NFC Notes: Trade Buzz, Bryce Young, Chuba Hubbard, Buccaneers, Panthers, Saints

Buccaneers

• When examining the trade market, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler writes the Browns trading CB Greg Newsome II to the Buccaneers in exchange for a fifth-round pick is a deal that makes sense for both parties. 

Panthers

Joe Person of The Athletic named five players the Panthers could look to move ahead of the upcoming trade deadline.

• Former WR Diontae Johnson was the first name Person mentioned, and he was sent to Baltimore on Tuesday in a day three pick swap.
• Person names QB Bryce Young as the second candidate but admitted an offseason move for Young makes more sense when teams are making plans at the position.
• After the injury to DE Aidan Hutchinson, Person thinks OLB Jadeveon Clowney makes sense for the Lions as a veteran with solid career pass-rushing production.
• Person also believes Carolina could move on from RB Miles Sanders because of RB Chuba Hubbard‘s performance and the pending debut of second-round RB Jonathon Brooks.
• Finally, Person stated WR Adam Thielen could have value on the market but doesn’t know if losing him in the locker room makes sense after trading Johnson.
• When taking a look at under-the-radar trade candidates, ESPN’s Dan Graziano is curious to see if the Panthers look to trade either Hubbard or Sanders given Brooks is nearly recovered from his knee injury.
• According to Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, it’s his sense that Carolina wants to keep Hubbard but is flexible on dealing away Sanders. 
• Graziano also thinks the Panthers trading Young to the Giants in exchange for a fourth-round pick is a deal that makes sense for both parties. 

Saints

The 2-0 start to the Saints’ season feels a long way away after New Orleans dropped its sixth-straight loss to fall to 2-6 on the year. Still, fans hoping for drastic changes from GM Mickey Loomis will be disappointed. Loomis has resisted a rebuild for years and continues to preach patience, particularly with some of the young players the Saints are hoping develop into stars to replace the ones who are aging out like DE Cameron Jordan and LB Demario Davis. 

“If you look at Cam’s career, he came to us in 2011, and the first four years of his career, cumulative, he had 118 tackles and 29 sacks. After four years. He actually made the Pro Bowl at the end of his third year. One time,” Loomis said via Nick Underhill of NewOrleansDotFootball. “The next four years, years 7, 8, 9 and 10, he had 160 tackles, compared to 118 tackles. He had 48 sacks in those four years compared to 29 sacks. He made the Pro Bowl four times. He was All-Pro three times. So what I would say in his first four years, he was considered a good pro, a good player. It was those years that he became and became recognized as a great player.

“If you looked at Demario’s career, you’d see exactly the same thing. He had seven sacks, he had 332 tackles, he had one interception, he had eight passes defensed. Good player. Solid. He didn’t have any honors during that time. In years 7, 8, 9 and 10, he had 18 sacks compared to seven, he had 475 tackles compared to 332 tackles. He had the same number of interceptions — one — but he had 24 passes defensed compared to eight. And made All-Pro first team twice in years 9 and 10 for him.

“So I would say the same thing for him: He went from being recognized as a good player in his first four years to become a great player in years seven through 10.”

Loomis went on to highlight WR Chris Olave, CB Paulson Adebo (a pending free agent), DT Bryan Bresee, first-round OT Taliese Fuaga, second-round CB Kool-Aid McKinstry, OL Cesar Ruiz, WR Rashid Shaheed, CB Alontae Taylor, LB Pete Werner and DE Chase Young (also a pending free agent) as young players who should provide optimism about the future in New Orleans. 

“So, you know, the expectation that we’re going to have these guys come in here in years one, two and three and be great players is probably, for the most part, a little unrealistic,” he said. “Now we have a ton of players four years or less that I think can get to that level in their next four or five years… There’s lots of guys that are candidates to become those types of players. Will they all do that? No. That’d be unrealistic. We don’t expect that. But certainly we have a lot of guys, and there’s others as well, who have that opportunity.”