Before diving into the rest of my MMQB takeaways, I wanted to go a little longer on the biggest news of last week.
The Jaylen Waddle trade may have seemed sudden, but the reality of it, for the Broncos, was anything but. Last year, on Halloween, the Dolphins fired longtime general manager Chris Grier, which started a months-long process of reimagining the organization. Predictably, contending teams started circling over their roster, looking to see what could be plucked from the remains of a regime on its way out, with a full reset coming but not fully executed.
That’s where Denver came in, looking to add to a team that coach Sean Payton and GM George Paton saw as ready to compete for the biggest prize. Waddle was their target, and while Payton and Paton didn’t get him, the seed was planted.
And it sprouted a trade some five months later, last week, with the Dolphins sending Waddle and a fourth-round pick (No. 111) to the Broncos for first-, third, and fourth-rounders (Nos. 30, 94, 130). Its completion was indicative of two teams in very different places, as they were back at the end of October, with one going all out to win a championship and another trying to amass capital to conduct an overarching rebuild.
That, in the end, is why the deal worked so well. Paton and Payton’s goals with their roster-building meshed perfectly with what new Miami GM Jon-Eric Sullivan and coach Jeff Hafley are trying to accomplish. That much was reflected in a process that, from start to finish, was clean and straightforward, and helped to accomplish the goals of both teams.
Here’s how it all went down …
• Upon their hire, one thing was clear: Sullivan and Hafley would be focused on turning around the Dolphins’ recent luck in the draft. They had fewer picks over the past four years than any team in football and just two guys left, total, from the classes of 2022 and ’23 (De’Von Achane and special teamer Cameron Goode). As such, volume was going to be important, and part of building that up would be listening to teams inquiring on their current players.
• While Sullivan was open to listening to anyone, guys on bigger second contracts would be more likely to move, both for economic reasons (given their dead-money issue), and since the timelines of such players might not match up with the team’s rebuild. At the combine, as the Dolphins made a last-ditch effort to construct some sort of Tua Tagovailoa trade before cutting him, teams did start to sniff around others on Miami’s roster.
• The Broncos, meanwhile, were looking to add an explosive element to their offense (last season they ranked 12th in explosive run rate and 19th in explosive pass rate, per Sharp Football Stats). They were open to different ways to do it. While Payton’s offenses have generally had bigger wideouts, there were examples—Brandin Cooks in New Orleans would be one—where adding a stick of dynamite at receiver opened things up for everyone in his scheme.
• After the combine, Broncos assistant GM Reed Burckhardt reached out to Sullivan, making the initial inquiry on Waddle’ availability. Sullivan had gotten advances on Waddle, but nothing that progressed far, in Indianapolis. He told Burckhardt he’d listen, but it wouldn’t be cheap—knowing that a first-rounder would have to be a part of any package coming back (and more than that if it was a low first-rounder).
• Paton’s staff was already doing background work on Waddle. Bo Nix told Paton that, in the 2019 Iron Bowl, Waddle put together one of the greatest individual games he’d ever seen, even as Nix’s Auburn team beat Waddle’s Alabama team 48–45. Safety Brandon Jones was a resource, too, having covered Waddle for three years in practice in Miami. And one of Paton’s scouts with a tight relationship with Nick Saban reached out, and Saban told him that Waddle was competitive, tough, sudden, and could drop his weight as fast as anyone he’d ever coached.
• Part of the equation for the Broncos was holding Waddle up against competing options, those being either the skill player who’d be available for them with the 30th pick, or a free agent who could bring a big-play element to their offense (Rashid Shaheed was the closest thing). It became increasingly clear after that research, and around 15 in-depth calls they made to people like Saban, that Waddle was their best option.
• The Broncos used their chart to properly value what other receivers were traded for: like Cooks (the equivalent of the 30th pick in the Saints-Patriots trade, 24th in the Patriots-Rams trade), Amari Cooper (16th, since it was a midseason deal between the Raiders and Cowboys), Stefon Diggs (equivalent of the 20th pick in the Vikings-Bills trade), Davante Adams (13th pick in the Packers-Raiders trade), Tyreek Hill (14th pick in the Chiefs-Dolphins trade), A.J. Brown (16th pick in the Titans-Eagles trade) and Marquise “Hollywood” Brown (28th pick in the Ravens-Cardinals trade). As they saw it, the equivalent of a pick in the mid-20s would be appropriate value, all things considered (age, contract, skill, etc.).
• Meanwhile, the Dolphins went through a similar exercise and saw the A.J. Brown trade as a good starting point. Tennessee landed a mid-first-rounder (No. 18) and third-round comp pick (No. 101) in that deal in 2022.
• Trust was a foundational element to the train staying on the tracks through the process, and Paton felt good that Sullivan, without another serious suitor, wouldn’t start shopping his offer around. Paton actually worked with Sullivan’s father, Jerry, the longtime NFL receivers coach, two decades ago in Miami. And the two were on opposite sides of the Packers-Vikings rivalry for 14 years (2007 to ’20), so there was a high level of mutual respect, even if the two didn’t know each other all that well beforehand.
• After about a week of talks, the Broncos were willing to trade the 30th pick this year and a third-round pick in 2027 to land Waddle. Sullivan balked at wanting the third-rounder to come in this year’s draft—generally teams will look at picks a year ahead as devalued by a round, so in Miami’s mind, that was basically an offer of a first and a fourth. Paton and Sullivan worked through potential compromises and settled on a giveback of a fourth-round pick swap, where Denver’s fourth-rounder would jump 19 spots (from 130 to 111) for giving up the third-rounder.
• And as the deal was done, Paton called Patrick Surtain II, who was Waddle’s roommate and best friend at Bama. He’d talked to Surtain about Waddle before the trade deadline, so he didn’t need to consult with him before doing this particular deal. He surprised him with the news, which was, as you’d expect, very well-received.
We probably all call these deals win-wins too often. But I believe this one truly is—again, because of the places these two teams are in.
For Miami, the operative question on giving up Waddle, a player they very much valued and one beloved in the organization, related back to timelines. If, say, Sullivan and Hafley had the program rolling going into 2028, it would be with Waddle at 30 years old and likely in search of a new contract. Conversely, the first- and third-round picks they bring onto their roster would be going into Year 3, still a year away from even being able to negotiate a new deal. That’s a better timeline match than Waddle would be.
For the Broncos, their roster is the point where they have few holes left to fill. They still have seven picks, and three of the top 111 in 2026, and project to have 10 for 2027 (with comp picks for John Franklin-Myers and P.J. Locke factored in). They also get Waddle at $68.6 million over the next three years. That’s an APY of $23 million, which is less than the new-money APY on the deal they gave Courtland Sutton last summer. Yes, if Waddle balls out, he could come back to the table. But that would be a good problem to have.
And with Nix on a rookie contract for at least another year, this was always the time to be aggressive, particularly if they could get a player who could open up things for their other skill players, and enhance their play by allowing them to slot into complementary roles.
In the end, it’s a pretty cool spot Denver finds itself in now, and in the wash Miami set itself up to create a much brighter future for a franchise that’s stumbled along for way too long.
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