap hits ($8.75 million this season and $11 million next season). When you factor in how many young, cost-controlled contracts will be on this roster, it’s not a deal that will remotely impact the team’s operations over the next few seasons.
The emotional? I am, admittedly, a bit personally conflicted when thinking about this trade. I wrote a magazine cover story on Gardner two seasons ago and, as we walked around his alma mater at the University of Cincinnati, I remember a player who was aggressively invested in recreating a new narrative around this team. He said then head coach Robert Saleh gave him the green light to recruit and he took that job seriously, being one of the loudest voices in the ear of future Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
While we can all fall into the trap of getting hot and bothered about a future to come, the Jets have a destructive history of acquiring elite talent and watching those players succeed elsewhere. Darnold, Revis, Leonard Williams (Mekhi Becton if you want to be a real sadist about it) and so on. When you add in the nearly-as-shocking news that Quinnen Williams was moved to the Cowboys, you’re talking about generations of Jets fandom that have been shipped away for the promise of something better. Gardner struck me as the most personally determined in changing the idea of what it meant to play for the Jets. Sadly, he never got that chance.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Five Thoughts on the Colts’ Massive Trade for Sauce Gardner.