A.J. Bouye Trade Grades: Denver Broncos take Jaguars to task

The Denver Broncos have traded only a fourth-round pick to the Jaguars to acquire A.J. Bouye. Grading the trade for both teams.

For one reason or another in the NFL, sometimes good players get traded. Whether or it’s irreconcilable differences between the team and player, a bad fit in the scheme or, as is the case with Tuesday’s trade seeing the Denver Broncos acquire cornerback A.J. Bouye from the Jacksonville Jaguars for a fourth-round pick.

The Bouye trade seemingly materialized out of nowhere — even if it can’t take place until the new league year begins on March 18 — though the timing makes sense. The Jaguars are reportedly in sell-now mode as they declined Marcel Dareus’ option, are looking to trade Nick Foles and just used the franchise tag on Yannick Ngakoue, with a strong likelihood he gets traded as well. Subsequently, they wanted to shed more salary, saving just over $11.4 million by trading Bouye, per Over the Cap.

As for the Broncos, general manager John Elway and the front office were surely going to be in the cornerback market this offseason as all signs indicated them moving on from veteran Chris Harris Jr. this offseason. Instead of shelling out new-market money or using a premium draft pick, however, they get a proven player on a relatively solid deal while they have plenty of salary-cap flexibility.

So how did the Broncos and Jaguars make out, given their current situations, in the A.J. Bouye trade? Let’s hand out a letter grade to each team for this deal.

The Broncos had a need at cornerback, $70 million in cap space and extra third (2), fourth and seventh-round picks in the 2020 NFL Draft. So instead of paying someone like Byron Jones a deal worth something in the $16-18 million per year range or taking the risk on a draft pick panning out immediately, the Broncos acquired a 28-year-old cornerback who has been one of the better players in the league for the past few seasons.

To be sure, Bouye is coming off a suspect season in 2019 with Jacksonville as he struggled a bit after the Jalen Ramsey trade — and a little before due to the defense’s overall letdown. But he’s still in his physical prime and, as part of a still highly talented Broncos defense featuring Von Miller and Bradley Chubb up front, he should be able to recapture his form.

Denver gets high marks for the player they acquired but also for little they gave up. They gave up an extra mid-round pick to get a $14 million per year player. Even if they have to pay that contract, that’s strong maneuvering by the Broncos to fill what could’ve arguably been their biggest need this offseason.

In some ways, you have to commend the Jaguars for making the trade happen at all. With a dire need to shed salary, they unloaded one of their biggest contracts and were able to get something in return rather than just releasing him to recoup the money and take a minimal dead cap hit. In that regard, Jacksonville should be praised.

But outside of that, it’s hard to put a positive spin on the situation the Jaguars have found themselves in. Bad contracts — namely the Foles deal — have them backed into a corner in the salary cap, so they were forced to essentially spearhead a rebuilding effort, by no fault but their own, beginning with trading one of the best defensive players.

Furthermore, while it’s good the Jaguars got something instead of nothing by letting Bouye go. The hit-rate on fourth-round draft picks isn’t particularly high, even if there are talented prospects available. Subsequently, it’s hard to say that’s going to move the needle for the rebuild. Instead, it appears simply as if Jacksonville put themselves in a bad situation and had to mortgage viable assets to start climbing out of that hole.