Additional reporting by Jeremy Fowler, Stephen Holder and Dan Graziano

AT A STONE church on a hill, in a pastoral town only two miles from their training facility, the New York Jets paid their respect to a franchise icon Tuesday morning in Madison, New Jersey. More than 400 mourners packed into St. Vincent Martyr for Nick Mangold’s funeral Mass, 10 days after the beloved center died because of complications from kidney disease at age 41.

Jets general manager Darren Mougey was among the last to arrive, walking purposefully into the church as a bagpiper filled the crisp autumn air with strains of sorrow. Mougey wore a dark suit and the expression of a man whose mind was racing. Five hours remained until the NFL trade deadline at 4 p.m. ET, and he was sitting on a couple of blockbusters.

Mougey stood in the back of the church (“A beautiful service,” he would say later) and slipped out before it was over, heading back to the office for urgent business. Back at St. Vincent, about three dozen of Mangold’s former teammates from the Jets and Ohio State congregated outside the church after the Mass, exchanging hugs and wiping tears. The casket was placed in the hearse, bagpiper playing again. A solemn moment.

Minutes later, a news flash on social media: Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner traded to the Indianapolis Colts.

Word slowly spread through the crowd of mourners. One of them was Darrelle Revis, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who, once upon a time, was traded by the Jets in his prime. He refused to believe his old team had parted with one of its young stars.

“No they didn’t,” Revis said matter-of-factly, when informed of the trade. “You’re joking.”

Somebody showed him Gardner’s social media post, bidding farewell to New York. Revis shook his head in disbelief. It was real, and it was stunning.

And it wasn’t the team’s only shocking move as the Jets (1-7) pulled off two major trades. They dealt Gardner and defensive tackle Quinnen Williams for four draft picks and two backup players, blew up the core of what once was a top-five defense and fueled a torrent of conflicting emotions in their locker room. This is a story about how the Jets, trying to overturn years of misery, culminated months of planning with two potentially franchise-altering moves in less than two hours.

Tuesday night, Mougey, who had barely slept the previous two nights, was hoarse and drained. He lost his train of thought during a video call with reporters. He apologized, adding, “I’m running with half a brain here.”

TO PREPARE FOR the trade deadline, Mougey and his staff met weekly, starting in Week 4. They discussed the roster in-depth, assigning potential trade value for each player. They studied contracts and comparisons from around the league, adjusting based on the ebb and flow of the season. The goal was to anticipate as many scenarios as possible. They were confident this would eliminate any recency bias.

Three weeks before deadline day, the Colts called and everything changed.

Initially, the Jets had no interest in moving Gardner, team sources said. After all, he’s only 25, a two-time All-Pro under team control through 2030 after a record-setting four-year, $120.4 million contract extension in July.

The Jets told the Colts it would take a Micah Parsons-like deal, the same team sources said — i.e. two first-round picks and a quality starter. Another reference point was the Jalen Ramsey trade in 2019, when the Los Angeles Rams dealt two first-round picks for the star corner.

The Colts weren’t biting.

That shifted a few days before the deadline, as the offers “kept getting richer and richer,” Mougey said. The Colts, coming off a loss after a blistering 7-1 start, were hoping to bolster their chances of a Super Bowl run and coveted an outside cornerback.

The market was drying up — they checked into Deonte Banks of the New York Giants and New Orleans’ Alontae Taylor — and perhaps that drove up the price for Gardner. Anticipating January home games, they wanted to prepare for visiting passing attacks that would look to exploit the comfy indoor conditions at Lucas Oil Stadium.

By Monday, they let the Jets know they “could potentially do” a deal that included 2026 and 2027 first-round picks, a Colts team source said.

The Jets didn’t shop the Colts’ offer to other teams, but they were emphatic about having mercurial wide receiver Adonai Mitchell included in the package, according to a Jets team source. Mitchell, a 2024 second-round choice, was buried on the Colts’ depth chart, but the Jets had positive scouting reports on him and a glaring need at receiver.

By the time Mougey left for the funeral, the trade was close to the goal line. He probably could’ve pushed it across early that morning, but he hit the “pause” button out of sensitivity to the day’s events.

The first-year GM didn’t know Mangold personally, but he’s keenly aware of what the team’s 2006 first-round pick meant to the franchise. He sees Mangold every day in the Jets’ fieldhouse, where mural-sized photos of Ring of Honor members hang from the rafters.

So Mougey made the two-mile drive to St. Vincent, hoping word of the looming deal wouldn’t leak. The last thing he wanted was a news alert disrupting the mourners, and in that case the Jets did a good job keeping both trades under wraps, so good that rival executives were surprised when the deals were announced.

“I did not expect this at all,” said an AFC executive who had dealt with the Jets.

