NFLTR Review: The Panthers Probably Should Trade Christian McCaffrey, But It’s Complicated

In this week’s issue, we explain why the Panthers should trade away their best player: 

• CAR is going nowhere, and by the time they are McCaffrey might not be able to help
• However, significant obstacles make a trade unlikely
• The five teams who still ought to be all over a deal

The Case For Trading Christian McCaffrey

The Carolina Panthers are 1-3 with an offense that looks like one of the worst in the league and a head coach who’s been on the hot seat since last December. There’s still three-quarters of the schedule to go, but unfortunately it looks like Carolina has already played through the easy stretch. 

https://twitter.com/loganulrich/status/1578104898134355969?s=20&t=BxaItp-mU8gVRP5MFCIFNA

We’re barely into October, but plenty of fans are already starting to look ahead to coaching candidates and draft prospects — and they’re not wrong. The Panthers probably have better odds of finishing with the No. 1 pick than they do of turning this season around and saving HC Matt Rhule’s job. 

The team won’t really turn its attention to next year for a few more weeks at the earliest but when it does, there’s a strong case to be made that trading RB Christian McCaffrey should be their top order of business. The veteran running back has been one of a few bright spots for the Panthers in 2022. Despite various nicks and bruises sending him to the injury report each week, McCaffrey has played every game and largely carried his usual load. Don’t let anyone tell you any differently — he still looks like one of football’s most dangerous offensive players. 

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1576709021758763008?s=20&t=rZRwsFC3Ot3IGbsNJqzVQQ

Christian McCaffrey picked up a 1st down on this pic.twitter.com/2GvXnG6F4b

— Hayden Winks (@HaydenWinks) September 27, 2022

But not even McCaffrey will be able to outrun the realities of the running back position forever. Carolina is going nowhere this year and probably not in 2023 either if that ends up being the first year of a rebuild. McCaffrey turns 27 next June and that’s getting dangerously close to the running back cliff year of 30. By the time the Panthers are ready to compete, McCaffrey could be on the downslope of his career. 

There’s a case to be made that McCaffrey’s greatest value to the Panthers could come as an asset rather than on the field. Looking ahead to 2023, the Panthers are not in good cap shape, especially for a team that’s going to be trying to patch a ton of holes. Over The Cap ranks them 30th in the NFL in effective cap space, which takes into account signing draft picks and filling out the roster. They’re $11.5 million in the red right now for next year and will need to make some cuts this offseason. 

Carolina’s draft pick stash is also lacking. They’re down to four picks in 2023, including no third-rounder, and five picks in 2024 with no fourth-rounder if current starting QB Baker Mayfield hits 70 percent of the snaps. One of Panthers GM Scott Fitterer’s roster-building tenets is that he can recoup additional picks by trading back in the draft but it’s still tough to build a team when you’re limited in both the draft and free agency. 

Trading McCaffrey wouldn’t create a ton of cap space but it would clear his number from the books in future years. It could also potentially add another nice pick or two to help the Panthers rebuild. 

This is where things start to get complicated, however, and the idea of trading McCaffrey starts to venture into fantasy rather than practicality. It doesn’t make any sense for the Panthers to give him away for a fourth-round pick. They need premium picks — ideally a first and no less than a multi-pick package featuring a second. For all of the same reasons it makes sense for the Panthers to trade McCaffrey, however, like his age and contract, those would be working against them in finding a buyer. 

Blockbuster deals for running backs were relatively common in the 1990s, but there haven’t been many big deals in recent years. The Texans gave up what ended up being a third-round pick for Duke Johnson in 2019, while the Rams dealt a sixth and a fourth for Sony Michel last year. Back in 2013, the Colts did give up a first-round pick for Trent Richardson, and the way that aged poorly is partially why teams have devalued the position so much. 

Also working against a trade is the fact that, for as inevitable as it seems Rhule will be fired in the coming months, he’s still trying to save his job and the team is still competing to win. If the Panthers traded McCaffrey, their best player, by the deadline in Week 8, they’re sending a message that everyone might as well pack up and go home. NFL teams just don’t operate that way. Coaches invest too much of their time and players sacrifice too much of their health for every game not to be treated as important. 

