The NFL is a carousel that never stops.
On Wednesday, the Pittsburgh Steelers traded wide receiver George Pickens to the Dallas Cowboys for a 2026 third-round pick and a later-round swap.
People have floated Romeo Doubs as a trade candidate. The Pickens trade should dispel any such rumors.
Pittsburgh trading Pickens to Dallas for a third-round draft pick and swapping a late 2026 selection for a late 2027 selection has dictated market value. If Pickens is going for a third, we can safely assume Doubs’s value would fall somewhere around a fifth-round pick.
Now, consider Green Bay’s situation.
Shortly after Green Bay’s season ended in Philadelphia in January, general manager Brian Gutekunst spoke to reporters. One part of the presser really stood out from his past press conferences: He ramped up the urgency level.
These opportunities don’t come (every year), the life of a player in the National Football League is not very long. We’ve got a bunch of good guys in that locker room, we’ve got a bunch of talented guys in that locker room, and I think it’s time we started competing for championships, right? I think they’re ready.
The Packers have made the playoffs in the first two years Jordan Love has been the starting quarterback. Gutekunst’s sense of urgency may not command an outsider’s attention, but those who have followed the Packers closely immediately recognized the boldness of the comment, given who it came from.
Obviously, the goal is to compete for a Lombardi Trophy every year. Gutekunst’s comment that now is the time to start doing that raised the bar and hastened the timeline.
So what does that mean for Doubs? He suffered two concussions in 2024 and was suspended for a game for conduct detrimental to the team. Despite that, he’s been a constant in Green Bay’s passing game.
Would trading him for a 2026 fifth-round pick or something around that general vicinity be a move made by a team ready to compete for championships now? Absolutely not. It’d be a move made with an eye toward the future. Not to mention, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, considering the compensation.
The trickle-down effect of moving Doubs would intensify the pressure on the rest of the room.
Christian Watson won’t be on the field come Week 1 in September as he works his way back from a torn ACL. That’s a big piece of the puzzle to be missing indefinitely. Dealing Doubs would mean another loss the offense had to overcome.
Green Bay has good numbers in the wide receiver room, but moving Doubs at the same time Watson is set to miss a large portion of the season would immediately catapult Jayden Reed and Dontayvion Wicks into the top two spots on the depth chart.
That’s fine theoretically, but then you’re talking about rookies Matthew Golden and Savion Williams getting many more targets immediately. That may work for Golden, but it would be a mistake for Williams. He’s a raw talent plagued by drops at TCU and head-scratching bobbles at that. Diminishing the capacity of the wide receiver group by trading Doubs just wouldn’t be worth it.
The only way this would make some sense is considering Doubs’ contract situation. Doubs and Watson are entering the final year of their rookie deals. If they can’t work anything else out with Doubs, some would assume Green Bay could let him walk for nothing.
However, they’d likely get a compensatory pick, so it wouldn’t all be for naught. That compensatory pick wouldn’t be far from what they’d get in trading Doubs now. It adds to the idea of how pointless it’d be to send Doubs packing at this stage.
Doubs is a crucial ingredient in Green Bay’s passing game. You could make the case he’s been Jordan Love‘s most reliable target the past two years. Getting rid of that to get greedy for more draft picks is illogical.
The Pickens trade sheds light on what the Packers could get should they entertain a trade for Doubs this offseason. If Gutekunst is true to his word about competing for championships starting right now, a Doubs trade would indicate the exact opposite. If the Packers don’t sign Doubs to an extension, the best case for the team is to let things play out this year and take the compensatory pick if he walks next offseason.