GARDNER AND HIS brother, Allante, also one of his agents, were notified by the Jets around the same time — 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday. Sauce got a call from Mougey, Allante from Nick Sabella, the Jets’ senior director of football administration. They had no inkling that one of the biggest NFL trades of 2025 was in the works, according to Allante, who called it a sound business decision by the Jets.

“They couldn’t turn it down, and Ahmad [Sauce] deserves to be on a winning football team,” Allante said.

Recalling his conversation with Sabella, Allante Gardner said, “It was almost like he was saying, ‘This is going to hurt, but we have to do it for the future of the organization.'”

Sauce was supposed to be part of that future.

Only four months earlier, the Jets had locked in arguably their most popular player with an extension that made him the NFL’s highest-paid cornerback. Gardner loved the idea of playing his entire career in New York. He proclaimed his desire to help change the losing culture.

Coach Aaron Glenn, too, was giddy, saying Gardner and wide receiver Garrett Wilson (four-year, $130 million extension) were “foundational players.”

“I want them here for a long time,” Glenn, who has significant say on personnel decisions, said at the time.

For the Jets, with 14 consecutive non-playoff seasons (the longest active drought), the extensions provided a feel-good vibe at the start of training camp. It’s highly unusual for a team to flip a player so soon after extending him, but Mougey and Sabella structured Gardner’s deal in a way that allowed them to escape with minimal cap ramifications — only $13.75 million in signing bonus, with rolling guarantees that will be absorbed by the Colts.

That decision wasn’t an accident; Mougey said they wanted to make it a tradable contract, just in case. In essence, it made Gardner more desirable. As a different league source said, “If Sauce didn’t have an extension, do Jets get two [first-round picks]? Probably not.”

The Jets didn’t sign him to trade him four months later, but the landscape changed because of their subpar record and the desire to buttress their rebuild with draft capital. Though no one ever criticized Gardner publicly, there was internal concern about his ball production (three interceptions in 55 games) and high penalty rate (14 in his past 25 games).

Gardner is considered the most flawed of the elite corners, with one NFC executive saying, “Never been a huge Sauce fan, so that was a great deal to me that you just couldn’t pass up.”

An AFC executive added, “[The] lack of interceptions and penalties have always been the issue with [Gardner], but otherwise a really good player.”

Glenn praised Gardner’s talent but also suggested the change of scenery might be good for him. In his post-trade comments, he made it sound as if no player is untouchable.

Thirty years ago, Glenn’s coach and mentor, Bill Parcells, expressed the same sentiment to him when trade rumors were swirling. The Hall of Famer told Glenn, a young corner at the time, that he’d trade his wife for the right price. That always stuck with him.

Jets owner Woody Johnson recently called Gardner and Wilson “great talents,” saying their contract extensions were important to the organization. Try to imagine Johnson’s reaction when, only two weeks after making that comment, his top football lieutenants informed him of their plans to trade Gardner.

Actually, it wasn’t what you might have expected.

Johnson, known in the past for meddling, was pragmatic and professed his faith in Mougey and Glenn, according to a Jets team source.

FOR THE JETS, trapped in a losing vortex for the better part of two decades, history always repeats itself.

Twelve years ago, first-time GM John Idzik wanted to accelerate the rebuilding process, so he traded his most valuable asset for first- and fourth-round picks. And so Revis, arguably the greatest cornerback of his generation, was traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on April 21, 2013.

And there Revis was Tuesday, paying respect to Mangold, only two miles from where one of the most shocking trades in team history was going down. Once he absorbed the news, he praised the move.

“I guess this is kind of a similar path for Sauce,” Revis said. “In this situation, I think the Johnson family is trying to look to the future, getting these draft picks for him. It’s been a tough year, really tough for the organization, but I think the future is always bright and you can always turn things around.”

With the returns for the Gardner and Williams trades, the Jets hold five first-round picks over the next two drafts — two in 2026, three in 2027.

“It starts with trying to find a franchise quarterback,” said Revis, who played with Tom Brady on the New England Patriots’ 2014 Super Bowl championship team. “I think those guys have been trying to do that for the last couple of years.”

For the last 50, but who’s counting?

TWO WEEKS AGO, Williams learned from a reporter that he was on the verge of 100 games in a Jets uniform — 98, to be exact.

“You hear that?” he said in a joking way to a teammate at the next locker. “I never thought I’d make it.”

He didn’t — at least not with the Jets.

In that moment, Williams had to know there was a chance he’d be traded by the deadline. His camp had made it known that the former All-Pro coveted a change of scenery, league and team sources said.

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Williams, who went 27-2 in two playing seasons at Alabama, was worn down by losing. He arrived in 2019, was drafted No. 3, and the closest he came to a winning season in New York was 7-9 as a rookie. In fact, he experienced more losing than just about every player in team history.

