The past two NFC champions are reportedly among six teams looking to push the NFL trade deadline back by two weeks.
Per Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports, the San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, Washington Commanders and Detroit Lions plan to submit a proposal to the NFL that would move the trade deadline from Week 8 to Week 10.
Jones noted that it remains "unclear" if the proposal will be approved by NFL team owners during the annual league meetings next month in Florida. A source told Jones that "there's disagreement among both owners and general managers themselves about whether the deadline should be moved at all."
"Our professional sports league has the earliest trade deadline by far," Browns general manager Andrew Berry said. "When you look at the other major four sports leagues … I think baseball and basketball, their trade deadline is after about 65% of their games have been played. Hockey's after 78%. We're currently at 45%. Our proposal would move it to about 55% of games played, while also maintaining the integrity of the season."
Another option would be to move the deadline back one week to Week 9, which would make sense after the NFL added a 17th game to the schedule.
Jones added that the hesitation from the league comes from the NFL's desire to prevent tanking, as pushing the deadline back could influence teams to ship away key players if they feel they can't compete for a playoff spot. However, Berry doesn't believe that moving the deadline back would promote tanking.
"I think that really hasn't really borne true in the data," he said. "That's part of the reason why we didn't really push it deeper into the season. When we looked at again after Week 10, there are usually at minimum, 27 teams that are within two games of a wild-card spot with seven or eight games to play. So it affords more flexibility for all teams without getting into a position where the NFL is a league of, call it, like haves and have-nots."
