As the sixth week of the NFL season arrives, the gap between Super Bowl contenders and teams vying for favorable positions in the draft has begun to grow. Once teams recognize their spot in the pecking order, they can chart their path forward for the rest of 2026 and beyond, and one of the first decisions to make is whether to buy or sell at the Nov. 10 trade deadline. That mark is already less than a month out, so there are only a few games left to help front offices decide whether to add impact talent or ship it out in exchange for draft capital.
A few teams have already begun this process. On Sunday, the Arizona Cardinals traded wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. to the Houston Texans in a move that padded the former's draft coffers and gave the latter a high-upside depth piece on offense who could get his career back on track in a new situation. Before Harrison, Cam Jurgens, Joey Porter Jr. and J.J.
McCarthy hit the trade block. The question is not whether there will be a flurry of moves at the deadline — that is a given. It is more about which teams will make them.
Once it becomes clear who is buying and who is selling, the players involved will, in many cases, be quite obvious. Here are the teams that could buy and sell at the deadline and the players that may be on the move. Sell candidates: Khalil Mack, Donte Jackson, Quentin Johnston, David Njoku Why wait until the deadline to move on from obvious trade candidates such as Mack?
The Chargers are, shockingly, going nowhere fast at 0-5 and face a grueling schedule between now and Nov. 10, so they may as well get out ahead of the market and sell before they lose even more leverage. This roster and its coaching staff might have simply run its course, because after years of coming up short in the postseason, their chances of even getting back there in 2026 are bleak at best. Mack is by far the most tradeable player on the roster as a 35-year-old playing extremely well on a one-year contract.
That is the exact kind of rental player that defense-needy playoff contenders are in search of every single year. Teams with holes on the back end of the defense could call about Jackson and his expiring contract, too. He racked up nine interceptions across the 2024 and 2025 seasons, after all.
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