Of the 73 players with at least 100 games played as a Jet, the lowest winning percentage belongs to current long-snapper Thomas Hennessy — a .300 mark from 2017 to present. Williams (.306) would be right behind him, second on the list.

“I think the world knew I was frustrated being there so long and still losing,” Williams said Wednesday at his introductory news conference with the Dallas Cowboys.

Williams foreshadowed his feelings with his infamous tweet in February, saying, “Another rebuild year for me I guess” — his response to the news that quarterback Aaron Rodgers was being released. That social media post didn’t sit well with folks in the organization.

The losing, coupled with a subtle position switch (he was used primarily as a 3-technique tackle instead of his usual spot at nose tackle), fueled his unhappiness. His usual production wasn’t there; he had only one sack — coincidentally, a takedown of former teammate Rodgers on the first play of the season (a 34-32 home loss to Pittsburgh).

Unlike the Gardner deal, the Williams trade came late and fast. Talks with the Cowboys intensified Monday, Jets team sources said. The Jets made it clear to Dallas that they had to be blown away to part with one of the league’s best defensive tackles. Another team, reportedly the Jacksonville Jaguars, made a strong push. It was an ideal situation for the Jets, who had two teams interested.

After returning from the funeral, Mougey finalized the trade — Williams for a 2026 second-round pick, a 2027 first-round pick and backup defensive tackle Mazi Smith.

Here was the clincher for the Jets, a team source said: They negotiated the right to get the better of the Cowboys’ two first-round picks in 2027, as Dallas has its own selection and the Green Bay Packers’ pick from the Parsons trade. That could have huge ramifications in the Jets’ favor if Dallas (3-5-1) has a losing season in 2026.

With a stockpile of draft capital, the Jets have the resources to trade up for a quarterback in ’26 or ’27 or use the picks to pry a veteran away from another team. They wanted flexibility. Well, they got it.

“More than anything,” Glenn said, “we want to make sure we build this team in our vision.”

JETS WIDE RECEIVER Allen Lazard checked his phone Tuesday and saw a text from a close friend. It simply said:

“OMG.”

Lazard figured it was a trade, so he checked X and saw the Gardner news. The Williams news broke a short time later.

The entire locker room responded in an “OMG” kind of way to the blockbuster moves. Edge rusher Jermaine Johnson posted on social media his support for the organization, but added, “I’m sick.” Running back Breece Hall said, “It sucks, but it’s the nature of the business.”

Glenn, charged with motivating a team that saw two of its best players traded for draft capital that won’t help it win in 2025, addressed it briefly in a team meeting. His message: Change in the NFL is a constant; change creates opportunity. Will his players buy it? There could be an answer Sunday (1 p.m. ET, CBS) when the Jets host the Cleveland Browns (2-6) — a game that could have huge draft implications.

Two miles down the road, on a blue-sky Tuesday, former Jets from the 2000s and 2010s were grappling with a different kind of shock. Only 15 years ago, Mangold anchored an offensive line that helped the Jets to the AFC Championship Game — their last playoff appearance.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Revis said.

The Jets have taken part in the circle of recovery and renewal for a half-century, trying to overcome the past while looking forward to a brighter tomorrow.

And so Revis, one of the best to ever wear a Jets uniform, did just that.

“With all these draft picks, I can kind of see the chess moves being made on the board,” he said, his voice competing with the tolling bell atop St. Vincent.

Pakistan captain Abbas Afridi produced a sensational performance at the Hong Kong Sixes 2025, hitting six consecutive sixers in an over to lead his side to a thrilling win over Kuwait on Friday.

Chasing Kuwait’s total of 123, Pakistan reached the target off the final delivery to claim victory by four wickets at 124. Afridi remained unbeaten on 55 from just 12 balls, hitting eight maximums in total, along with the six sixes in an over.

Shahid Aziz provided valuable support, scoring 23 not out off just five balls to help seal the win.

Earlier, batting first, Kuwait started strongly with opener Adnan Idrees hitting 17 off eight balls, including two sixes. Afridi struck in the second over to dismiss Idrees, reducing Kuwait to 23-1.

Bilal Tahir responded with consecutive sixes to take the score to 35-1.

Mohammad Shahzad’s third over went for 31 runs as Meet Bhavsar continued his aggressive innings, taking Kuwait past 50 to 66-1.

Abdul Samad conceded 22 runs in the fourth over, while Bhavsar smashed three sixes and a four to bring Kuwait to 88-1.

Maaz Sadaqat then claimed Bilal Tahir for 24 off six balls, and Usman Patel joined Bhavsar to take Kuwait past 100 with a six, four, and a single in the fifth over.

Afridi bowled the final over, conceding 39 runs, including two sixes and a four from Usman Patel.

