Survey results!!
Anyone who has been paying attention to Commanders football this season will be aware of the acquisition of CB Marshon Lattimore from the Saints at the trade deadline and the hamstring injury issue that affected him and the time of the trade and moving forward through the season.
Washington has played eight games since the trade deadline; Lattimore has appeared in only two of them, and did not reach the end of the second game before re-aggravating his injury.
The Commanders won five straight games to finish the regular season even without Lattimore playing, but a huge part of the reason why Adam Peters traded for the 4-time pro bowler was to help Washington reach the playoffs and win in the postseason. The time has come for him to make the GM look good.
Here are the details of the trade:
Washington kept a 3rd round pick (originally from Miami) acquired in trade, sending Washington’s own 3rd round pick to the Saints. The 6th round pick was the one that the Saints sent to Washington earlier in 2024 in the John Ridgeway trade.
Two factors (beyond the skill of the player involved) made this a low-risk move with high upside. First, Lattimore’s cap hit for 2024 was a mere $605,000 for the Commanders. His ‘24 cap impact was never going to be painful. Secondly, Lattimore is under contract to the Commanders for two more seasons — through 2026, when he will be 30 years old. His average cap hit for those two seasons of $18.25m would currently rank 13th among NFL corners, but none of his salary is guaranteed (he does have a roster bonus of $2m due on 20 Mar each year), meaning that the Commanders can part ways with the veteran corner at any time with very little or no negative cap impact.
Still, many Washington fans have expressed a level of angst that the front office surrendered draft capital for Lattimore. Some fans would have preferred a different corner with less injury history; some prioritized trading for a receiver more highly, and some didn’t want to trade away any draft picks at all.
With Lattimore about to face his old NFC South rival Tampa Bay in the playoffs, it seemed like a good time to survey Hogs Haven readers to find out what they thought of the trade now that the regular season had ended without significant contribution (yet) from Lattimore.
There is a generally positive feeling from the survey respondents, with 71% either saying that it was a smart trade, or that having Lattimore under control for two more years offers value. Only 5% of respondents felt like the trade was a bad move.
In the immediate term, Washington has a top-tier corner that can be deployed against potential future Hall of Fame wide receiver Mike Evans tonight. Not only that, but Lattimore has faced Evans 13 times in his career to-date so he knows the receiver well, and Lattimore has a history of restricting Evans to pedestrian production. The concerns are really about physical limitations — whether Marshon is healthy enough (and ‘rust-free’ enough) to play well against Evans, and whether he can make it through the entire game — much less a potential playoff run by Washington — without re-aggravating the injury.
Longer term, assuming that Lattimore is able to get healthy and stay that way, his acquisition allows the team to use remaining salary cap and draft resources to complete the defense and add weapons and better blocking on offense. In other words, with one less key position to have to fill, Adam Peters can expedite the process of building a championship roster. If Lattimore can’t live up to expectations, then the investment in draft capital wasn’t crippling and the salary cap impact will have been negligible.
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