4 nightmare trade scenarios the Eagles have to avoid

In the past couple of seasons, we’ve seen some bad trade deadline moves by Howie Roseman and the Philadelphia Eagles. In 2022, they traded a third-round pick for defensive end Robert Quinn and in 2023 they traded for safety Kevin Byard.

Howie’s a learner. In 2020, he drafted Jalen Reagor in the first round, and it was a complete and utter failure. Since then, he’s made much better first-round picks. It’s probably right to assume that he’s learned from the bad trades he’s made as of late. 

The Eagles have roster needs, but some players aren’t worth it

There are some really bad teams in the NFL right now and Howie Roseman has an opportunity to fleece them before the trade deadline on Nov. 5. Unfortunately, there’s a fine line between fleecing and getting fleeced. A few of the names that are on the trade block could certainly help the Eagles in positions of need, but they’d be a bad idea to go after for a few different reasons.

Trading for a third(ish) round pick for the Bills’ Von Miller:

There are a couple of reasons why trading for Von Miller would be a bad idea: he’s currently serving a suspension from an alleged domestic dispute of the woman beating/strangling variety, and he’s 35 years old. One of those reasons is significantly and violently worse than the other.

From a football level, he’ll be eligible to play before the trade deadline so the suspension wouldn’t affect his availability after a trade. On a human level, you don’t want a bad guy on your team… especially a guy who’s potentially this type of bad guy.

As for his age, this team is trying to get younger at the pass rusher position. Trading for a player who’s a year younger than Brandon Graham is pretty counterintuitive to that entire idea. Not to mention the Eagles’ lack of success with trading for older players like the aforementioned Robert Quinn who was 32 when they got him.

The upside for that trade is that he was a Pro-Bowler under Vic Fangio with the Broncos in 2019. That was five years ago when Miller was 31 and it’s not an upside worth chasing, especially when other, younger players like Travon Walker could serve a similar purpose.

Trading a day-two pick for the Cardinals’ Budda Baker:

Budda Baker is a good player. He’s been with the Cardinals since 2017, and he’s been a Pro-Bowler six times and All-Pro three times. This isn’t about how the Eagles would perform with Baker; This is about who they currently have.

Right now, C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Reed Blankenship are the Eagles starting safeties, and Sydney Brown is waiting in the wings. If Budda was traded to this team he would have to go on the field immediately which means C.J.G.J. or Blankenship would get sent to the bench.

There’s no way that it could be Blankenship. He’s been playing really well all season and he’s the only player on the defense to have any sort of turnover. That means it would be C.J.G.J.

To be fair, that would be a huge upgrade. C.J. has been incredibly hit or miss this season, literally. He’s made just as many huge tackles as he’s missed and he hasn’t been great in coverage either. The two things that go into why this would be a bad trade are C.J.’s money and his personality. 

He’s currently getting paid $11 million per year and it would be financially criminal to put a healthy $11 million player on the sideline.

The bigger issue is the human element: it seems like C.J. takes just about everything personally. That’s totally fine and awesome as long as you can aim that kind of emotion in the right direction. If he got benched, there’s about a 99.9999 percent chance that he would take that personally. If he’s benched so a UDFA and a guy who just joined the team could play, it’d be like putting a pressure cooker filled with tetanus cover nails in the corner of the locker room. 

There’s no way that a guy like C.J. would be cool with any part of this, and keeping him in the right headspace is a part of managing this roster. 

Trading a whole bunch of first-round picks for the Raiders’ Maxx Crosby:

Maxx Crosby and Myles Garrett are the two pass rushers that the general population wants to be traded away from the teams they’re currently on; Crosby’s Raiders are going nowhere and Garrett’s Browns are a laughingstock of the highest order.

Both of these guys are top-tier talent and both of their organizations DESPERATELY need to go through rebuilds. The problem with rebuilding is that you need blocks to build with, but you also need a foundation to build around. Crosby and Garret are their team’s foundations. That means trading for them comes at a heavy price. 

The only reason Crosby shouldn’t be a player that the Eagles should trade for is that if they are going to go in on getting a game-wrecking pass rusher, they should go all the way in.

Both of these guys are Ferraris, but one of these Ferraris happens to be the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year with arms the size of pirate ship ropes. If the Eagles are looking to make a franchise-altering trade by getting rid of multiple first-round picks, then they should bite the bullet and pony up for Garrett over Crosby.

Trading away Milton Williams:

Milton Williams has been a good player and every week he’s showing that he’s more and more valuable to the Eagles. In Week 7, he was one of the defensive linemen that the Eagles took out of rotation and rested for the entirety of the fourth quarter. 

He’s also been a starter in five of the six games this season. That doesn’t mean as much as it does at other positions given how much DTs rotate on a play-to-play basis, but it’s not nothing. He’s currently playing the second most snaps (160) behind Jalen Carter (273), but no one is going to reach that level. The point is, the Eagles would be a worse team without Milton. 

It seems like his future with the team is going to go one of two ways: he’ll sign an extension during the season, or he’ll get traded for a decent chunk of good picks. There aren’t a whole lot of Miltons in the world, and the Eagles have themselves a good one. Hopefully it stays that way.

The Eagles have some decisions to make in the next two weeks. We just have to hope that the answer to the holes in the roster isn’t, ‘Let’s plug in this guy who was really good a half-decade ago, get a guy who will make the most volatile player on the team angry, mortgage our future on the second-best pass rusher available, and get rid of the most plain-named guy on our roster.’