Jets shipping Justin Fields to the Chiefs in latest Darren Mougey miracle

Mougey strikes again.

Charlie Baduini

Former New York Jets quarterback Justin Fields / David Butler II-Imagn Images

Heading into the 2026 offseason, it was a matter of when, not if, the New York Jets would move on from quarterback Justin Fields. A release was the most likely outcome, possibly a June 1 cut.

Instead, general manager Darren Mougey found a trade partner for Fields, shipping him to the Kansas City Chiefs for a 2027 sixth-round pick. ESPN's Adam Schefter was first on the news.

According to The Athletic's Zack Rosenblatt, the Jets are facilitating the deal by taking on most of Fields' remaining salary. He was due $10 million guaranteed in 2026, and the Jets are paying roughly $7 million of it, leaving the Chiefs on the hook for the remaining $3 million.

It's an incredibly impressive trade from Mougey, considering how Fields' play deteriorated over the stretch of the 2025 season.

Jets turn the page on the Justin Fields era with Chiefs tradea

What makes this trade so great from the Jets' side of things is how much money they saved by not trading him. Had they outright released before the start of free agency, New York would've incurred a $22 million dead cap charge, bringing their total amount of dead cap space to almost $113 million for 2026, by far the most in NFL history.

Thanks to Mougey's savvy GM'ing, somehow drumming up interest in a quarterback who had little to no value by the time December 2025 rolled around, the Jets have gotten out from under Fields contract.

Fields had a historically awful year in New York last season. What started off promising in an incredible Week 1 performance quickly crumbled. The former Chicago Bears first-round pick completely devolved into a quarterback who was scared to throw the football.

In nine starts, Fields completed 62.7% of his passes for 1,259 yards, for seven touchdowns and one interception. Sure, the ratio looks nice on paper, but the stats don't tell the whole story. His 139.9 yards per game were the lowest for any qualified quarterback since his stint with the Bears in 2022.

Fields now gets the chance to resurrect his career backing up Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City under Andy Reid's tutelage. With Mahomes' ACL recovery, he'll get plenty of opportunities in training camp, preseason, and maybe even the start of the regular season to show what he's got.

Either way, he's not the Jets' problem anymore, and fans can thank Mougey for once again pulling off a masterclass in the trade market.

Charlie Baduini

Charlie Baduini covers the New York Jets as a site expert for The Jet Press and FanSided. He is a sports journalist based in Northern New Jersey with a wide variety of sports reporting experience in print and broadcast journalism. Baduini’s byline can also be seen on Heavy and The Sporting News, where he covers several teams across the NFL and NBA. His work has been featured in Heavy, Athlon Sports, The Sporting News, Yahoo Sports, MSN, and Yardbarker. He also serves as a seasonal intern for ESPN, working as a production assistant for the Heisman Trophy Ceremony every year since 2022. Baduini has been a Jets fan for as long as he can remember, with his family's fandom dating back to the 1960s when his grandfather, Louis, became a season ticket holder. His family has since held on to the tickets to this day. He is an avid fan of the New York Knicks and New York Mets.