During the NFC Championship, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio fired off a tweet that could be seen as a classic form of social media hyperbole. But in the moment, it strangely didn’t feel like much of an exaggeration, either.

“The Rashid Shaheed trade is one of the best in-season moves ever (seen),” he wrote.

Alright, so maybe the Seattle Seahawks’ midseason acquisition of Shaheed from the New Orleans Saints hasn’t quite come close to the impact that Eric Dickerson made on the Indianapolis Colts, or the benefit that the Dallas Cowboys saw from trading away Herschel Walker.

But the Seahawks arguably wouldn’t be playing in the Super Bowl this weekend against the New England Patriots without the wide receiver.

Since he was traded to Seattle, Shaheed has had no shortage of game-changing plays. In the NFC Championship, he hauled in a 51-yard pass on Sam Darnold’s first completion to begin the contest with a bang. Before that, he opened the Divisional Round with an electric 96-yard kickoff return touchdown, flipped a regular-season contest against the Los Angeles Rams with a punt return touchdown and caught several passes on a game-winning drive against the Indianapolis Colts. He even had a remarkable 100-yard kickoff return touchdown against the Atlanta Falcons.

The Seahawks can thank New Orleans. All it cost to pry Shaheed from the Saints, too, were picks in the fourth and fifth rounds of the upcoming NFL draft — a more than reasonable price to pay for a contending team looking to make a run.

Still, despite the difference Shaheed has made, sending him out west doesn’t mean it was a bad trade for the Saints.

Three months removed from the league’s deadline, the Shaheed deal has turned out to be a win-win for the parties involved — even if the Saints have yet to use their new draft picks.

For the Saints, trading Shaheed was a logical move. At the time of the deal, New Orleans held a lowly 1-8 record and risked losing Shaheed in free agency as his contract is set to expire after the season. Trading Shaheed in November yielded actual draft capital rather than waiting to see if he’d earn a compensatory pick in 2027, which wouldn’t be guaranteed if the Saints themselves plan to be active in free agency this spring.

Further, Shaheed’s move to Seattle freed up playing time for wide receiver Devaughn Vele, who New Orleans acquired months earlier from the Denver Broncos for a fourth-round pick in 2026 and a seventh-round pick in 2027. While there could be a convincing argument made that Vele should have seen more snaps well before Shaheed’s departure, Vele directly stepped into Shaheed’s role and was productive.

In fact, over the final nine games, Vele recorded more catches and receiving yards than Shaheed did with Seattle. Vele, even with missing the final three weeks because of a shoulder injury, had 20 catches for 254 yards and a touchdown to Shaheed’s 15 catches for 188 yards.

Their roles, of course, were different. In Seattle, despite reuniting with former Saints offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, Shaheed became the Seahawks’ third receiver behind Jaxson Smith-Njigba and Cooper Kupp — seeing his on-field snap percentage diminish from 73.8% in New Orleans to 47.7% in Seattle. Vele, in turn, became the Saints’ No. 2 receiver behind Chris Olave.

Still, it was important for New Orleans to find out what it had in Vele. And now that the 28-year-old is on a rookie-scale contract for two more seasons, it helps to know he can be a useful player. And without Shaheed’s special-teams impact — admittedly a huge part of his game — the trade likely would have been viewed very differently in Seattle.

It would be overly simplistic to suggest the Saints traded Shaheed essentially for Vele. But receiving a fourth-round pick from Seattle helps offset the cost it took to pry Vele from the Broncos. Though the NFL’s draft order isn’t finalized, New Orleans pick to Denver is estimated to be No. 108, while the Saints will pick for Seattle at No. 132.

Some Saints fans, though, may wonder if the team ultimately received enough for Shaheed. And that’s a fair question. New Orleans, after all, was rumored to want a third-round pick for the 27-year-old, but settled for two middle-round selections.

Did the Saints cave? Well, not exactly.

For one, the Saints understood their chances of re-signing Shaheed in the upcoming offseason were likely slim. General manager Mickey Loomis said they weighed the “likelihood” of the possibility with other factors before making the deal. And in this case, matters were complicated by the fact that the Shaheed shares the same agent as Olave, whom the Saints have tried to extend to a long-term deal. Extending Olave and Shaheed to big money deals wasn’t technically impossible, but would that have been wise for a team with so many other needs? And at the time, a 1-8 Saints team looked like it could use all the extra draft capital it could get.

But the price for Shaheed was ultimately set by a deal that happened almost 90 minutes earlier. That was when the Jacksonville Jaguars sent a fourth-round and a sixth-round pick to acquire Jakobi Meyers from the Las Vegas Raiders.

The Seahawks and the Saints found common ground once the other framework was established.

“You have to evaluate what’s the market, what’s happened in the past with receiver,” Loomis said in November.

The Seahawks were happy with how the market unfolded. So were the Saints.