T10YL - Did Any NFL Trade from August 2014 Matter?
The answer depends in part on whether you think kickers matter.
We’re beginning our initial approach to the one-year anniversary of Trades Ten Years Later, and one of the most salient takeaways has been the differences in typical trades across each league. MLB trades rarely shake a franchise to its core, but frequently include guys who are still playing baseball today. NBA trades vacillate between totally meaningless and existentially crucial, and while most of the guys traded ten years ago aren’t still playing in the NBA, they’re often still professional basketball players in a different country.
The NFL is a different ball of wax. We’ve published 12 NFL posts (including four on the 2014 Draft) and several have discussed a player that has already died. The most impactful trade we’ve discussed is probably the one involving a 30-year-old scatback who would go on to blow out his ACL and fracture his arm on the same play.
To make my point explicit, writing about NFL trades is more gruesome and less fun than writing about the other trades, and as a backlog of dozens of MLB trades from July and August continued to accumulate, the NFL trades were easy to push to the backburner. This is one of the more active times on the football trade calendar, as teams cutting their offseason rosters down to 53 players shift talent around to produce a better balance, but I also expect it’s going to be an especially pointless time in the football trade calendar, since half of these guys probably get cut anyways.
I don’t know whether that theory is right yet; let’s find out together. We’ll run through the 10 NFL trades from August in a rapid-fire fashion and figure out whether it was a waste of time for everyone involved.
August 13, 2014
TRADE ONE:
New England Patriots receive: Ben Bass
Dallas Cowboys receive: Justin Green
See what I mean? Justin Green actually had a few seasons of NFL playing time as a fullback. Unfortunately, that was that Justin Green and not this Justin Green, who had played 14 special teams snaps and 9 defensive snaps for the Patriots in 2013. Ben Bass was a comparative veteran of 25 defensive snaps and 15 special teams snaps for the Cowboys, but those came way back in 2012. Bass’s 2012 season was cut short by an ankle injury, he missed the 2013 season with a separated shoulder, and his 2014 training camp was impacted by a hamstring injury. What a sport.
This trade did not matter to either franchise, with neither player making an NFL active roster again. Green’s Wikipedia notes that “In the summer of 2015, Green retired from football to focus on pursuing a career to help children in the community,” and then appends the hilarious follow-up that “this was only temporary as he continued his pursuit of playing professional football the following year.” Green seemingly hasn’t pursued his football career since 2017, but it’s unclear whether he’s returned to helping children in the community.
TRADE TWO:
New England Patriots receive: Jerel Worthy
Green Bay Packers receive: Conditional late-round draft pick (did not convey)
The Patriots’ second trade of August 13 was much more meaningful, with Chris Wesseling acknowledging that the Bass-Green swap “barely moved the needle” but calling this trade a “bigger splash.” Jerel Worthy was drafted 51st overall in 2012 and put up only modest production due to what Wesseling describes as a “poor fit” in Green Bay’s defensive scheme. He tore his ACL at the end of that season and only played 19 snaps in 2013 as he recovered from the injury. In training camp, a back injury had been preventing him from regular practice, and roster spots were hard to come by in Green Bay’s talented defense. Wesseling, who is evidently the only source I’ll be consulting on this trade, described the acquisition of Worthy as a “worthwhile project” for Bill Belichick.
Wesseling was mistaken; this trade did not matter to either franchise. Worthy was waived by the Patriots and spent 2014 on the Chiefs’ practice squad. The conditional draft pick evidently did not convey if Worthy got waived before the season started, so nothing happened. Worthy was able to get playing time in each of the 2015 through 2018 seasons, which probably qualifies this as a happy ending for our purposes.
