The Arizona Cardinals were busy on Thursday, trading hybrid defender Isaiah Simmons to the New York Giants, offensive tackle Josh Jones to the Houston Texans, and acquiring quarterback Josh Dobbs from the Cleveland Browns. The Cardinals are clearly looking toward the future, which means that they could trade even more veterans between now and the start of the regular season.
The fact of the matter is that, no matter how hard they try during the regular season, there just isn’t enough talent on this roster for Arizona to win more than five or six games. So, with this in mind, the Cardinals will likely try to trade some of their older veterans on expiring contracts. This will allow the team to spend the 2023 season evaluating their young talent to see who should be a part of their core moving forward. Of the players remaining on the roster, the two most likely trade candidates are tight end Zach Ertz and running back James Conner, and both players should have plenty of interested teams.
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Potential Landing Spots For NFL Veterans on the Trade Block
Zach Ertz Trade Destinations
We already covered the rationale behind a Zach Ertz trade in a previous article, so we’ll keep this portion brief for now. Basically, Ertz is still a good player, but the three-time Pro Bowler is entering his age-33 season and is in the final year of his contract. The Cardinals are in no position to compete this year, so instead of effectively wasting one of the final years of Ertz’ career, they should let him to go a better team and see what they have in 2022 second-round pick Trey McBride.
There are not nearly enough good tight ends in the NFL, so while Ertz isn’t the player he once was, he can still be a valuable part of just about any offense out there. Looking around the league, the most logical trade fits for the veteran are the Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Chargers, and Carolina Panthers. The Cowboys lost Dalton Schultz to the Houston Texans in free agency, and they have yet to do anything to replace him. While Jake Ferguson is reportedly having a good camp, a contending team like the Dallas Cowboys should look for a more proven option at the position.
The Los Angeles Chargers have a decent starting tight end in Gerald Everett, but he’s nothing more than a league-average player at this point in his career. The depth behind Everett leaves a lot to be desired, and Los Angeles needs as many weapons as possible seeing as they play in the same division as the Kansas City Chiefs. The Panthers, meanwhile, are not set to compete in 2023, but they need somebody to catch passes. With DJ Chark reportedly battling injury, the team doesn’t have any reliable weapons in the passing game. The present-day version of Zach Ertz is probably a better player than Hayden Hurst, and he could be a nice safety blanket for rookie quarterback Bryce Young.
James Conner Trade Destinations
James Conner probably wouldn’t fetch much of a return in a trade, but the veteran running back can still help the right team. As evidenced by the Isaiah Simmons trade, the Cardinals are ok with receiving a minimal return for players that aren’t a part of their future. The one thing going in Conner’s favor is that he won’t be a free agent until 2025, so any team trading for the two-time Pro Bowler would get two seasons of service out of him.
Conner is nobody’s Plan A at this point in time, but he’d make plenty of sense as a fallback option for whichever teams end up losing the Jonathan Taylor sweepstakes. Right now, the frontrunners appear to be the Miami Dolphins and Philadelphia Eagles, but the Buffalo Bills, Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, New Orleans Saints, and Buffalo Bills are probably in the hunt as well. Of those six teams, the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs are most likely to trade for the veteran, as they have the two weakest running back depth charts of the bunch.
