The NFL is the richest, most powerful, most watched, most successful sports league in human history. And with football fans demanding more football content than ever before, one would think that something as important as the NFL trade deadline would be deserving of round-the-clock coverage. And yet, the league’s own network apparently did not have the resources or the interest to provide it.
The NFL has turned even the most mundane things into events. There are fantasy football specials. NFL mock draft specials. Schedule release specials. The NFL has even treated the release date of the schedule release date as news.
But when it came to the NFL trade deadline, with many moves widely expected as plenty of teams have emerged as both buyers and sellers, NFL Network was caught flat-footed.
But it wasn’t that NFL Network didn’t acknowledge the trade deadline activity. They did, just in strange, underwhelming circumstances.
When the news broke just before 1 p.m. ET that the New York Jets had traded star cornerback Sauce Gardner to the Indianapolis Colts in exchange for two first-round picks, it was one of the biggest blockbuster deals in recent NFL history. The Colts are now all-in behind the incredible resurgence of Daniel Jones while the Jets are fully committed to rebuilding mode.
But when the news happened, NFL Network was in the middle of a replay of Good Morning Football from earlier in the day. Bridget Condon and Mike Garafolo broke in live from the NFL Network studios, spent three minutes breaking down the deal together. They also shared the news of wide receiver Rashid Shaheed being dealt from the New Orleans Saints to the Seattle Seahawks.
And then… poof. Back to the GMFB replay.
But it was just minutes later that Condon and Garofolo were back again. In fact, Mike Garofolo somehow managed to interrupt himself as he was also on GMFB earlier in the day. And again it was the news of the Gardner trade. But this time, fellow reporters Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero joined for almost 15 minutes of live coverage.
pic.twitter.com/ICPMB28eBf
— welovesports40 (@welovesports40) November 5, 2025
After that… we were back to the GMFB replay again.
After another 20 minutes came another live breaking news segment with Garofolo and Rapoport on the Jakobi Meyers trade from the Raiders to the Jaguars. Coverage continued to ping pong back and forth between replays and live breaking news. And then inexplicably, at 2 p.m. ET, NFL Network began airing a Monday Night Football replay between the Cowboys and Cardinals from the night before. That broadcast was interrupted two more times with trade deadline news until the channel finally dedicated a full program to the trade deadline. That came at 4 p.m. ET with a special edition of The Insiders with Pelissero hosting Garofolo, Rapoport, and Judy Battista where they recapped all the previous moves as the NFL trade deadline expired.
In short… huh?
NFL Network has been dogged in recent years by budget cuts and constraints to live programming, so perhaps that was what was on display here. It’s not an easy time at the network for anybody. Maybe it’s part of the reason why the league is so eager to make a deal with ESPN and maybe lean on the WorldWide Leader in Sports and their vast array of resources for live NFL coverage. After all, that’s what ESPN covers the most anyways. There are probably dozens of NFL personalities just waiting for the bat signal to be thrown up at ESPN and ready to be put into action.
But the really weird thing is that NFL Network was clearly ready to cover breaking news as they cut in to the Good Morning Football and MNF replays five times in just three hours. NFL Network was already offering plenty of live coverage anyways in these breaking news updates… so why not just commit to that? Given the expertise and ability of all those reporters, they could have more than held their own filling that airtime all afternoon as deals kept being made.
It was a programming decision that left fans on social media searching for an explanation.
Thought NFL Network would be wall-to-wall coverage of trade deadline stuff today, but I turned it on before work and saw some random segment on Mack Hollins, so…there’s that. There’s certainly that.
— Mike Ashmore (@mashmore98) November 4, 2025
In media circles, NFL Media (owner of NFL Network) is known to be very frugal (some of that probably tied to trying to sell the business).
But re-airing GMFB and MNF during the trade deadline (while ESPN is off of YouTubeTV), you REALLY earn that reputation!
Baaaad look.
— Ben Koo (@bkoo) November 4, 2025
NFL Network after Sauce Gardner got traded
What a joke pic.twitter.com/K9CjZpMUPA
— JaguarGator9 (@JaguarGator9NFL) November 4, 2025
The @nflnetwork is terrible. We’re in the middle of trades and they’re replaying Monday night’s game instead of providing nonstop trade coverage smh
— Rod (@Rodistotle) November 4, 2025
How does the NFL Network not have a trade deadline special on right now? Instead we have a replay of MNF. Seems like poor programming on a day like this.
— Donny Football (@DonChed54) November 4, 2025
NFL trade deadline is two hours away and NFL Network is showing a replay of Cowboys-Cardinals. I don’t get it man. YOUR NETWORK WAS CREATED FOR DAYS LIKE THIS!!!
— Andrew Fillipponi (@ThePoniExpress) November 4, 2025
It’s especially unfathomable when ESPN is in a dispute with YouTube TV and those subscribers may have loved an additional option to consume with those networks dark on that platform. At least you could understand if NFLN just committed to replays and simply passed. You may not agree with it given how important the news of the day was for the league’s present and future. But it would have fit in with their recent downsizing.
But showing replays and then also having multiple live segments breaking in to that coverage just made no sense. The reporters were already there! In studio! Mic’d up! Just use them!
Even if it wasn’t a historically active and important trade deadline, this is the NFL Network. Even with limited resources these are the dates and times worth circling on the calendar. And if you’re going to employ actual reporters and people to cover news as it comes in… it may actually be worth using them.