New York Jets trade wide receiver Denzel Mims to Detroit Lions

Following reports that the New York Jets planned to release wide receiver Denzel Mims, the team was able to find a trading partner for the former second-round pick. Mims is now headed to the Detroit Lions to compete for a spot on the 53-man roster just as training camps get underway across the league.

The Jets planned to release Mims to the free agents market but they wound up making a trade in exchange for a pick swap of a 2025 conditional sixth-round pick and a seventh-rounder, according to NFL Network. The deal will reportedly be finalized on Thursday.

It’s a solid deal for the Lions who will enter the season without 2022 first-round WR pick Jameson Williams due to his gambling suspension. The Jets also reportedly reached out to the Dallas Cowboys, seeking a seventh-round pick as compensation.

New York selected Mims with the No. 59 overall pick in the second round of the 2020 NFL Draft. Already loaded with talent at the position the Jets had good reason to move on from the fourth-year wideout. In his first three seasons, he played in 30 games total.

His most productive season was as a rookie in 2020. He had 23 catches for 357 yards. Those numbers went down to eight catches and 133 yards, and 11 catches for 186 yards over the next two seasons. Mims has yet to record a touchdown since entering the league.

The former Baylor Bears standout initially signed a four-year deal worth $5.43 million in 2020. The Jets would have owed him $1.35 million for the 2023 season.

Mims a Texas native who played his high school football for Daingerfield before heading to Baylor. The 6-foot-3, 207-pound receiver turns 26 this season.

Sauce Gardner recalls fight with Mims

Discussing his rookie season on the Pivot, Jets star cornerback Sauce Gardner revealed that he did get into one memorable scuffle last year – with Mims.

“We’d be talking, then he did something,” Gardner said. “He did something that was cheap to one of my teammates. and I just ran onto the field.”

It all sounds very minor. Gardner promised he could stay chill during the filming for Hard Knocks.

“Y’all are going to like me,” he promised. “I’ll be calm.. I’ll talk on the field, I’ll talk a little trash.”

But he said tempers do escalate in preseason camp. “You’ve been to training camp for a little minute, waking up, seeing the same person extra early in the morning,” he said. “You develop this little anger, like ‘yo’ bro, why am I looking at you again?’ It feels like we, we just here. I close my eyes and it’s day two of training camp. Then it gets to day 10 or something. It just gets crazy.”

On3’s Suzanne Halliburton contributed to this report.