When the Denver Broncos swung a rare in-season, in-division trade with the Los Angeles Chargers for linebacker Daiyan Henley on Wednesday, it almost seemed too good to be true. Denver was getting a 26-year-old linebacker on an expiring deal, a half-year rental at minimum, and an immediate upgrade to the position group.

Well, it turns out it was too good to be true. Zac Stevens of DNVR broke the news late Wednesday night, which really stretched into Thursday morning, stating that the Broncos trade for Henley would not be going through.

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Why the Broncos’ trade for Daiyan Henley fell apart

When both teams announced the deal Wednesday, they made clear it was pending a physical. That’s the key detail in Stevens’ report.

In reality, this looks like a situation where the Broncos got Henley inside the building, ran him through his physical, and didn’t like what they found. Neither team has offered more detail than that, but the timeline doesn’t leave a lot of room for other explanations.

This is not the first time we’ve seen something like this, either. It happened in the offseason with star pass rusher MaxX Crosby. Everyone thought he was a Baltimore Raven, and he went through the process to become one. Then Baltimore got him in, didn’t like his knee, and sent him back to Las Vegas.

A similar situation played out just this week. The Cincinnati Bengals thought they had landed some pass rush help in Arnold Ebiketie from the Philadelphia Eagles. That trade didn’t even last much more than an hour before it got turned around, because Cincinnati realized the compensatory formula wasn’t going to work out. So the Bengals sent Ebiketie back to Philadelphia.

To be clear, the Henley situation doesn’t appear to be a paperwork issue like the one in Cincinnati. Still, the pattern is hard to ignore.

Nothing is final until it’s actually final

Whether it’s free agency or trades like Ebiketie, Crosby, and now Henley, this is another reminder that nothing is done until it’s officially done.

We can grade the trade. We can go through all the different scenarios. The teams can get excited, and so can the fans. But until pen is put to paper, until physicals are passed, and until everyone is squared away, these deals can fall through.

That’s exactly what is happening in Denver, and it is a pretty big blow for the Broncos. Henley has really come alive over the past two years, and he was going to be a very good player for this defense. The half-year rental was the floor, too. Denver could have paid him after the season if he played the way it expected, which would have turned a midseason trade into a long-term answer at linebacker.

Where the Broncos and Henley go from here

So the immediate question becomes what Denver does next. The Broncos clearly identified linebacker as a spot worth upgrading, or they never would have made a call to a division rival in the middle of the season. That need doesn’t go away just because this trade did.

As for Henley, he won’t be a Bronco anymore. Instead, he heads back to the Chargers after a day in which both teams believed he was gone. That makes for a very awkward return to Los Angeles, and it will be worth watching how the locker room handles a player who was traded and then un-traded within roughly 24 hours.

The Broncos made an aggressive move, and that kind of urgency is fine by me. This one just didn’t make it across the finish line.