August 20, 2014
TRADE THREE:
Philadelphia Eagles acquire: Kenjon Barner
Carolina Panthers acquire: Conditional 2015 7th-round draft pick (did not convey)
At least this one is quite easy to explain. Kenjon Barner was the 38th-best running back prospect in his recruiting class when he signed with the Oregon Ducks as a high schooler in 2008. By the time he left the school in 2012, he had received Heisman votes and was an All-American. Barner’s collegiate breakthrough got him selected by the Carolina Panthers in the sixth round of the 2013 Draft, but didn’t get him much playing time on a roster that was already loaded with quality running backs as well as Cam Newton. Fortunately for Barner, the college coach who had helped take his game to new heights was now running an NFL team.
The tempting conclusion is that the trade did not matter. Barner was cut before the season began and spent his only NFL time in the 2014 season on the Eagles’ practice squad. As a result, no pick conveyed to Carolina. But in the 2015 preseason, Barner returned two punts for touchdowns, which was sufficient to earn him a spot on the Philadelphia roster for the next two seasons. He left to sign with the Chargers, got cut, and then rejoined the Eagles in 2017 after the aforementioned traumatic injury to old friend Darren Sproles. Barner returned three kicks in the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory, which is more than enough for us to conclude that this trade did matter. The bar is not high!
Amazingly, this was the first of three Super Bowl rings that Barner would win in his career. The second came the very next season, when the Patriots kept Barner on the roster for a few weeks during a season where they cut him three times and gave him a ring for his patience. Barner signed with the Buccaneers during Tom Brady’s first year with the team, spending much of his time either on the practice squad, injured, or suspended for PED use, but that was still enough to earn championship number three.
I assume this is going to be the most uplifting story we get.
TRADE FOUR:
Philadelphia Eagles receive: Cody Parkey
Indianapolis Colts receive: David Fluellen
Apparently, NFL teams making August trades like to make two per day.
David Fluellen was a running back from Toledo and Cody Parkey was a kicker from Auburn. Neither player was selected in the 2014 NFL Draft, and each had signed with their current teams as undrafted free agents. The Eagles had just traded for a running back and could afford to swap out the one they had been auditioning. Incumbent kicker Alex Henery had just missed a field goal in a preseason game, which might not immediately cost a kicker their job but will certainly result in heightened scrutiny.
I am shocked to report that this trade did matter, and not just for the eventually infamous reason you might be expecting. Cody Parkey won the Eagles’ kicker job as a rookie and proceeded to set multiple scoring records that year, with his 150 points setting a new high for NFL rookies (breaking Kevin Butler’s record from 1985) and a new high for any Philadelphia Eagle (breaking David Akers’ record from 2008). The rookie scoring record didn’t get broken until last season, when Brandon Aubrey had the advantage of a 17-game schedule (his 9.235 points per game still trails Parkey’s 9.375 points per game). The Eagles record still hasn’t been broken. On the strength of this incredible rookie season, Cody Parkey was named to the only Pro Bowl of his career in 2014.
Parkey got injured three games into the 2015 season and was replaced by Caleb Sturgis, who the team kept around as his replacement. Those three games were Parkey’s final three with Philadelphia, but his biggest contribution to NFL history and to the Eagles’ success was yet to come. Parkey hopped around the NFL over the next few seasons, spending 2016 in Cleveland, 2017 in Miami, and 2018 in Chicago. His time as a Bear ended in such legendary fashion that it produced an onomatopoeic Wikipedia article with the title that anybody familiar with Cody Parkey has been waiting to see this whole time: “Double Doink.”
Here’s the video of the Double Doink. A low-scoring playoff game between Parkey’s former Eagles and his current Bears was coming down to the wire, with several late scores setting up a 43-yard field goal with ten seconds remaining and the potential to change the score from 16-15, Eagles to 18-15, Bears. As soon as the ball was kicked, it was clear something wasn’t quite right, though we wouldn’t know for some time that Treyvon Hester got a finger on the ball while trying to block it. As the Chicago Bear mascot fell to the ground in anguish, the football bounced off the left upright (the first doink), then down to the crossbar (the second doink), then down to the ground harmlessly.
