Eagles news: Brandon Graham, Lane Johnson and potential trades

It’s only Tuesday, and this week has already been a roller coaster. In just two days, the Philadelphia Eagles extended one legend and saw another retire. It was great and then it hurt, but those are the ebbs and flows of the offseason. That’s the theme of this week’s news.

A legend retires

Brandon Graham might not have been the best Eagle of all time, but he was the epitome of the Philadelphia Eagles, and he has officially retired.

The Eagles drafted B.G. with the 13th pick of the 2010 draft. His career started incredibly slowly and his rookie season ended early with a torn ACL. He got labeled a bust and he and his family felt it. It got to a point where his mom wouldn’t even wear his jersey to games. 

Then he made the move to outside linebacker and his production started to pick up. In 2015, he almost went to the Giants in free agency before the Eagles re-signed him for a four-year deal. 

His redemption tour culminated in 2017, when he made the most important play in franchise history. With 2:16 left in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LII, he strip-sacked Tom Brady— the only sack of the game. 

Brandon Graham’s heroics led directly to the 41-33 win and the Eagles bringing home their first-ever Lombardi trophy.

Fast forward to 2021, and B.G. suffered his second season-ending injury in Week 2 when he tore his Achilles against the 49ers. At that point, he was 33 years old, and 33 years olds have a much harder time coming back from debilitating injuries.

It didn’t slow B.G. down. He came back in 2022 and had a career-high 11 sacks before he was snubbed for the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year Award. Geno Smith won that award for coming back from being a bad football player. Whatever, this isn’t about him.

Then in 2024, B.G. was the best player on the defense for most of the early season until Week 12 when he suffered yet another catastrophic injury; he tore his triceps.

There’s no way that he was going to come back from that, right? Sure, he came back from the ACL and the Achilles, but he is 36 years old now. Was this it for him? Was his 15-year career and farewell tour going to end with a fart? 

No. Somehow, some way, he made it back to play in the Super Bowl 11 weeks after his injury. It’s superhero stuff. People don’t just do that.

He took the final snap of his career when the Chiefs were pathetically going for a two-point conversion with 1:48 left… and he did it while playing with re-torn triceps. What an animal and what a story.

He ended his career after 15 seasons, playing 212 games, 7,048 defensive snaps, 508 tackles, 163 QB hits, 82 sacks, 24 forced fumbles, 7 fumble recoveries, approximately 500,000 insults thrown, 1,000,000 cackles, and most importantly, 2 Super Bowl rings.

He had the best and longest career of any Eagle ever, and he’ll be missed on the field. Fortunately, during his retirement speech, he said that he wanted to talk to Jeffery Lurie to find a way that he could still be with the team. We won’t see B.G. in a midnight green jersey ever again, but he’s not going anywhere.

And then there were two...

With Brandon Graham’s retirement and the Eagles not re-signing long snapper Rick Lovato, the only two Eagles that were on the Super Bowl LII-winning team are now Jake Elliott and Lane Johnson. 

Monday brought us some good news on the Lane Johnson front. He signed an $8 million contract extension that will keep him with the team through the 2027 season.

This is huge. Two weeks ago, I wrote about how a Lane Johnson extension/contract restructuring seemed like a long shot, but it might help the Eagles with the salary cap and more importantly, how it would just be huge to have that kind of continuity at right tackle. 

This also has some pretty significant implications in the draft. The Eagles have been very forward-thinking when it comes to drafting offensive line replacements over the past five years and this draft seemed like as good of a time as any to draft the future right tackle. 

That might be postponed, kind of. It would make sense for Howie Roseman to draft an offensive lineman at some point during the draft, but now that pick doesn’t have to be made with an early-round or premium pick. That’s great, especially with how utterly decimated the Eagles' defense became from free agency.

Bryce Huff is on the trading block

It can’t all be bad news, right? Everything that the Eagles have done since free agency started has been some level of disappointing: Whether it’s the important players that have left, a blindsiding C.J. Gardner-Johnson trade, or the mostly lackluster additions — there just hasn’t been a whole lot of good.

It can’t all be the guys we like that go, right? Everyone that the Eagles have let go since free agency started has been some level of disappointing. Mekhi Becton had a career resurgence, C.J. Gardner-Johnson was beautifully nasty, and Milton Williams, Josh Sweat, and Slay were all great players who had been around for a long time.

There hasn’t been anyone who has left that made you say, ‘Ah, well… the Birds will be in a better spot without them.’

Luckily, it looks like that might change. Jordan Schultz reported that the Eagles are “open to trade talks involving TE Dallas Goedert and DE Bryce Huff. Let’s ignore the Goedert part of that (for now, because it’s a huge bummer) and focus on the Bryce Huff part.

It’s not necessarily Bryce Huff’s fault that he’s in this spot. Yeah, he stunk and couldn’t find the field unless it was with the third-stringers, but he also wasn’t the one who paid himself $17 million per year. It was a bad big miss by Howie Roseman and it was a terrible investment. 

Schultz tweeted that on Friday, and since then the Eagles signed edge rusher Azeez Ojulari. That means the whole, ‘Well, at least Bryce Huff is a warm body with a pulse’ argument to keep him around is relatively moot at this point.  If the Eagles can trade him and recoup anything, it would be considered a win.

Where could Dallas Geodert go?

Last week Josina Anderson reported that the Eagles were open to trading Dallas Goedert. When you hear it from just one person, it makes your ears perk up. When you hear it from two people, it starts to get into your heart. That’s exactly what happened with Jordan Schultz's reporting. 

If what Josina Anderson is saying is true, and the Eagles are looking for a future fourth or fifth-round pick, that means it might be worth looking at where Goedert could go and what those picks could be. 

Paul Bretl at TheColtsWire thinks the Colts might be a landing spot. He brings up that Goedert and Shane Steichen spent two years together when Steichen was the Eagles' offensive coordinator in 2021 and 2022, and also that the Colts' tight end usage in the passing game has been pathetic (my interpretation of his words). 

If Goedert went to Indianapolis, and the Eagles got the trade value they were looking for, we would be looking at either the 117th pick (fourth round) or the 151st pick (fifth round).

Mike Moraitis of Sports Illustrated thinks the Panthers could be Goedert’s new team. Hopefully he’s wrong because the Panthers are terrible, and Goedert deserves better than that.

Mike says that the Panthers' current tight ends (Tommy Tremble and Ja'Tavion Sanders) don’t offer a whole in the passing game, and they would also benefit from having some level of veteran leadership. 

In the fourth round, the Panthers have the 111th pick and the 114th pick. And in the fifth round, they have the 140th, 146th, and 163rd picks. 

There have been a few notable Eagles that were drafted with picks around all of those spots: Halapoulivaati Vaitai (164th), Kenny Gainwell (150th pick), Avonte Maddox (125th), and Jason Avant (109th).

That’s not exactly a huge list, but they are guys who have been important in some way or another. Right now, the Eagles have one fourth-round pick and four fifth-round picks. Chances are Howie Roseman would trade whatever he gets from trading Goedert, but if he does actually use it, he has had some luck in hitting with players in those spots.