For months there have been rumors about a possible trade for wide receiver AJ Brown away from the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL. But such a trade for Philly is not as easy as some people imagine.
At a glance
- The rumor that the Eagles could trade AJ Brown persists.
- There is no shortage of interested parties for the wide receiver.
- The Eagles have a problem ensuring enough cap space due to their contract structure.
Trading player XY is always easy. But even if there are tensions between a player like Brown, the coaching staff or anyone else in an organization, that doesn’t mean that such a deal is just a question of price.
Aside from the fact that general manager Howie Roseman doesn’t seem all that keen on trading away his top receiver anyway, the Eagles themselves don’t have a lot of room to practically pull off such a trade.
Roseman repeated his attitude from the past few months again during the week at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis: “Ultimately, we’re trying to get better – and that’s hard to do if you’re constantly giving up great players.” And Brown is such a great player.
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Brown has enough interested parties
But if we still believe the rumor that Brown would want to leave, then there would be enough interested parties – think of the New England Patriots, Buffalo Bills or Pittsburgh Steelers, who are all desperately looking for playmakers – who would be able to take on Brown’s contract after a trade – although the Bills still have to make improvements in terms of cap space. But that’s not the point in this case.
The much bigger obstacle to trading Brown somewhere is the fact that the Eagles’ contract structure from the last few years stands in the way. The Eagles started structuring contracts differently than most other teams a few years ago. Essentially, they turned away from the usual high signing bonus payments at the beginning and then ever-increasing base salaries and went to basically constantly low base salaries and sometimes guaranteed option bonuses, including a number of void years at the end of the deal.
What this does is that the high salaries from the second or third year onwards for the top players do not lead to excessively high cap numbers because the high amounts of the option bonuses are always treated as a signing bonus and are therefore stretched over a maximum of five years. A very good way to have more cap space in the present and save yourself from future maneuvers. But as it now turns out, this also limits flexibility in the following years.
AJ Brown’s contract now looks like he will still receive $29 million guaranteed this year, of which $27.45 million will come via an option bonus. His cap hit is currently $23.39 million, which is manageable. The problem for the Eagles, however, is that this contract, in its multiple adjusted form, has been running for a while. And a breakup this year would leave $72.5 million in dead money. At least when you are fired. In the event of a trade, it would still be an impressive $45.35 million and that would lead to a cap deficit of $21.96 million.
The Eagles lack the cap space for a Brown trade
However, the Eagles only have cap space of around 13.6 million, even just under 8.5 million if at least 51 players are under contract. This is where the lack of flexibility in the Eagles contracts comes into play.
“Over The Cap” took the trouble to calculate how much cap space teams can gain with “simple restructuring” this offseason. For the Eagles that is just $6.7 million, which would increase the effective cap space (from 51 players) to just $15.27 million. Not enough to make a brown trade possible.
Now there is still the possibility of “maximum restructuring”, as “OTC” calls it. However, this doesn’t just require the above-mentioned simple steps, where simply converting a salary that is above the basic salary into a signing bonus. But for this you would also have to approach contracts and extend them including the signing bonus or add void years. According to “OTC”, the Eagles could even get up to $24 million. And then the cap space would be $32.88 million.
Still, that seems like a significant effort just to get rid of a player of his class. And Roseman doesn’t seem to favor that idea anyway. In addition, this is the last guaranteed year of Brown’s contract, so a new team would have to offer a soon-to-be 29-year-old a new contract close to market value, which is why it is unlikely that the Eagles could expect truly fair compensation for him. More than a second-round pick or even just a third-round pick and perhaps a conditional 3rd rounder for 2027 seems difficult to imagine after Brown has often caused unrest recently and probably played his weakest season since 2021. And he was still in Tennessee back then.
Brown’s departure from Philadelphia is not impossible, but the Eagles would have to put in some effort to make it possible.
