Being British you may not know this, but you just described Major League Baseball. The season is 6 months long and the deadline is at the end of the fourth month. Every year there is a lot of discussion of which teams are buyers and which are sellers. Teams with strong financial situations can use the first four months as an evaluation period and fix it all at the deadline. The Atlanta Braves were one game under .500 in 2021 at the deadline. They revamped their team at the deadline by trading for 5 players and went on to win the World Series. A whole bunch of franchises serve as de facto development teams for the big market teams. It’s the same dynamic that saw Everton sell a peak Wayne Rooney to Manchester United. I want to avoid that for the NFL in any way possible. The fact that I’m saying all this as a bitter Reds fan doesn’t make it any less true.