Twenty players changed teams during cutdown weekend. The transaction wire lists them all the same way, a name and two cities. Our ledger sorts them differently. Those twenty players carry 46 penalty flags from the last three seasons, and 33 of those flags belong to offensive linemen.
That is not an accident. Cutdown trades are depth trades, and line depth is where teams tolerate a record. Nobody trades a week before the season for a receiver who holds. Plenty of teams will take a tackle who does.
The heavy end
Broderick Jones to Dallas is the biggest penalty record that moved. The shape of it matters more than the total: three flags in 2023, eight in 2024 for 74 yards with offensive holding on top, then a single flag last season. Dallas is betting the 2025 line is the real one. If it is, they bought a starting tackle cheap. If 2024 was the real one, the flags will land exactly where Dallas can least afford them.
Dallas also ran the other side of this market in the same weekend, shipping Nate Thomas and his four illegal formation calls to Houston while taking on Jones and his twelve. Four alignment flags in one season is a strange thing for one tackle to collect, and now it is Houston’s strange thing.
Kansas City made the same bet as Dallas from the other direction. Joshua Ezeudu arrives from the Giants with eight flags across 2023 and 2024, false start at the top of the sheet, and a clean 2025. The Chiefs are paying for the clean year. The Jets took Jordan Meredith and his five flags from Las Vegas, false starts and ineligible man downfield leading the list, both the kind that show up on third and short.
The only defensive back near the top is Clark Phillips III, who came to Chicago from Atlanta with six flags from his rookie season, defensive holding on top, and nothing since. Same bet, smaller stakes.
The fifteen yard kind
Gervon Dexter Sr. went from Chicago to Atlanta carrying the most expensive habit on the wire: roughing the passer, twice last season and once in 2023. Those are fifteen yard flags with an automatic first down attached. Green Bay’s price on Kaleb Johnson included one face mask. That is the entire list of personal fouls that moved this weekend, which tells you how carefully teams shop this time of year.
The clean sheets
Nine of the twenty arrived with no flags at all across three seasons. Baltimore shipped out two of them, C.J. Okoye to the Giants and Diego Pounds to Kansas City. Buffalo sent center Sedrick Van Pran-Granger to Indianapolis, and centers run the cadence, so a clean sheet there is worth more than it looks.
Miami swapped out Quinn Ewers and Tutu Atwell, two flags between them, and brought in Jarquez Hunter and Kyle McCord, who carry none. The Chargers’ TeRah Edwards went to Carolina clean. Jarrett Patterson went to San Francisco with the oddest sheet of the weekend: exactly one flag in each of the last three seasons, a metronome.
| Player | From and to | Flags | Signature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broderick Jones, OT | PIT to DAL | 12 | Offensive Holding |
| Joshua Ezeudu, OL | NYG to KC | 8 | False Start |
| Clark Phillips III, CB | ATL to CHI | 6 | Defensive Holding |
| Jordan Meredith, OL | LV to NYJ | 5 | False Start |
| Nate Thomas, T | DAL to HOU | 4 | Illegal Formation |
| Gervon Dexter Sr., DL | CHI to ATL | 4 | Roughing the Passer |
| Jarrett Patterson, OL | HOU to SF | 3 | One per season |
| Quinn Ewers, QB | MIA to JAC | 1 | Delay of Game |
| Tutu Atwell, WR | MIA to LAR | 1 | Offensive Pass Interference |
| Kaleb Johnson, RB | PIT to GB | 1 | Face Mask |
| Walter Rouse, T | MIN to NE | 1 | Offensive Holding |
| Sedrick Van Pran-Granger, C | BUF to IND | 0 | Clean |
| Hunter Long, TE | JAC to ARI | 0 | Clean |
| Jarquez Hunter, RB | LAR to MIA | 0 | Clean |
| Kyle McCord, QB | GB to MIA | 0 | Clean |
| C.J. Okoye, DL | BAL to NYG | 0 | Clean |
| Diego Pounds, OT | BAL to KC | 0 | Clean |
| Mark Redman, TE | LAR to GB | 0 | Clean |
| TeRah Edwards, DL | LAC to CAR | 0 | Clean |
| Corey Kiner, RB | ARI to NE | 0 | Clean |
What to watch when the real games start: Dallas’s new tackle on obvious passing downs, Kansas City’s snap count on the road, and whether Atlanta’s new lineman can rush the passer without the fifteen yards. Every one of these ledgers updates in the app, flag by flag, as the season writes the next column. The division by division cutdown breakdowns are here too, starting with the NFC East and AFC West.