In the aftermath of the double-doink, Parkey went on the Today Show a few days later for a five minute appearance. This media appearance had not been approved by the Bears organization and resulted in prompt excoriation by the Chicago media, which in turn was followed by Parkey’s release from the team despite still being owed millions of dollars after one year of a four-year contract. “We always talk about a ‘we’ and not a ‘me’ thing, and we always talk as a team, we win as a team, we lose as a team,” said then-coach Matt Nagy. “I didn’t necessarily think that was too much of a ‘we’ thing.”
David Fluellen never caught on with the Colts and was waived before the start of the 2014 season. He spent the entire 2015 and 2016 seasons on the Titans’ practice squad, then finally made his NFL debut in 2017 during a Week 2 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars that is the only home game I’ve seen my team play in the last fifteen years. He only rushed for 37 yards in his career and had 18 of them that day, so I came remarkably close to watching half of David Fluellen’s NFL career in-person. Fluellen spent further time on the Tennessee active roster in each of 2018 and 2019 until he suffered a knee injury that he never returned from.
August 21, 2014
TRADE FIVE:
Kansas City Chiefs receive: Kelcie McCray
Tampa Bay Buccaneers receive: Rishaw Johnson
I’d like to skip the step of learning who these people are and jump to the conclusion that this trade did not matter, but I suppose we should confirm that before putting it in writing.
McCray and Johnson were each undrafted free agents from the class of 2012, neither of whom got any playing time that year. In 2013, each moved to a new organization and finally got onto an NFL field, with McCray going from Miami to Tampa Bay and Johnson going from Seattle to Kansas City.
Johnson got waived a month after this trade and never played in the NFL again, so we’re tracking nicely for meaningless. Kelcie McCray was out of Kansas City after one season where he only played 5% of defensive snaps. This should clear our conclusion that this trade did not matter, but unfortunately I’m forced to acknowledge that McCray was, technically, a 1st-team All-Pro in 2014.
1st-team All-Pro is a really, really, really high bar. Isaac Bruce just made the Hall of Fame and had one All-Pro season, when he made the 2nd team in 1999. How is it remotely possible that Kelcie McCray pulled it off?
The short answer is “he didn’t,” the long answer is “an outrageously dumb technicality.” In 2014, Pro Football Focus published a standalone “Special Teams All-Pro team,” which as far as I can tell is the first and last time they chose to do this. In addition to the kickers, punters, and returners (all of whom can get honors on normal All-Pro lists), the Special Teams All-Pro team honored the best individual performers at each role on returns and coverage for each of kickoffs and punts. According to Pro Football Focus, Kelcie McCray was the best “vice” in the NFL in 2014, which is apparently the guy on punt returns who tries to block the “gunners” from the punting team.
To decide whether this mattered, I looked at video of the Chiefs’ one punt return touchdown in 2014, because I certainly wasn’t going to watch McCray’s performance on nondescript punts. Punt returner De’Anthony Thomas fields the ball on the side of the field that McCray (#24) is covering, but by the time he fields the ball the gunner has already slipped past McCray:
As Thomas fields the punt and explodes past the gunner, McCray does assist with a strong block that REALLY looks like it should be a penalty in some form, as evidence by the distended nature of the jersey that he is yanking:
McCray neutralizes the gunner enough for Thomas to shoot past, then shoves him in the back once more for good measure at a point where such an action can really only impact the play negatively:
I’m certainly not an NFL official and apologize to all vices if these are actually clean blocks, but that’s still not enough to get me to care about PFF’s First Team All-Pro Vice – this trade did not matter. We were right all along.
Rishaw Johnson has coached at UTSA and McNeese State since the end of his NFL career, but he left the latter school after the 2021 season and a tweet of his from March says “when I was coaching,” so maybe he’s not coaching anymore. On the other hand, his Twitter bio still says “I’m a Real ball Coach!,” which suggests that he still is coaching.
August 26, 2014:
TRADE SIX:
Denver Broncos receive: Brandon McManus
New York Giants receive: Conditional 7th-round draft pick (#245, Tre McBride selected).
