NFL trade policy

[Veritas]

I'm just curious. Does anyone know what the NFL's policy is concerning trades? In baseball, teams who are either going to the playoffs or are fighting for a berth will make a trade with another club to strengthen a weakness. I would think that teams going into the NFL playoffs would make a trade to shore up a weakness. For example, the Colts would make a trade to replace Dwight Freeny and the Cowboys might want to pick up a defensive back. Does the NFL prohibit all trades during the season?

[imported_mega]

You can trade up until a certain point in the season. One thing that basically prohibits trades like that from the inception is the cap hit a team has to take. While the team that trades a certain player gets out of the yearly amount of money owed to the player, they are still vested to pay the signing bonus plus take a cap hit for the first year of the trade. If the trade occurs before June 1st, the cap hit goes towards the season coming up and then if the trade happens after June 1st, the cap hit goes towards the next nfl season proceeding the one coming up.

Because of the salary cap, its very hard to make player for player deals, the same with basketball. In basketball, they usually have to send an extra player to a team that noone wants just to even out the cap for both teams. Back to football though. Usually if there are trades, its the result of a holdout and in that case, its almost always for draft picks. The biggest in season trade this year was Chris Chambers to the Chargers for a draft pick. Thats usually more the norm rather than player for player swaps in the nfl.