Surprise! NFL general managers are talking about draft-day trades at the combine

You might want to make sure you’re sitting down before you start reading this, otherwise the shock might overwhelm you.

NFL general managers have had plenty to say at the combine this week, and several have indicated they might be interested in working out some trades on draft day.

OK, it’s not actually surprising. Draft-day trades are nothing new. Last year, there were 10 swapped picks in the first round alone.

There are a number of reasons teams might want to move around in the order. A team might need to move up to avoid missing out on a top target, or jump back in the order and stockpile some extra picks. Whatever their individual reasons, teams are open to it, and GMs were talking about it at the combine.

The Browns need a quarterback, but they have the first- and fourth-overall picks thanks to last year’s draft day trade with the Texans that let Houston take Deshaun Watson with the 12th-overall pick. That frees Cleveland up to potentially make a big move with that first selection.

New GM John Dorsey is open to it.

The Broncos’ biggest question is still at quarterback, and they could grab one of the draft’s top signal callers with the fifth-overall pick. But they might trade back, per John Elway.

“We’re open,” Elway said Wednesday. “Like you said, everything is going to come in order, and obviously like you said free agency is first. We’ll be open for business on the fifth pick depending on how things fall.”

The Bills’ quarterback situation is up in the air. They might go ahead and move on from Tyrod Taylor, though GM Brandon Beane said at the combine that Taylor is on the Bills’ roster “until we decide different.” Even with the uncertainty at that position, Beane isn’t chomping at the bit to move up. But he’s not ruling it out, either.

“You can’t just go up there, hey, we need a quarterback, we’re going to mortgage everything to go up there,” Beane said. “We’ve got to know that we feel this guy is the guy and is worth the ransom or whatever you want to call it that it would take to move wherever you have to move to get a guy you think fits your long term plan.”

The Titans don’t need a quarterback, but they’re still open to moving around on draft day if the situation is right.

“If there is a player that we really, really, maybe we thought he was going to go in the top 10 and for whatever reason he’s slipping down the board, we’ll try and position ourselves to maybe acquire the guy,” Titans GM Jon Robinson said early in the week, via USA Today’s Jason Wolf. “Or if we get action on our pick at 25, and a team wants to come up to our pick so that we trade back, I think I have proven that I am willing to trade. My phone line is always open.”

Chris Ballard said the Colts evaluate the merits of a player they can get with the third-overall pick against how much they would benefit from, say, three players they could get with the extra picks if they trade back.

“You just have to weigh it. Are we always open? Absolutely,” Ballard said. “But at the end of the day, we’ll always do the best thing for the team.”

The Niners were big movers and shakers in last year’s draft. They ended up trading back a spot, giving their No. 2-overall pick to the Bears, who selected Mitchell Trubisky. The Niners still got the player they were targeting, Solomon Thomas, at No. 3. Then they traded back into the first to get Reuben Foster with the No. 31 selection.

Now that the Niners have the quarterback spot all locked up after trading for Jimmy Garoppolo and making him the league’s highest-paid player (until Kirk Cousins signs somewhere this offseason, anyway), you might think they’d stick with their own picks this year. John Lynch says that’s not necessarily the case.

“I think we demonstrated last year, I really felt that I’d be much more conservative in the draft but some things fell our way,” Lynch said. “I think you always keep an open mind. Sure, we’d certainly be willing to move around a little bit if some people covet some guys, not only at that position, but any other position.”

There’s one thing we know for sure: There will be draft day trades. It won’t be a surprise to see any of these teams dealing when the draft rolls around.