Analyzing the 2023 trade deadline moves: Washington defensive ends going different ways at the deadline

Kentavius Street traded from the Eagles to the Falcons

Atlanta tries to compensate for Grady Jarrett injury

Falcons receive: Kentavius Street and 2025 seventh-round draft pick

Eagles receive: 2024 sixth-round draft pick

The Falcons have been one of the most infuriating teams to watch this season. Diving into the tape on offense, you see them be able to move the ball pretty effectively, but then just don’t cash in on those drives.

That is backed up by the numbers, where they’re at least average in success rate (42.1%) and yards per play (5.1), but bottom-ten in percentage of drives ending in points (31.9%) and turnovers (15.4%). Meanwhile, the defense had been much more consistent on a weekly basis, not having surrendered more than 24 points until this past Sunday and were tied for fourth league-wide in success rate (39.9%).

So as they’re trying to finally put it together on offense and find consistent play under center, seeing the other side allow rookie QB Will Levis light them up for four touchdowns through the air and a season-high in points, is certainly disappointing. On top of that, they soon after received the news that perennially underrated interior D-lineman Grady Jarrett will miss the rest of the year with a torn ACL.

Atlanta is in the bottom-three in terms of sacks (15) and tackles for loss (30), but they had been able to set a firm line of scrimmage and push the pocket pretty well. So losing the one true difference-maker along the front definitely hurts.

Thinking that bringing in Kentavius Street from Philadelphia would off-set that would be an unfair expectation, but we’ve seen this guy be able to add some disruption as a rotational player. His only two years of playing a full 17 games – the final one in San Francisco and his one in New Orleans – he recorded 6.5 sacks and 11 TFLs across (56 total stops) across 869 total snaps.

Adding depth at the very least makes sense for a late-round pick-swap, being tied for the NFC South lead at 4-4 currently.

For the Eagles, I’m not going to waste a lot of time on this. Considering they don’t even need 50% of snaps from one of the most productive interior D-linemen in the league in Jalen Carter and their OTHER Georgia first-round pick in Nolan Smith being third string on the depth chart, they’re still absolutely loaded up front.

Street is an effective player when called upon, but he’s only averaged 11 snaps per game so far, which put him ninth in that pecking order. This gives them the ability to get someone like Smith on the field a little bit more and see if he can become more of an impact name down the stretch and they get a free pick swap basically, after signing Street for this year at 600.000 dollars.

So the effects it may have on a young player getting a little more playing time and having that one extra roster spot to potentially elevate somebody from the practice squad at a position that isn’t already a massive strength, is something that could pay off regardless of any compensation.