Still, it’s worth pointing out the Broncos made a deal in these circumstances last year, trading OLB Von Miller to the Rams for second and third-round picks. Miller was in a contract year, which is a key difference, but there’s at least some form of precedent if a compelling offer is out there for Carolina. 

Other factors working in the Panthers favor are that McCaffrey has already restructured his deal this offseason, meaning he’s making a minimum base salary and price won’t be an issue for an acquiring team in 2022 at least. His guarantees would also stay with the Panthers in a trade, with an acquiring team responsible for just $12 million a year over the remaining three years. If McCaffrey’s injury woes continue, they could cut him at any time with no penalty. 

Landing Spots

For the sake of speculation, let’s assume the Panthers can drum up a fairly significant market for McCaffrey, and that for one reason or another they can manage the hit in the locker room. The first isn’t that far-fetched, the second is at least conceivable. There are five teams that stand out as potential landing spots 

Bills

The Bills aren’t hurting for offensive weapons but adding McCaffrey to that offense would put opposing defenses in a real bind. Defenses league-wide have put an emphasis on taking away the deep ball and making offenses stretch together long drives. Buffalo’s adapted pretty well to that this season and have been able to move the ball taking the underneath passes. 

But adding a weapon like McCaffrey would turbocharge the Bills. Some offensive players have a gravity around them that sucks in defensive players and commands their attention, freeing up space on the field for everyone else. If the Bills added McCaffrey to go with WR Stefon Diggs, they’d have two of those players, with McCaffrey pulling defenses closer to the line of scrimmage and Diggs stretching the field. The same would be true in the backfield with McCaffrey and QB Josh Allen creating the same type of misdirection Carolina used to be able to do with McCaffrey and Cam Newton. 

So no, the Bills don’t “need” to trade for McCaffrey. But he’s the type of weapon who could make an already explosive offense virtually unguardable. 

It’s notable that there were already reports earlier this offseason that the Bills looked into trading for McCaffrey as they explored their options for adding a receiving dimension out of the backfield. They did ultimately draft James Cook in the second round but he’s been brought along slowly as a rookie. As clear Super Bowl favorites, the Bills could also rationalize sending high picks to the Panthers for McCaffrey because they’d come at the end of the round.

There’s quite a bit of familiarity between players, coaches and front office personnel in the Buffalo and Carolina organizations, and in this scenario, McCaffrey would be the latest in a long Carolina-to-Buffalo pipeline. 

Broncos

Denver seemed all set at running back about a week ago. Unfortunately, they lost rising star Javonte Williams to a major knee injury in Week 4. Things could be dramatically worse than having to turn to veteran Melvin Gordon, who’s a solid back in his own right. But losing Williams eliminates some punch from a Broncos offense that’s in desperate need of it. 

The Broncos don’t have a lot of draft capital after trading for QB Russell Wilson and they have bigger needs than the backfield. Still, it’s worth remembering McCaffrey’s dad played for the Broncos for nine seasons and he grew up in the Denver area, so there’s already a connection. If the Broncos took the approach of just trading for the best available offensive player, it could lead them to McCaffrey. 

Chiefs

You can’t completely write off Chiefs RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire but at this point he is not trending toward having his fifth-year option exercised this coming offseason. Kansas City pretty much has a three-way split backfield between him, seventh-round rookie Isiah Pacheco and veteran Jerick McKinnon. All three can take advantage of the opportunities schemed up by HC Andy Reid and from the wizardry of QB Patrick Mahomes, but none of them are truly dynamic players in their own right — at least not yet in Pacheco’s case. 

In fact, the Chiefs offense as a whole is lacking in guys who are a cinch to win one-on-one matchups. They have TE Travis Kelce who still looks like one of the league’s top tight ends, but outside of him it’s a mishmash of guys who might do one or two things really well, but overall are more limited. At some point, defenses might be able to expose that, although Kansas City just dissected a pretty good opponent in Tampa Bay. 

