Adam Schefter broke it first: the Packers are sending QB Kyle McCord to the Dolphins for a 2028 sixth-round pick. Simple trade on paper, but the timing is what makes it interesting — Miami needed a new backup for Malik Willis after shipping Quinn Ewers to the Jaguars just a day earlier, and Green Bay had a surprisingly hot commodity sitting on its bench.
Trade: Packers are sending QB Kyle McCord to the Miami Dolphins in exchange for a 2028 6th-round pick, per sources. After trading Quinn Ewers to the Jaguars, the Dolphins needed a new backup for Malik Willis. Now the Dolphins have two former Packers QBs.
McCord was a sixth-round pick himself last year, No. 181 overall to the Eagles, and spent his entire rookie season buried on Philadelphia's practice squad. Green Bay scooped him up on a reserve/future deal in January, and by August he'd turned into the story of camp — 24-of-35 for 220 yards through two preseason games without a single interception. That's the kind of stretch that gets a depth-chart afterthought noticed around the league.
The problem for McCord in Green Bay was math, not talent. The Packers already have Jordan Love entrenched as the starter and paid Tyrod Taylor to be his backup, which left no realistic path to snaps. As Schefter put it, the veteran presence behind Love is exactly what let Green Bay turn a camp arm they were never going to roster into a future pick.
Packers have Tyrod Taylor to back up Jordan Love, and with Kyle McCord’s preseason emergence, Green Bay was able to turn it into a future 6th.
Greg Auman framed the value swap bluntly: Miami basically traded Ewers, last year's 231st overall pick, for McCord, the 181st pick — an upgrade in draft pedigree even if it's just a QB3 shuffle. And it's not the only quarterback move Miami made this week; ProFootballTalk noted the Dolphins also waived Mark Gronowski in the same stretch, which says a lot about how unsettled that QB room still is behind Willis.
There's a small football-world coincidence buried in here too. McCord is walking into Miami's QB room to replace a guy he was actually teammates with — he and Ewers were both freshmen at Ohio State back in 2021, per Albert Breer. He'll also be reunited with Dolphins pass-game coordinator Kevin Patullo, who was McCord's OC in Philadelphia last season, which should shorten the learning curve on a roster he's joining in the final days before cuts.
Packers GM Brian Gutekunst didn't hide that he liked what he saw from McCord even while letting him go. "Kyle is really diligent. He's really smart," Gutekunst said, via the team's website. "He's very consistent day in and day out as far as his preparation. To see him calm and be able to handle the different situations that he did was good to see." That's a glowing exit review for a guy dealt for a Day 3 pick three years out — but with Love and Taylor locked in, Green Bay simply had nowhere to play him.
For Miami, this is now the second QB swap in as many days, and it puts McCord squarely behind Willis heading into the season. For Green Bay, it's a tidy bit of asset management — squeezing a future sixth-rounder out of a practice-squad arm nobody outside the building had heard of a month ago. Worth watching whether McCord ever gets a real shot in Miami, or whether he's just keeping a seat warm again.