NFL trade grades: Browns, Jaguars get a 'B' for swapping cornerbacks Tyson Campbell, Greg Newsome II and picks

It's trade season in the NFL, and with the deadline approaching in just a few weeks, we're seeing teams start to get moving on the market. On Wednesday night, we even saw a rare player-for-player trade involving players in the same position when the Cleveland Browns sent cornerback Greg Newsome II and a 2026 sixth-round pick to the Jacksonville Jaguars for cornerback Tyson Campbell and a 2026 seventh-round pick.

The players were selected just seven picks apart in the 2021 NFL Draft. They have each at times played at an extremely high level and looked like future No. 1 cornerbacks, while also having periods where they played much worse and looked like someone their team might not want to commit significant resources to in the future.

Newsome, the former first-round pick, is playing in the final year of his contract on the fifth-year option, while Campbell is in the first year of a large contract extension he signed during the 2024 offseason. The respective contract situations of these players likely played a significant role in the trade itself, so it's important to note it ahead of time. 

With the details out of the way, let's grade the trade for each team. 

Cleveland Browns

The Browns got ahead of Newsome's potential free agency by swapping him out for a player who comes to them at a low cost. They're not on the hook for any of Campbell's signing bonus, nor his 2025 option bonus, which has already been paid out. Instead, they get Campbell on a contract that looks like this for the next few years (all numbers in millions), according to Over the Cap:

That's a very cheap and easy way to get out of the deal for a player who has shown the ceiling of a No. 1/2 cornerback in his career, though he has been bothered by injuries and ineffectiveness over the past couple of seasons. It's certainly much cheaper than what the Browns would have had to pay Newsome to bring him back for the next several seasons. There's no guaranteed money remaining beyond next season, after which the Browns can get out of the deal with no cap penalties if they want to. 

If Campbell performs at a high enough level to justify minimal investment, they have a bargain. If not, they have to go looking for another cornerback -- but they were going to have to do that anyway if they didn't want to pay Newsome on a long-term deal, which it obviously appears that they did not. They made this deal at the minimal cost of moving down from the sixth to the seventh round in next year's draft, but they also didn't necessarily net anything guaranteed in return.

Grade: B

Jacksonville Jaguars

The current Jaguars regime under James Gladstone and Liam Coen isn't the one that signed Campbell to his four-year, $76.5 million contract with $53.4 million in guarantees. They clearly weren't as committed to him as the team was under Trent Baalke and Doug Pederson. He got off to a somewhat slow start to this season (he's allowed 312 yards and three touchdowns in coverage so far, per Pro Football Focus), and with the guaranteed money remaining on his deal, the Jags decided to cut bait. 

The question now is whether they just wanted to get off the money at the cornerback position entirely, or whether they plan to give Newsome a new long-term contract this coming offseason. They already took on around $19.5 million in dead money for the 2026 season by executing this trade, and if they pay Newsome on a big deal, they'll basically be paying double the going rate for a corner of his stature, thanks to the acceleration of the remaining guaranteed money from Campbell's contract onto their books. 

For that reason, I somewhat expect them to take a look at lower-cost depth cornerbacks, whether in free agency or the draft, unless Newsome gets back to performing at a CB1 level for the rest of the season. They could then look to use Travis Hunter at cornerback more often than he has been used there so far. 

If Newsome shines and the Jaguars do pay him -- Gladstone's comments on his ball skills imply that they view him as a long-term fit, not someone to fill the need for the rest of the season, but that's also just the kind of stuff you say after making a trade -- then the on-field benefit to them would be somewhat mitigated because of the financial penalties they incurred by trading Campbell so early in his own contract. They basically paid Campbell $30 million to play five games and then go to Cleveland.

Grade: B