Arsenal face Chelsea in the Women’s Super League (WSL) on Saturday, but the reigning European champions already find themselves five points adrift of the league leaders, having dropped seven points from their opening six fixtures.

It is a worrying statistic, considering that the unbeaten Blues lost fewer points across the whole of last season as they claimed a sixth-consecutive title, and another defeat would extend the gap to a daunting eight points — a margin that could prove difficult to close given the brevity of the 22-game season.

But what are the major issues facing each team?

What state are Arsenal in?

This is a crucial, must-win game for Arsenal — perhaps even a season-defining one at this early stage for manager Renée Slegers. Compounding the challenge of closing a five-point gap in the WSL, the Gunners must also juggle the demanding schedule of the Champions League, with travel and rotation inevitably testing the depth and resilience of their squad. A setback now would not only damage their confidence but could also leave them chasing shadows in the title race before the halfway mark.

For a team with aspirations of defending their European crown and reclaiming domestic supremacy — with their last title win coming in 2019 — this match is a battle to keep their season alive.

Arsenal have faced problems at both ends of the pitch this season. In attack, their usually ruthless frontline has faltered. This is a team that scored four or more goals in eight consecutive home games last term — a record that spoke to their attacking dominance, yet the cutting edge has deserted them of late (as shown by the heatmap below).

Their buildup play remains sharp, but the final touch and finishing has been wasteful, with a host of clear chances going begging. They registered the third-most shots (113) thus far, but with only 40 on target (a very middling 35.4%) results have reflected the lack of clinical edge.

Defensively, things haven’t been much steadier. Goalkeeper Daphne van Domselaar has managed just two clean sheets so far, a surprisingly low return given her reliability and consistency last season. The ongoing injury absence of vice-captain and defensive leader Leah Williamson has clearly left a void.

Without her, Slegers has struggled to settle on a consistent center back partnership for Steph Catley, experimenting with different combinations in search of stability. While 19-year-old Katie Reid has stepped up admirably, her inexperience occasionally shows, and the backline’s composure remains fragile under pressure.

Slegers isn’t under immediate pressure regarding her position — at least not yet. Her historic Champions League triumph last season has earned her considerable credit, enough to shield her from the scrutiny that might not have been afforded to other managers in similar circumstances.

However, that goodwill won’t last forever. With her contract set to expire at the end of the campaign, the stakes are growing higher by the week. A trophyless season would be a major setback, particularly after her bold assertion that this would be the year Arsenal broke their title drought, and should that ambition fall short, her future at the club could quickly be called into question.

What state are Chelsea in?

It hasn’t been the most convincing campaign from Chelsea so far this season. The familiar ruthlessness, the swagger, and ability to completely overwhelm opponents haven’t quite been there. Yet, in true Chelsea fashion, it hasn’t mattered much. The league leaders are still grinding out results and, crucially, still winning the big games that shape title races.

Their recent victory over Manchester City — who themselves managed to beat Arsenal — was another statement of intent. Add to that a hard-fought draw against Manchester United, and it’s clear why Chelsea find themselves in the driver’s seat. A single point separates them from City, two from United, and a growing five-point cushion from Arsenal, who have stumbled early. That gap could stretch even further this weekend if Chelsea secure a result that would send a powerful message to the rest of the league.

It was, after all, a meeting with Arsenal that defined the turning point of last season. Chelsea’s 2-1 triumph at the Emirates — their first-ever away win at that ground — not only sealed former manager Jonas Eidevall’s fate but also removed any lingering psychological barrier about facing the Gunners in north London. This time around, the only obstacle preventing them from potentially ruling Arsenal out of the title race already might be themselves.

Defensively, Chelsea have looked uncharacteristically vulnerable at times, with lapses at the back gifting opponents opportunities they wouldn’t have been given in seasons past. Ordinarily, that might be forgiven if their attacking play were firing on all cylinders, but a subdued frontline has also left fans yearning for the cutting edge that once defined this team.

Chelsea have been missing a true focal point in attack this season. Aggie Beever-Jones has continued her remarkable scoring form with four goals from seven games, but she’s had to work tirelessly for every one (as shown by her actions graphic above). With Mayra Ramírez sidelined until 2026 and Sam Kerr‘s minutes still being carefully managed after her long-term injury, the side are without a traditional center forward presence.

That’s not a criticism of Beever-Jones; far from it. Her ability to hold up play, occupy defenders, and create space for others has been crucial to the team’s attacking output this season. Yet, despite her impressive contributions, Chelsea’s frontline still feels like it’s missing a natural point of reference — a forward who can consistently knit everything together and lead the line with presence as well as precision. It won’t be a quick fix, but one that could develop as the season progresses

If Chelsea can rediscover that balance between grit and flair, it’s difficult to see anyone stopping them from marching toward another league title. And it would be a major step if they can dispatch their closest rivals this weekend.