As midnight struck in the mountain time zone and the calendar turned from August 1 to August 2, 2011, Broncos kicker Matt Prater was having quite a night. There’s some inference there on my part, since we don’t have a verified log of what Prater was doing until “just before 3 AM,” when police were called to the scene of a hit-and-run accident at a Hyatt hotel. When the police arrived, they found four witnesses who told them that a man driving a Chevy Trailblazer had backed into a parked car, then fled into the hotel lobby. In the lobby, they found a woman who self-identified as the passenger in the Trailblazer and a waitress at Shotgun Willie’s (the article doesn’t tell us that Shotgun Willie’s is a strip club, though NBA fans might remember the name thanks to the exploits of Ja Morant). She told police she traveled with a man she had just met at her workplace named Matt P., but didn’t know his full last name. A brief subsequent search by police found Prater checked into a nearby La Quinta (bypassing the IHOP and the Sheraton located between the hotel where he crashed and the hotel where he was found). Prater subsequently failed a roadside DUI test, presumably administered in his hotel room, and recorded a blood alcohol content of 0.142. “I really messed up. I’m going to lose my job. I deserve this,” Prater said while being transported to the police station.
You can’t blame Prater for thinking he had ruined his life, since he did make substantial progress towards several different methods of ruining his life, but he kept his job as Broncos kicker for the next few seasons. There was at least one consequence, though, which is that Prater was put into the league’s alcohol program and subject to more rigorous testing. Over the summer of 2014, Prater had a couple of beers “at home while he was on vacation,” according to his attorney, but that was still sufficient to violate the terms of the NFL’s policy. Prater was facing a yearlong suspension that was ultimately negotiated down to the first four games of the NFL season. But because that decision didn’t come down until August 24, the Broncos were suddenly left without their reliable kicker.
So they picked up Brandon McManus, who the Colts had signed as an undrafted free agent from Temple in 2013. McManus was waived prior to the start of the season, then signed a reserve/futures contract with the Giants that led up to this trade. McManus made all eight extra points and three field goals he attempted during Prater’s suspension (they had a bye week for the fourth week), leading the Colts to release Prater. Later that year, the team brought in Connor Barth to attempt field goals (leaving McManus exclusively on kickoff duty), but he reclaimed the full job for the 2015 season and kept it through 2022. Eight and a half seasons worth of starting kicker means that this trade did matter.
The conditional 7th-round pick conveyed and was one of three picks the Giants traded to move up in the 2015 Draft and select Landon Collins. The Titans used the pick to select Tre McBride, who is a much more exciting player if you have him mixed up with current tight end Trey McBride. The original McBride was a wide receiver who had two catches for the Titans in 2015, played seven special teams snaps in 2016, and then had eight catches for the Bears in 2017.
Brandon McManus’s NFL career is probably over. He spent the 2023 season on the Jacksonville Jaguars and will certainly not be back after he was sued by two flight attendants who alleged that McManus sexually assaulted them while onboard the team flight for their annual games in London. McManus had since left the Jaguars and signed a free agent contract in Washington, which promptly cut him within a week of the lawsuit becoming public. There was a hearing last Thursday regarding a motion to dismiss the suit, which will likely not be resolved for some time.
TRADE SEVEN:
Tampa Bay Buccaneers receive: Logan Mankins
New England Patriots receive: Tim Wright, 2015 4th-round pick (#101, Trey Flowers selected).
What? Yes, definitive yes, this trade did matter. Logan Mankins is the 4th-best New England Patriot in history. What is this trade doing here in a late August bulk post? We’ll circle back to this one.
