Jaguars acquire Davon Godchaux from Saints before trade deadline

The Jacksonville Jaguars acquired defensive tackle Davon Godchaux from the New Orleans Saints on Monday for a conditional late-round draft pick, ESPN reported.

The deal came one day before the NFL trade deadline, which closes Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET. Jacksonville made a second trade Monday, sending a 2027 second-round pick and a 2028 fifth-round pick to the Atlanta Falcons for safety Jessie Bates III.

The Jaguars are 6-2 and lead the AFC South by three games. They lost nose tackle DaVon Hamilton to a torn quadriceps in Week 8, and their run defense dropped from first in the NFL to fifth in the first game without him. Godchaux, 31, is a run-stuffing tackle in the final year of an $11 million contract, and the price was a conditional 2028 sixth-round pick that could become a 2027 sixth-rounder if conditions are met, according to NFL Network’s Cameron Wolfe.

Godchaux will take over as the starter at nose tackle alongside Arik Armstead, ESPN reported. Hamilton went on injured reserve Nov. 3 and will miss the rest of the season.

The Jaguars gave up a season-high 172 yards rushing in last Thursday’s 33-10 win over Baltimore. More than a third of that came on Justice Hill’s 65-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. Jacksonville’s run defense now allows 89.3 yards per game, fifth in the league.

Jacksonville ranks 22nd in pass defense at 229 yards per game but leads the league in turnover ratio at plus-9 and ranks third with 11 interceptions, ESPN reported. The Bates trade addresses the secondary. The Godchaux trade addresses the line.

Godchaux arrived in New Orleans in March 2025, when the Saints traded for him from the New England Patriots, the Saints announced. He restructured his contract in September to help the Saints clear cap space. His cap hit this season was $3 million.

His role in New Orleans had shrunk. Godchaux played 12 snaps in the Saints’ loss to Cleveland on Sunday, and his usage had decreased over the last few weeks compared with the first three weeks of the season, ESPN reported. He had 13 tackles in five games with the Saints this year.

The Saints are 3-5 and sit in first place in the NFC South. They had about $4.3 million in available cap space before the trade. New Orleans leads its division despite a losing record.

No team in the NFC South has a winning record. The Saints lead at 3-5. The Falcons are 3-6 after a 34-17 loss to Cincinnati in Madrid on Sunday, ESPN reported. The Panthers and Buccaneers round out the division. A 3-5 team is in first place, and that team just traded away a defensive starter.

The Falcons made their own deal with Jacksonville, sending Bates to the Jaguars for the second-round pick. Bates, 29, is in the final year of a four-year, $64 million contract and will be a free agent this offseason. Atlanta was unlikely to re-sign him, and the organization is in a transition phase under new general manager Ian Cunningham, ESPN reported. The Falcons will have more than $142 million in salary cap space this coming offseason, the most in the NFL, according to Spotrac.

Both NFC South teams traded with the same AFC team on the same day. The Saints and Falcons are a combined 6-11. The Jaguars are 6-2. The division’s best players are leaving for a contender.

Godchaux grew up in Plaquemine, Louisiana, and played at LSU from 2014 to 2016, according to his biography. He was a four-star recruit out of Plaquemine High School and chose LSU over offers from Mississippi, Auburn and UCLA. He started 26 games in three seasons at LSU and declared for the draft after his junior year.

The Miami Dolphins drafted him in the fifth round in 2017. He played four seasons in Miami, signed with the Patriots in 2021, and agreed to a two-year, $16.5 million extension in New England in July 2024. The Saints traded for him eight months later.

He has 485 tackles and 5.5 sacks in 142 career games, according to Pro Football Reference. He has started 128 of those games. His best season was 2019, when he recorded 75 tackles and two sacks for the Dolphins.

The Jaguars play at the Tennessee Titans on Sunday. The Titans are 1-7. Jacksonville has a three-game lead in the AFC South with nine games remaining, and the trade deadline moves suggest the front office sees a window open this season.

Jacksonville made a similar move last November, acquiring receiver Jakobi Meyers at the deadline to help an injury-depleted position group. The Jaguars went on to win the division. The hope is that Bates and Godchaux can do for the defense what Meyers did for the offense, ESPN reported.

The Saints, meanwhile, are selling. They are in first place in their division, and they just traded a starter for a conditional sixth-round pick. The NFC South is there for the taking, and New Orleans just made itself weaker.

What I think

The Godchaux trade is a sensible, low-cost move for the Jaguars. A conditional sixth-round pick for a starting-caliber nose tackle is a fair price, and Jacksonville had a clear need after Hamilton’s injury. The Jaguars are 6-2 and have a real chance in the AFC. Adding a run defender makes sense for a team that just watched its top-ranked run defense fall apart in one week.

The more interesting side of this trade is the Saints. They are 3-5 and in first place in the NFC South. They just traded a defensive starter for a late-round pick. That is not what a team does when it is trying to win its division. It is what a team does when it is looking at the rest of the season, looking at its roster, and deciding that a conditional sixth-rounder is worth more than 12 snaps a game from a 31-year-old on an expiring contract.

The NFC South is bad enough that the Saints could still win it. A 3-5 team leads the division. The Falcons are 3-6. Someone has to win this thing. But New Orleans just made the decision slightly harder for itself, and that tells you what the front office thinks of this team’s chances.