'No they didn't': Inside the Jets' shocking deadline day trades of Sauce Gardner, Quinnen Williams

Additional reporting by Jeremy Fowler, Stephen Holder and Dan Graziano

AT A STONE church on a hill, in a pastoral town only two miles from their training facility, the New York Jets paid their respect to a franchise icon Tuesday morning in Madison, New Jersey. More than 400 mourners packed into St. Vincent Martyr for Nick Mangold's funeral Mass, 10 days after the beloved center died because of complications from kidney disease at age 41.

Jets general manager Darren Mougey was among the last to arrive, walking purposefully into the church as a bagpiper filled the crisp autumn air with strains of sorrow. Mougey wore a dark suit and the expression of a man whose mind was racing. Five hours remained until the NFL trade deadline at 4 p.m. ET, and he was sitting on a couple of blockbusters.

Mougey stood in the back of the church ("A beautiful service," he would say later) and slipped out before it was over, heading back to the office for urgent business. Back at St. Vincent, about three dozen of Mangold's former teammates from the Jets and Ohio State congregated outside the church after the Mass, exchanging hugs and wiping tears. The casket was placed in the hearse, bagpiper playing again. A solemn moment.

Minutes later, a news flash on social media: Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner traded to the Indianapolis Colts.

Word slowly spread through the crowd of mourners. One of them was Darrelle Revis, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who, once upon a time, was traded by the Jets in his prime. He refused to believe his old team had parted with one of its young stars.

"No they didn't," Revis said matter-of-factly, when informed of the trade. "You're joking."

Somebody showed him Gardner's social media post, bidding farewell to New York. Revis shook his head in disbelief. It was real, and it was stunning.

And it wasn't the team's only shocking move as the Jets (1-7) pulled off two major trades. They dealt Gardner and defensive tackle Quinnen Williams for four draft picks and two backup players, blew up the core of what once was a top-five defense and fueled a torrent of conflicting emotions in their locker room. This is a story about how the Jets, trying to overturn years of misery, culminated months of planning with two potentially franchise-altering moves in less than two hours.

Tuesday night, Mougey, who had barely slept the previous two nights, was hoarse and drained. He lost his train of thought during a video call with reporters. He apologized, adding, "I'm running with half a brain here."

TO PREPARE FOR the trade deadline, Mougey and his staff met weekly, starting in Week 4. They discussed the roster in-depth, assigning potential trade value for each player. They studied contracts and comparisons from around the league, adjusting based on the ebb and flow of the season. The goal was to anticipate as many scenarios as possible. They were confident this would eliminate any recency bias.

Three weeks before deadline day, the Colts called and everything changed.

Initially, the Jets had no interest in moving Gardner, team sources said. After all, he's only 25, a two-time All-Pro under team control through 2030 after a record-setting four-year, $120.4 million contract extension in July.

The Jets told the Colts it would take a Micah Parsons-like deal, the same team sources said -- i.e. two first-round picks and a quality starter. Another reference point was the Jalen Ramsey trade in 2019, when the Los Angeles Rams dealt two first-round picks for the star corner.

The Colts weren't biting.

That shifted a few days before the deadline, as the offers "kept getting richer and richer," Mougey said. The Colts, coming off a loss after a blistering 7-1 start, were hoping to bolster their chances of a Super Bowl run and coveted an outside cornerback.

The market was drying up -- they checked into Deonte Banks of the New York Giants and New Orleans' Alontae Taylor -- and perhaps that drove up the price for Gardner. Anticipating January home games, they wanted to prepare for visiting passing attacks that would look to exploit the comfy indoor conditions at Lucas Oil Stadium.

By Monday, they let the Jets know they "could potentially do" a deal that included 2026 and 2027 first-round picks, a Colts team source said.

The Jets didn't shop the Colts' offer to other teams, but they were emphatic about having mercurial wide receiver Adonai Mitchell included in the package, according to a Jets team source. Mitchell, a 2024 second-round choice, was buried on the Colts' depth chart, but the Jets had positive scouting reports on him and a glaring need at receiver.

