{"id":627237,"date":"2026-05-06T17:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/627237\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T17:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:23:10","slug":"5-trades-we-wish-we-would-have-seen-during-2026-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/627237\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Trades We Wish We Would Have Seen During 2026 NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Chicago Bears could have received: 2026 second-round pick (No. 36 overall) and 2026 third-round pick (No. 67 overall)<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Las Vegas Raiders could have received: 2026 first-round pick (No. 25 overall) \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">The Las Vegas Raiders made the easiest pick of the night when they landed Fernando Mendoza at No. 1 overall. The Heisman-winning quarterback offered a great blend of positional need, talent, upside and value with a chance to be a savior for the downtrodden organization.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">While the Mendoza pick made perfect sense for Vegas, the club could have helped expedite his development by swinging a deal for his favorite receiver\u2014Omar Cooper Jr.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">The chemistry that Cooper and Mendoza displayed at Indiana was a large reason why the program was able to march to a national championship this past season. The standout wideout led the Hoosiers in receptions (69) and receiving yardage (937) while tallying a stellar 13 touchdown catches. He was excellent under the brightest lights as well, racking up eight catches for 88 yards and a touchdown during IU&#8217;s two College Football Playoff contests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Cooper&#8217;s production, combined with his solid size (6&#8217;0&#8243;, 201 pounds), athleticism, toughness and versatility, resulted in him going into the 2026 draft as the No. 22 overall prospect and No. 5 WR on the Bleacher Report Scouting Department&#8217;s <a class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-inherit MuiLink-root MuiLink-underlineAlways MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__ui__link__medium_strong css-lu48cp\" href=\"https:\/\/bleacherreport.com\/articles\/25419331-2026-nfl-draft-big-board-br-nfl-scouting-depts-final-rankings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">big board<\/a>. Despite that grade, Cooper had to wait until the end of Round 1 before he heard his name called at No. 30.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">While Cooper will be a major asset for the New York Jets, the Raiders missed an opportunity to package their upcoming Day 2 picks up and jump back into the first round to grab their new QB&#8217;s top target. Vegas instead utilized the No. 36 pick to trade back before securing Treydan Stukes at No. 38.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Stukes fills a major void for the Raiders and has a promising outlook, but it&#8217;s hard to picture the Arizona safety making the same level of impact the Mendoza-Cooper battery would have together in the NFL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chicago Bears could have received: 2026 second-round pick (No. 36 overall) and 2026 third-round pick (No. 67 overall)&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-627237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}