August 30, 2014
TRADE EIGHT:
Dallas Cowboys receive: Lavar Edwards
Tennessee Titans receive: Conditional 7th-round pick (did not convey)
This is more like it. Lavar Edwards was a 2009 graduate of Desire Street Academy, a high school whose executive director was former quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Danny Wuerffel. Edwards was one of the final graduates of Desire Street Academy; the school abruptly closed a couple of weeks later. Edwards played collegiately at LSU and was a 5th-round draft pick by Tennessee in 2013, but found himself in a roster crunch when the Titans changed coaches and their defense switched from a 4-3 alignment to 3-4 alignment over the offseason.
Edwards played 52 snaps for the Cowboys and made one tackle. His Wikipedia article states that he was placed on injured reserve on December 10, “finishing with 10 tackles,” which is not a correct statement in any sense. Edwards only made one tackle in 2014, and while he did have ten career tackles at the time he was placed on injured reserve, he was by no means “finished.” Edwards would play for four additional NFL teams and a few more practice squads on his way to a robust career tally of 23 tackles.
The 7th-round pick didn’t convey because the threshold was higher than “one tackle.” This trade did not matter.
TRADE NINE:
Seattle Seahawks receive: Marcus Burley
Indianapolis Colts receive: 2015 6th-round pick (Amarlo Herrera selected)
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first – Marcus Burley is a cornerback rather than any of the positions that would be more suitable for somebody with “Burley” on the back of their jersey. Burley is possibly the only football player in the history of the University of Delaware to play cornerback at the NFL level (with apologies to any of the guys listed as “defensive backs” who manned the position), but had to get there the hard way after going undrafted in 2013. Burley didn’t play any NFL games that year, bouncing around on practice squads for the Jaguars, Eagles, and Rams before he ended up with the Colts.
Evidently, Burley learned a lot from his year as a quasi-NFL player and was a standout in Colts training camp. He competed for a depth cornerback role with excellently-named undrafted free agent Loucheiz Purifoy. The two both played better than expected, which is the kind of thing that always gets said about NFL players in training camp but in this case comes with external validation. Ultimately, Purifoy won the roster battle, but Burley did enough to prove that he had an NFL role. After no team wanted to use a draft pick on him in 2013, the Seahawks were willing to use next year’s 6th-round pick to bring him into the fold. It’s impossible to feel too bad about turning an undrafted free agent who never played for your team into a draft pick, let alone a 6th-rounder, with Stephen Holder calling the trade a “mini-coup” for Colts GM Ryan Grigson.
The 6th-round pick was used to select Amarlo Herrera. Herrera was a linebacker who attended University of Georgia, a school/position NFL pipeline substantially more robust than Delaware cornerbacks. That did not lead to NFL success for Herrera, who played one defensive snap for the Colts and got into a total of three games on special teams. He was released ahead of the 2016 season and was trying out for the WWE by the summer of 2017. I don’t think he made it.
Meanwhile, Loucheiz Purifoy didn’t stick in Indianapolis for long. Purifoy started his career as a consistent special teams member and saw an increasing number of defensive snaps, but weirdly, the Colts waived Purifoy after Week 11. “When you make a roster move like this on Thanksgiving, cutting a player who was playing well, at a position where the Colts could use help, it absolutely seems like there’s more to this than we currently know,” said Josh Wilson at Stampede Blue. Evidently, the decision to waive Purifoy resulted from “a string of minor, in-house disciplinary issues,” without much clarity on how the camel’s back broke. We almost had the setup for an exciting reunion, as the Seahawks claimed Purifoy the very next day, but he failed his physical and was immediately waived. That summer, the NFL suspended him 10 games, “most likely for violating the substance abuse policy,” which could answer a couple questions if true. Since then, Purifoy has plied his trade in Canada, playing for four of the nine Canadian Football League teams. He’s currently an Edmonton Elk.
That just leaves Marcus Burley, who spent the next two seasons as a contributor for Seattle’s Legion of Boom. In each season, Burley had one interception and one sack. The 2015 versions both came in the same game, when he sacked and picked off Johnny Manziel. He was released ahead of the 2016 season and his career wound down from there with abbreviated stints on the Cleveland Browns and Houston Texans. Thanks to Burley’s hard work in Seattle, we can conclude that this trade did matter.