By the time Mougey left for the funeral, the trade was close to the goal line. He probably could've pushed it across early that morning, but he hit the "pause" button out of sensitivity to the day's events.

The first-year GM didn't know Mangold personally, but he's keenly aware of what the team's 2006 first-round pick meant to the franchise. He sees Mangold every day in the Jets' fieldhouse, where mural-sized photos of Ring of Honor members hang from the rafters.

So Mougey made the two-mile drive to St. Vincent, hoping word of the looming deal wouldn't leak. The last thing he wanted was a news alert disrupting the mourners, and in that case the Jets did a good job keeping both trades under wraps, so good that rival executives were surprised when the deals were announced.

"I did not expect this at all," said an AFC executive who had dealt with the Jets.

GARDNER AND HIS brother, Allante, also one of his agents, were notified by the Jets around the same time -- 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday. Sauce got a call from Mougey, Allante from Nick Sabella, the Jets' senior director of football administration. They had no inkling that one of the biggest NFL trades of 2025 was in the works, according to Allante, who called it a sound business decision by the Jets.

"They couldn't turn it down, and Ahmad [Sauce] deserves to be on a winning football team," Allante said.

Recalling his conversation with Sabella, Allante Gardner said, "It was almost like he was saying, 'This is going to hurt, but we have to do it for the future of the organization.'"

Sauce was supposed to be part of that future.

Only four months earlier, the Jets had locked in arguably their most popular player with an extension that made him the NFL's highest-paid cornerback. Gardner loved the idea of playing his entire career in New York. He proclaimed his desire to help change the losing culture.

Coach Aaron Glenn, too, was giddy, saying Gardner and wide receiver Garrett Wilson (four-year, $130 million extension) were "foundational players."

"I want them here for a long time," Glenn, who has significant say on personnel decisions, said at the time.

For the Jets, with 14 consecutive non-playoff seasons (the longest active drought), the extensions provided a feel-good vibe at the start of training camp. It's highly unusual for a team to flip a player so soon after extending him, but Mougey and Sabella structured Gardner's deal in a way that allowed them to escape with minimal cap ramifications -- only $13.75 million in signing bonus, with rolling guarantees that will be absorbed by the Colts.

That decision wasn't an accident; Mougey said they wanted to make it a tradable contract, just in case. In essence, it made Gardner more desirable. As a different league source said, "If Sauce didn't have an extension, do Jets get two [first-round picks]? Probably not."

The Jets didn't sign him to trade him four months later, but the landscape changed because of their subpar record and the desire to buttress their rebuild with draft capital. Though no one ever criticized Gardner publicly, there was internal concern about his ball production (three interceptions in 55 games) and high penalty rate (14 in his past 25 games).

Gardner is considered the most flawed of the elite corners, with one NFC executive saying, "Never been a huge Sauce fan, so that was a great deal to me that you just couldn't pass up."

An AFC executive added, "[The] lack of interceptions and penalties have always been the issue with [Gardner], but otherwise a really good player."

Glenn praised Gardner's talent but also suggested the change of scenery might be good for him. In his post-trade comments, he made it sound as if no player is untouchable.

Thirty years ago, Glenn's coach and mentor, Bill Parcells, expressed the same sentiment to him when trade rumors were swirling. The Hall of Famer told Glenn, a young corner at the time, that he'd trade his wife for the right price. That always stuck with him.

Jets owner Woody Johnson recently called Gardner and Wilson "great talents," saying their contract extensions were important to the organization. Try to imagine Johnson's reaction when, only two weeks after making that comment, his top football lieutenants informed him of their plans to trade Gardner.

Actually, it wasn't what you might have expected.

Johnson, known in the past for meddling, was pragmatic and professed his faith in Mougey and Glenn, according to a Jets team source.

FOR THE JETS, trapped in a losing vortex for the better part of two decades, history always repeats itself.

