Chiefs make rare trade with Raiders: Grading both teams on deal that brings a defensive tackle to Kansas City

With the clocking ticking down until the NFL’s cut day deadline on Tuesday, the Raiders decided to trade away a player who was on the roster bubble in Las Vegas. 

CBS Sports NFL Insider Jonathan Jones has reported that the Raiders are sending defensive tackle Neil Farrell to Kansas City in exchange for a 2024 sixth-round draft pick. This is a rare deal between two division rivals that almost never trade with each other. 

With that in mind, let’s grade how each team did in the trade. 

Raiders: C

On one hand, Farrell was on the bubble, so the Raiders definitely get some credit here for getting a draft pick in return for a player they were probably going to cut anyway. However, a sixth-round pick isn’t exactly a good return for a player who went in the fourth round last year. 

During the 2022 NFL Draft, the Raiders used the 126th overall pick on Farrell and the pick they’re going to get from this trade is going to be much worse. If you assume that the Chiefs are once again going to be good this year, that means the Raiders will be getting a pick at the bottom of the sixth round, with the selection likely coming somewhere between 204 and 209. The Raiders are also helping the Chiefs, which is the opposite of what I would want to do if I were in the same division as Kansas City. 

Chiefs: B-

The Chiefs are getting a better grade than the Raiders and that’s mostly because Kansas City is getting help in a spot that’s suddenly become a position of need. With Chris Jones still holding out, the Chiefs needed to add some depth on the defensive line and that’s what this trade does. There’s no guarantee that Jones will be back for Week 1 — he’s hinted that he might sit out until Week 8 — so by adding Farrell, the Chiefs are giving themselves another body to work with up front. The fact that the Chiefs only had to give up a sixth-round pick to land Farrell makes this deal even better for Kansas City. 

Of course, if the Chiefs had been able to wrap up a deal with Jones by now, this trade likely wouldn’t have been necessary, so we’re going to ding them a little bit there.