Jets Trade Quinnen Williams and Sauce Gardner
This article was originally published on Over The Cap.
The Jets snuck in a few hours before the trade deadline and dramatically remade their team with an eye on the future that will give them significant draft capital following the trades of star defensive tackle Quinnen Williams and cornerback Sauce Gardner. The Jets will pick up a 2026 2nd round pick and 2027 1st round pick from the Cowboys for Williams while adding a 2026 and 2027 1st round pick for Gardner.
Williams was in just the second year of a four year contract extension that he signed with the Jets back in 2023, the final year of Williams’ rookie contract. The Jets paid Williams $40.3 million for 24 games on the contract. He made the Pro Bowl last season and had six sacks. Williams had just 1 sack this year and was reportedly upset with the direction of the Jets franchise. This should have been an easy decision for the Jets as the draft compensation is gigantic for a player who would have likely been unhappy in 2026 and would certainly be looking for a new contract in 2027 as he turns 30. Williams will leave the Jets with $13.24M in dead money this year and $9.8 million in 2026.
Dallas will inherit Williams’ contract which will see them owe him about $8.4 million for the remainder of this season, assuming the Jets did not pick up any of the contract, and $21.75 million next season. Williams will enter the final year of his contract in 2027 where he is owed $25.5 million and he will most certainly look for an extension at that point. This would likely signal the end of Kenny Clark’s tenure next season with Dallas as Clark is also owed over $20 million.
This is an odd trade for Dallas who only received two first round picks for Micah Parsons a far more dominant player than Williams this summer. Dallas currently sits at 3-5-1 and looks like anything but a contender for the playoffs and it is hard to believe that Williams would make a horrible defense turn into a passable one. Dallas looks like a team that had peaked and should be more focused on the future but instead is trying to get a wildcard game this season. At the end of the day they basically traded Parsons for Williams, the gain between and 1st and 2nd rounder in 2026 and whatever the net change is for a 1st round pick swap in 2027. They will save about $55 million between the two players, which is significant, but then its a big wait and see on what Williams will earn on a new contract.
Gardner has signed a massive contract extension with the Jets in mid July that would pay him just over $30 million per year, making him the highest paid corner in NFL history. This was a deal that seemingly was done to send a positive message to the locker room about rewarding good players with contracts rather than fighting over an extension, but always seemed short sighted from the standpoint of the draft value that a player like Gardner would have.
Despite the fact that Gardner is one of the top corners in the NFL, the Jets on paper looked far away from being a contender when they signed him to a new contract. By the time the team would possibly be good Gardner would likely be nearing the last year where he would be expected to be a high level player considering the typical age curves associated with corners. Essentially the Jets would have been paying a high price for a great defender on a bad team and giving up the draft potential associated with trading him. This may signal that the Jets staff had far more hope for Justin Fields this season and with reality setting in the Jets fixed the decision and didn’t worry about the sunk cost of the contract which was around $14.4 million at the point of the trade. Gardner will leave the team with $8.75 million in dead money this year and $11 million next year. He played no games under the new contract years so essentially his salary that he earned this year was paying for a draft pick.
From the Colts perspective this contract makes sense to acquire. The team is a surprising 7-2 and is in a position to make a bold move to help the team. In the past teams have traded two first round picks for players like Gardner and received zero salary compensation prior to an extension so the fact that the Jets prepaid over $14 million was a massive bonus in the Colts favor. From the Colts perspective they just acquired one of the top corners in the NFL on a contract that will average $21.87 million for the next six years. The cost for four years is just $17.76 million a year which is incredibly cheap.
Gardner will count just $625K on the teams cap this year and he will have salaries of $25.25 million in 2026, $24.95 million in 2027, $20.2 million in 2028, and $30.1 million in both 2029 and 2030. The 2026, 2027, and 2028 salaries are all virtually guaranteed but there are zero guarantees on the high salaried years. The Colts have control over how low or high the salary cap charges will be over the life of the contract based on decisions they make related to how to account for option bonuses in the contract.