Twelve years ago, first-time GM John Idzik wanted to accelerate the rebuilding process, so he traded his most valuable asset for first- and fourth-round picks. And so Revis, arguably the greatest cornerback of his generation, was traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on April 21, 2013.

And there Revis was Tuesday, paying respect to Mangold, only two miles from where one of the most shocking trades in team history was going down. Once he absorbed the news, he praised the move.

"I guess this is kind of a similar path for Sauce," Revis said. "In this situation, I think the Johnson family is trying to look to the future, getting these draft picks for him. It's been a tough year, really tough for the organization, but I think the future is always bright and you can always turn things around."

With the returns for the Gardner and Williams trades, the Jets hold five first-round picks over the next two drafts -- two in 2026, three in 2027.

"It starts with trying to find a franchise quarterback," said Revis, who played with Tom Brady on the New England Patriots' 2014 Super Bowl championship team. "I think those guys have been trying to do that for the last couple of years."

For the last 50, but who's counting?

TWO WEEKS AGO, Williams learned from a reporter that he was on the verge of 100 games in a Jets uniform -- 98, to be exact.

"You hear that?" he said in a joking way to a teammate at the next locker. "I never thought I'd make it."

He didn't -- at least not with the Jets.

In that moment, Williams had to know there was a chance he'd be traded by the deadline. His camp had made it known that the former All-Pro coveted a change of scenery, league and team sources said.

Williams, who went 27-2 in two playing seasons at Alabama, was worn down by losing. He arrived in 2019, was drafted No. 3, and the closest he came to a winning season in New York was 7-9 as a rookie. In fact, he experienced more losing than just about every player in team history.

Of the 73 players with at least 100 games played as a Jet, the lowest winning percentage belongs to current long-snapper Thomas Hennessy -- a .300 mark from 2017 to present. Williams (.306) would be right behind him, second on the list.

"I think the world knew I was frustrated being there so long and still losing," Williams said Wednesday at his introductory news conference with the Dallas Cowboys.

Williams foreshadowed his feelings with his infamous tweet in February, saying, "Another rebuild year for me I guess" -- his response to the news that quarterback Aaron Rodgers was being released. That social media post didn't sit well with folks in the organization.

The losing, coupled with a subtle position switch (he was used primarily as a 3-technique tackle instead of his usual spot at nose tackle), fueled his unhappiness. His usual production wasn't there; he had only one sack -- coincidentally, a takedown of former teammate Rodgers on the first play of the season (a 34-32 home loss to Pittsburgh).

Unlike the Gardner deal, the Williams trade came late and fast. Talks with the Cowboys intensified Monday, Jets team sources said. The Jets made it clear to Dallas that they had to be blown away to part with one of the league's best defensive tackles. Another team, reportedly the Jacksonville Jaguars, made a strong push. It was an ideal situation for the Jets, who had two teams interested.

After returning from the funeral, Mougey finalized the trade -- Williams for a 2026 second-round pick, a 2027 first-round pick and backup defensive tackle Mazi Smith.

Here was the clincher for the Jets, a team source said: They negotiated the right to get the better of the Cowboys' two first-round picks in 2027, as Dallas has its own selection and the Green Bay Packers' pick from the Parsons trade. That could have huge ramifications in the Jets' favor if Dallas (3-5-1) has a losing season in 2026.

With a stockpile of draft capital, the Jets have the resources to trade up for a quarterback in '26 or '27 or use the picks to pry a veteran away from another team. They wanted flexibility. Well, they got it.

"More than anything," Glenn said, "we want to make sure we build this team in our vision."

JETS WIDE RECEIVER Allen Lazard checked his phone Tuesday and saw a text from a close friend. It simply said:

"OMG."

Lazard figured it was a trade, so he checked X and saw the Gardner news. The Williams news broke a short time later.

The entire locker room responded in an "OMG" kind of way to the blockbuster moves. Edge rusher Jermaine Johnson posted on social media his support for the organization, but added, "I'm sick." Running back Breece Hall said, "It sucks, but it's the nature of the business."