If you’re trying to put a price tag on Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen, you’re already in fantasy-land. Still, ESPN’s Bill Barnwell took the swing on Thursday, and the result is as eye-opening as it gets: Mahomes and Allen are tied at the top, each valued at seven first-round picks.
That kind of haul has never actually changed hands. In Barnwell’s setup, a team would probably need to engineer another deal first just to gather enough assets for a trade of that size. In other words, this isn’t the sort of package you casually toss around in the NFL.
Barnwell acknowledged just how difficult it is to separate the league’s best quarterbacks from the rest of the field. On Allen, he wrote, "I'm of the opinion that Allen is the best quarterback in football at the moment, having outplayed Mahomes over the past three seasons, but Mahomes' postseason halo and remarkably consistent success before 2025 would undoubtedly charm teams, too," Barnwell writes.
"Mahomes turns 31 in November, so there would be some hesitation about committing too many future picks given his age and the knee injury. But that could still mean a decade of high-level quarterback play from arguably the best player of his generation."
That knee injury matters in the discussion, at least in theory. Barnwell noted that Mahomes’ recovery from a torn ACL would make some teams pause.
But the bigger point is that the exercise is purely hypothetical. Mahomes is not getting traded today, tomorrow or probably any day.
And if he somehow were, the same would be true for Allen: the price would be massive.
The two quarterbacks have split their head-to-head story in a pretty familiar way. Allen has had the edge in regular-season meetings, while Mahomes has owned the playoff side of the matchup. But when it comes to trade value, Barnwell put them in the same rare tier - the very top of the NFL.
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