NFL Trade Market: Which Stars Are Truly Worth a First-Round Pick?

When it comes to big trades, NFL fans have every reason to be a little envious of their NBA counterparts. Over in basketball, star players are swapped for handfuls of first-round picks as if they’re part of a weekly routine. Kevin Garnett once shouted “Anything is possible!” after winning an NBA title—but the same quote could easily describe the jaw-dropping trade activity in his league. In the NFL, though? Not so much.

That’s not to say the NFL has no blockbuster trades. Player movement is more common than it used to be. But there are limits—teams can only trade draft picks up to three years in advance, and the league’s salary cap structure, especially when it comes to dead money, makes dealing stars far trickier than it is in the NBA. Sometimes, a player’s contract makes them virtually untradeable.

But what if we set all that aside for a moment? Imagine a football universe with no dead cap headaches, where teams can freely move contracts around, and every player is on the table. What kind of return would the NFL’s biggest names fetch? Could a team actually trade Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen in that world? It sounds wild, but then again, nobody expected Luka Dončić to be trade bait either.

So, let’s explore that fantasy landscape: which NFL players would be worth at least one first-round pick in a trade?

It’s a more complicated question than you might think. For starters, the timing of the trade matters. A team isn’t going to move its starting quarterback in the middle of training camp without a Plan B. So we’re assuming these hypothetical trades happen in some magical offseason window where anything goes.

Then there’s value. A first-round pick isn’t a one-size-fits-all currency. There’s a huge difference between the 32nd overall pick and the first. When determining value, it’s not about just one team being interested—it’s about whether several teams would consider giving up real draft capital for a player.

Age, position, and contract size all play massive roles in these evaluations. Teams prize youth and positional value. Elite quarterbacks always command top dollar. But for non-quarterbacks over 30? History tells us they rarely net a first-rounder. You’d have to go back to 1994 to find the last time a player like that (Chris Doleman) was moved for one. Even 29-year-olds are risky investments, with only two being traded for first-rounders in recent decades: Richard Seymour and Davante Adams.

On the flip side, rookies who were just drafted in the top 15—especially at premium positions like quarterback or left tackle—are often worth a first-rounder even before taking a single snap.

In the real world, superstars like Mahomes or Allen aren’t going anywhere. Their teams would rather give up the stadium than lose their franchise cornerstones. But for one day, it’s fun to imagine a league where the trade market is just as wild and unpredictable as the NBA’s—where “anything is possible