To get ahead of that, the Chiefs could be interested in trading for McCaffrey. He’d be a clear upgrade in the run game over the current committee — to make things less messy the Chiefs could send back Edwards-Helaire to Carolina and that might actually help grease the wheels for a deal by giving the Panthers a semi-palatable replacement. McCaffrey’s passing acumen would also be a boon for Mahomes by giving him another trusted target to lean on, while Reid would go nuts designing misdirection plays to take advantage of the attention McCaffrey commands. 

The fit isn’t quite as clean with the Chiefs as it is with the Bills. But keeping McCaffrey away from their AFC rivals itself is a pretty good reason to do the deal for the Chiefs. 

49ers

For someone as committed to the run game as he is, 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan has struggled to find a reliable running back since being hired by the 49ers back in 2018. The position is annually snakebit by injuries, which actually might not inspire a lot of confidence given McCaffrey’s injury history. 

Superstition aside though, McCaffrey would be the best back to suit up for San Francisco in years. He’s a terrific runner between the tackles, as he proved in his college career at nearby Stanford, and his pass-catching ability would provide another safety valve for QB Jimmy Garoppolo. Down the road, McCaffrey would also be a great player to lean on in 2023 when QB Trey Lance returns. 

Rams

One of the problems that’s been evident with the Rams in their slow start to the 2022 season has been the lack of a running game. Obviously the poor play of the offensive line, worsened by injuries, has been a major part of that but the Rams are also getting little out of Darrell Henderson and Cam Akers, the latter of whom seems to have lost some explosiveness after a torn Achilles last year despite his miraculous return after just five months. 

As a result, Rams HC Sean McVay has leaned even more into a transition that began last year with QB Matthew Stafford, moving the offense away from the play-action heavy attack it featured in McVay’s first few seasons and toward a more traditional dropback passing game. The Rams don’t have the receiving weapons to consistently make that work right now, though. They’re struggling to integrate WR Allen Robinson into the offense and leaning far too much on WR Cooper Kupp, making them stale and predictable. 

Trading for McCaffrey wouldn’t fix the offensive line, but it would make a lot of people’s jobs on offense easier in Los Angeles. For starters, McCaffrey is still capable of creating something out of nothing as a runner, which would be a big upgrade over what Henderson and Akers are providing right now. He’d also provide another reliable target for Stafford to turn to instead of Kupp, especially as an outlet and check down option if the line continues to leak. 

With McCaffrey in the fold, McVay could go back to the recipe he had with RB Todd Gurley that was so effective. They have a quarterback in Stafford who still gives them the ability to have more answers to what the defense is doing, but this would put less of the offensive burden on the shoulders of Stafford, Kupp and McVay. 

