The circus is finally leaving town.

For the entirety of training camp, Matthew Judon’s contract extension – or lack thereof – has hung over the team and head coach Jerod Mayo. Should they trade him? Should they reward him for acting like a petulant child? Well, we have our answer.

On Wednesday night, Ian Rapoport reported that the Pats are trading Judon to the Falcons for a 2025 3rd round draft pick. Atlanta will be taking on the final year of Judon’s $6.5 million contract and (you would have to assume) be giving him a long term deal.

While solid during his Patriots tenure, Judon faded down the stretch each season and only played four games in 2023. This is a fantastic deal for Eliot Wolf and the Patriots.

Not only do you continue adding draft capital while you rebuild, but you get rid of a headache in the locker room. Was Judon a good teammate? Absolutely, but with this new era in its infancy, this type of contract dispute was going to be a distraction all season long or until it got resolved, especially if he took the Logan Mankins route and began holding out. Not only that, but he’s on the wrong side of 30 coming off a pretty significant injury and you need to spend money you would have spent on him on the offensive line.

This is also a message to your now much younger team that complaining and putting on a show for the whole world to see not only won’t get you what you want, it’ll get you sent out of town. This is a win-win for everyone involved.

Now, this also puts pressure on guys like Keion White and Josh Uche to perform. The Patriots do get a bit worse of course by losing a pass rusher the caliber of Judon, but the team survived without him in 2023 and as long as guys like White and Uche continue to develop.

Judon wraps up his Patriots career after three seasons, finishing with 84 solo tackles and 32 sacks in 38 games. His 15.5 sack performance in 2022 was his best season with New England after a 12.5 sack performance in 2021. Last year in the four games he had four sacks and 10 solo tackles.