August 31, 2014
TRADE TEN:
Houston Texans receive: Ryan Mallett
New England Patriots receive: Conditional 7th-round draft pick in 2016 (#243 overall, subsequently traded)
We’ve discussed multiple trades where the Texans sent away quarterbacks, now here’s one where they acquire a quarterback.
Ryan Mallett was a cannon-armed quarterback prospect from Arkansas who endeared himself to the campus community as he led the Razorbacks to a Sugar Bowl in his final season. Some saw Mallett as potentially the best quarterback in the 2011 draft class, but concerns about his character and mobility led him to slide to the third round. The Patriots scooped Mallett up with the hopes that he could develop under Tom Brady, who would turn 34 before the 2011 season began. While nobody said so explicitly, Mallett was set up to be an heir apparent to Brady who could take some reps as a backup for a season or two and then take over once Brady’s performance deteriorated with age.
Well, uh, obviously it was not clear to anybody at the time how Tom Brady was going to age (or not age). By the time 2014 rolled around, Mallett’s rookie contract was almost over and he had just turned 26. Tom Brady was smack in the middle of a streak of 10 consecutive Pro Bowl appearances. The Patriots still liked the plan to develop an heir apparent under Brady, but rolled that concept over to a newer model with Jimmy Garoppolo. With former Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien newly installed as Texans head coach, Houston made sense as a landing spot for Mallett to continue competing for playing time. The Patriots got a 7th-round pick that would become a 6th-round pick if Mallett played more than 40% of snaps in 2014. He did not do that.
We have no choice but to conclude that this trade did matter, because Ryan Mallett started games for the Texans at the most important position in sports. Midway through the 2014 season, Mallett took over as starter and made it through two games before a torn pectoral muscle ended his season. Well, he actually made it through one game, tore his pec during warmups prior to the second game, and then tried to play through the pain after waiting for so long to get his chance as a starter. He threw 45 passes that game, which must have hurt, and then had his season ended anyways because obviously the team caught onto the fact that he had a major injury.
In the 2015 season, O’Brien alternated Mallett and Brian Hoyer at starting quarterback through the first weeks of the season in a manner seemingly designed to drive both men insane. Hoyer was named the starting quarterback, then replaced by Mallett in the fourth quarter of Week 1. Mallett started Week 2 and 3, then got benched for Hoyer towards the end of Week 4. Mallett started again in Week 5, got pulled midway through the second quarter, and then was on the bench for Week 6. The carousel ended in enjoyable fashion after Mallett missed the team’s flight for a game against the Dolphins and had to book a commercial flight to get himself to Miami. After a brief internal power struggle, the Texans released Mallett later that week.
Mallett joined the Ravens after being released and spent the next few seasons as a backup in Baltimore. He began a high school coaching career in 2020 as an assistant coach and took over as the head coach at White Hall High School in 2022. “I never missed a practice ever, unless because I was hurt,” said Head Coach Mallett, apparently forgetting about the time when he allegedly overslept a practice immediately after Brian Hoyer was named starting quarterback.
Tragically, Mallett would only coach at White Hall for one season. While on vacation with his girlfriend in Destin in June of 2023, Mallett got caught in an ocean current and drowned, one of ten swimmers who had drowned in the Panama City Beach area that month as a result of increased coastal hazards. The White Hall Bulldogs went 5-3 during a 2023 season where they wore helmets with a decal commemorating Mallett.
So where does that leave us on our ten August trades?
Four trades did not matter.
Two trades did matter, but only because of the kicker involved. Extremely gray area.
Three trades did matter (one because of a quarterback, one because of a runningback/returner, and one because of a cornerback)
One trade mattered enough that it got carved out from the set and somehow that’s the one that involves an offensive guard. Stay tuned for in-depth Logan Mankins trade coverage in a standalone post, coming sometime this September to a Substack near you (this one, specifically).