This Week In Football

• The NFL news drought continues and for our sake, hopefully it picks up with the trade deadline at the end of the month. One story to keep an eye on will be the looming sweepstakes for WR Odell Beckham, who is recovering from a torn ACL and is expected to be cleared to play sometime in November. Beckham loved his time in Los Angeles and the Rams have been the frontrunners to sign him back at some point, even keeping his nameplate and locker open in the locker room. But Beckham’s a free agent right now with a whole lot of options — including a return to the Giants possibly? Beckham had a visit at the team facility with players, including some friends still on the team. It wasn’t an official visit listed on the NFL wire or anything and no deal is imminent, but it’s still notable. Bills DE Von Miller let drop that Beckham has similar visits set up with a few other teams as players begin their recruiting efforts in earnest. There’s room for some twists and turns here as this story unfolds in the next several weeks.  
• Sooner or later, teams play their first-round quarterbacks. For all the talk about a redshirt season for Steelers rookie QB Kenny Pickett, the Mitch Trubisky era lasted less than four games in Pittsburgh. Steelers HC Mike Tomlin put Pickett in for the start of the second half and there’s no going back now. Pickett won’t solve all of the issues the Steelers have on offense but he at least showed more of a willingness to attack down the field. It’s still going to come down to the defense, which unfortunately has cracked in each of the past three losses. 
• We mentioned it briefly earlier, but the knee injury to Broncos RB Javonte Williams was one of the worst breaks of the week. It wasn’t just a clean ACL tear, Williams suffered damage to his LCL and other ligaments, making the road to recovery harder for the second-year back. There’s a good chance this will drag into the 2023 season and impact how effective Williams is, at least early in the season. That means the Broncos will have to pay extra attention to how they construct their backfield and devote more resources than they perhaps otherwise would to those No. 2 and No. 3 spots. 
• Other notable injuries this week: 
  • The Falcons placed RB Cordarrelle Patterson on injured reserve with a knee injury. He apparently needed some kind of procedure Monday to address an injury that cropped up this past week. Patterson is 31, so even if this is only his second full-time season as a running back, he has some wear and tear. The Falcons also handled him with kid gloves during camp and the preseason to try and preserve him. Hopefully he’s back in four weeks and ready to pick up where he left off. 
  • Titans first-round WR Treylon Burks has a turf toe injury, which is a gnarly, painful setback for someone Tennessee was hoping for big things from. He’ll probably miss multiple weeks and this is the kind of injury that can linger for a whole season. 
  • Colts RB Jonathan Taylor missed Thursday night’s game due to toe and ankle injuries. He seemed to avoid something more severe and the 10-day layoff between games will be good for him. You saw how much the Colts offense needed him, however. 
  • The Broncos took another couple of injury hits, losing DE Randy Gregory to a knee injury on Sunday and LT Garett Bolles to a broken leg on Thursday. Gregory should be back at some point later this season and there’s a chance Bolles can make it back too. But obviously that’s bad news for a team really on the rocks to start 2022. 
  • Bills slot WR Jamison Crowder fractured his ankle and is out indefinitely. This could be an interesting opportunity for fourth-round WR Khalil Shakir. 
  • Vikings first-round S Lewis Cine had a gruesome compound ankle fracture in the team’s London game. It was so bad that Cine had to be left behind for surgery and the early stages of recovery, as infection is always the worry with compound fractures. He’ll basically enter the 2023 season as a rookie, which is less than ideal. 
  • To wrap the injury report up, Giants WR Kenny Golladay suffered an MCL injury while blocking in Week 4, which is both a blow to a hobbled New York receiving corps and any remote hopes the team had of trading Golladay. 
• The free agent market is usually pretty thin this time of year, but we did have a handful of signings/transactions that were notable: 
  • The Giants have been trying to upgrade their linebacking corps which is among the worst in the league. They already signed Jaylon Smith and he made it up to the active roster in Week 4. New York also added S Landon Collins who has shifted into more of a box safety/linebacker role in recent seasons. Giants DC Don Martindale ought to be able to come up with some fun things for him and he’s a much better fit in the scheme than he was when he left New York. 
  • A linebacker the Giants released, veteran Blake Martinez, caught on with the Raiders and former DC Patrick Graham. Las Vegas has been hit with injuries at the position and their run defense has been exposed. Martinez should help with that. 
  • The Saints had brought back RB Latavius Murray due to injuries and a lack of depth at the position and he looked solid in action Sunday in London. So it was surprising to see him poached from New Orleans’ practice squad to Denver’s roster early this week. Players can decline active roster offers, but it sounds like the Saints were willing to promote Murray. He just thought the opportunity in the Broncos’ backfield was better. 
  • Finally, Buccaneers WR Cole Beasley retired after just a brief stint in Tampa. Beasley tried to hang around but sometimes when that happens it becomes evident to a player that the game has moved past them. Other parts of life were also calling to Beasley, which is notable considering how another prominent Bucs player has handled that dynamic…

Check This Out

Obviously the big topic of discussion for a few days is going to be the Broncos and Wilson after yet another stinker of an offensive performance. And they deserve the fire. That might have been one of Wilson’s worst games as a pro, with numerous indefensible decisions. A lot of people, myself included, expected some growing pains with the Broncos offense. This seems to go a little beyond that. 

And yet, the narrative in the immediate aftermath of the game on social media seemed to be that Wilson is washed, the Seahawks were right to trade him, and the Broncos have just saddled themselves with one of the worst personnel mistakes in years between the picks and contract they gave up. 

Not so fast my friend. 

This article from FootballGuys.com’s Matt Waldman is a couple of weeks old and is written from more of a fantasy football perspective. But Waldman is a legitimate talent evaluator. His assessment and Wilson’s body of work carry a little more weight in my mind than some of the reactionary Twittercism aimed at dunking on people for likes. 

Decide for yourself.