Don’t bother adding Davante Adams and Amari Cooper to the list of traded NFL wide receivers.
Their names were already there even before the New York Jets acquired Adams and the Buffalo Bills acquired Cooper this week for third-round draft choices. This was the third trade for Cooper and the second for Adams, pass catchers with 11 Pro Bowls and nearly 21,000 yards between them.
So it goes at the receiver position.
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NFL teams rarely trade high draft choices during the season. When they do, wide receivers are disproportionately the players targeted. Over the past 10 seasons, receivers accounted for 10 of 29 in-season acquisitions when picks in the first three rounds were traded. No other position had more than six players acquired at those prices.
The results have almost always been underwhelming.
Seven of the last eight receivers acquired during the season averaged 8.7 starts with their new teams — not just during the seasons in which they were acquired, but across all future seasons as well.
Viewed merely as rentals, these players did not fare better. They averaged 38.3 yards per game for their new teams in those initial seasons, well below the 50-yard average for starting receivers across the league.
The Jets and Bills should not necessarily panic. They appear well-positioned to beat the odds after acquiring Adams from the Las Vegas Raiders and Cooper from the Cleveland Browns, respectively. These players’ combined pedigrees — the 11 Pro Bowls, 20,726 yards and 158 touchdowns — separate them from failed in-season receiver acquisitions of the recent past.
In-season WR trades for picks in Rds. 1-3
The table above lists Adams and Cooper with the other receivers acquired in-season since 2015 using picks in the first three rounds. It’s a 10-year sample without much promise.
Cooper appears twice and is the only success story among the eight acquisitions made before this season. He made 54 starts with Dallas after the Cowboys acquired him from the Raiders in 2018 (Dallas later traded Cooper to Cleveland for a deal involving later-round picks).
Below, we see how each of these receivers produced in his initial season during games he played with his new team. Cooper was again the outlier.
First-year production with new teams
Beyond Adams and Cooper, the other receivers traded for higher picks during the season fell into two general categories:
• Highly drafted younger players who had failed to meet expectations but possessed perceived upside: Chase Claypool, Calvin Ridley, Kadarius Toney, Kelvin Benjamin
• Mid-tier veterans on the decline: Emmanuel Sanders, Golden Tate, Mohamed Sanu
Cooper and Adams — who was dealt from the Packers to the Raiders before the 2022 season — do not fit the recent mold. Four closer comps emerge when expanding the time period to 2002, when the NFL expanded to 32 teams. Again, the results are not encouraging.
The table below shows first-year production for Keenan McCardell, traded from Tampa Bay to the San Diego Chargers in 2004; Deion Branch, traded from the New England Patriots to the Seattle Seahawks in 2006; Braylon Edwards, traded from the Browns to the Jets in 2009; and Randy Moss, traded from the Patriots to the Minnesota Vikings in 2010.
First-year yards for Adams/Cooper comps
These four veterans averaged 49.5 yards per game across 37 combined games for the remainder of their initial seasons with their new teams, right at the league average for starting receivers. Of the four, only McCardell and Moss had been elite producers previously.
McCardell was coming off an 1,174-yard season with Tampa Bay when he held out into 2004 and was eventually traded during what was his age-34 season. He had one more solid season in him, falling just short of 1,000 yards in 2005. Moss had gained 1,264 yards with New England in 2009, but his poor production in 2010, his age-33 season, foreshadowed the end. He would never reach 500 yards in a season again.
Cooper, 30, and Adams, 31, have produced at high levels recently. The chart below shows their rolling 17-game averages for yards per game, with both well above the 50-yard average for starting wideouts. This should be what the Bills and Jets are getting.
Cooper’s recent production has fluctuated along with which quarterback was in the starting lineup for Cleveland. His per-game receiving yardage since the start of last season, counting playoffs:
• 109 in the five games Joe Flacco started
• 98.5 in the two games P.J. Walker started
• 62.7 in the 12 games Deshaun Watson started
• 22 in the three games Dorian Thompson-Robinson started
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Adams’ production has hovered just under 70 yards per game over the same period whether Jimmy Garoppolo, Aiden O’Connell or Gardner Minshew were in the lineup.
Both receivers will have accomplished quarterbacks throwing to them — Cooper with Josh Allen in Buffalo, Adams with his former Green Bay teammate, Aaron Rodgers, with the Jets.
Everything but history suggests bright days lie ahead.
(Photo of Davante Adams: Ed Mulholland / Getty Images)
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