While most of us like to think NFL teams have unlimited resources and should never be scared off from paying any amount for any player, the reality is somebody has to be the adult.
Somebody has to make sure the party keeps getting paid for.
For the Philadelphia Eagles, that person is general manager Howie Roseman, who faced the difficult task of ensuring the Eagles got good value back in trading 3-time NFL All-Pro wide receiver A.J. Brown this summer.
While the market was hot for Brown early — rumors of 2 1st-round picks or a 1st-round pick and 2nd-round pick — the reality ended up being that the Eagles had to wait until the league year rolled over to 2026-27 to avoid a disastrous dead cap hit and, by the June 1 deadline, the market had cooled.
Cooled, but not gone completely cold. The Eagles still got back a 2028 1st-round pick and 2027 5th-round pick from the New England Patriots in return for Brown, although Bleacher Report’s Moe Moton dinged them in his grades for the biggest offseason deals for dealing Brown.
In Moton’s postmortem, he gave the Patriots an “A” grade for trading Brown and dealt the Eagles a “B-” for the move.
“In a transaction many saw coming, the Philadelphia Eagles waited until June 1 to trade Brown, so they could spread his dead cap hit across two years rather than take on a $43.5 million charge for the 2026 term,” Moton wrote on July 7. “General manager Howie Roseman made a fiscally responsible move, and this may be a case of addition by subtraction. The New England Patriots picked up a No. 1 receiver without having to give up a first-round pick in next year’s draft, which may be an elite class in terms of blue-chip prospects.”
Translation: The Patriots got over on the Eagles more than the Eagles got over on the Patriots, which rarely happens in trades involving Philly.
Eagles Made Several Moves to Replace Brown
Perhaps the greatest acknowledgement of how great Brown was in 4 seasons with the Eagles — including a Super Bowl win — is that Roseman and head coach Nick Sirianni didn’t even attempt to replace his production with just 1 wide receiver.
Instead, the Eagles went out and added a trio of wide receivers to try and make up for Brown’s lost production and back up new WR1 DeVonta Smith.
First, the Eagles signed veteran Marquise “Hollywood” Brown to a 1-year, $2.04 million contract, then followed that by trading a 2026 5th-round pick and 2027 6th-round pick to the Green Bay Packers for Dontayvion Wicks, who they signed to a 1-year, $12.5 million contract.
The biggest move came in the 2026 NFL draft, where the Eagles traded up with the Dallas Cowboys to select USC wide receiver and Biletnikoff Award winner Makai Lemon at No. 20 overall.
Brown Still Making More Than All 3 WRs Combined
With Lemon’s 4-year, $20.8 million rookie contract added, the Eagles will pay the trio of new wide receivers approximately $19.7 million in 2026.
That’s still almost $13.3 million less than what Brown will make with the Patriots in 2026, with the big bet being that the Eagles’ 3 new wide receivers can either match or exceed the 78 receptions for 1,003 yards and 7 touchdowns from Brown in 2025.
Numbers tell us they might do that easily. Wicks and Brown alone combined for 79 receptions for 919 yards and 7 touchdowns last season.
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