Eagles news: Quontract, Bauntract and the Maxx price for an edge rusher

One of the best ways to follow up a Super Bowl-winning season is by paying your best players and keeping your most important players from hitting free agency. The Philadelphia Eagles followed up their Super Bowl-winning season by paying one of their best players and keeping one of their most important players from hitting free agency … and they did it in two consecutive days. 

The Quontract

On March 13, 2024, the Eagles signed Saquon Barkley to a three-year deal for $37.75 million ($12.5 million per year). At the time, the thought was that it was a lot of money, but Barkley is a good player, and he’d make the Eagles' offense a whole lot more fun to watch.

Then he had a three-touchdown game in Week 1, yada yada yada, he jumped over a guy backwards, yada yada yada, he ran for 255 yards against the Rams, yada yada yada, ran for 2,000 regular season rushing yards, yada yada yada, hit a 78-yard touchdown run in a snow divisional game in the playoffs, and then followed that up by ending the Commanders season on the first offensive play of the game in the NFC Championship game. 

Saquon didn’t just make the offense more fun to watch; he was the rocket fuel that moved the offense, and he did it in the best season a running back has ever had in the history of the NFL. He was underpaid, at $12.5 million, which is crazy.

On Tuesday, March 4, 2025, Howie Roseman made that right by signing King-Quon to a two-year, $41.2 million extension. That makes the best running back in the world the highest-paid running back in the history of the NFL. It’s awesome. 

We’re still waiting on the official details of the contract to see if that opens up any more room toward the 2025 salary cap, but knowing how Howie Roseman operates, it’s safe to say that it does. We just don’t know how much yet. 

For some reason, some people are being frumpy about this and trying to dog on the contract, which is dumb. Will he be over 30 by the time his contract is over? Yeah, and that stinks. You can’t do anything about a player’s age, but wear and tear-wise, you can. 

Before the Super Bowl, I went back and watched all of Barkley’s 411 carries from Week 1 through the NFC Championship game and classified each play on how big the hit was. Spoiler: 411 carries aren’t that bad if you avoid contact as well as Barkley does. 

I saw some people worried that the Quontract sets a weird precedent for players who play well in one season to get a big payday. On that note: Good. 

It’s not just that Saquon played well; he played the best. If there are guys who come to Philadelphia and play at Offensive Player of the Year or Defensive Player of the Year levels so they can get paid, that’s a good thing that should be encouraged.

That’s the kind of thing that attracts the best players like Myles Garrett. It’s also the exact thing that drove Saquon away from the Giants. He was the best player on their team year in and year out, but they never paid him.

If the Eagles want to set the precedent that they pay the best players in the world for being the best in the world, that’s going to make the best players in the world come to the team. 

The most important thing is that Saquon Barkley is going to end his career as a Philadelphia Eagle, and his time with the New York Giants will be just a prologue. 

The Bauntract

Howie Roseman wasn’t done with paying his best players. One day later, he did the unthinkable, unimaginable, and oft-dreamt of thing: paying an elite linebacker. Zack Baun was signed to a three-year $51 million contract ($17 million per year). Unreal.

Baun was easily the top priority for the Eagles going into the offseason. Nakobe Dean went down with a gnarly knee injury in the wild card round of the playoffs, and he’ll probably be out for most of, if not all of, the 2025 season. 

If the Eagles were going to have any stability at linebacker, they were going to have to re-sign Baun, and that’s exactly what they did. Luckily, it just so happens that Baun was the best linebacker in the NFL in 2024… so that’s super sick.

Baun was drafted by the Saints in the third round of the 2020 draft, but he spent his entire time there as a special teams player and a rotational edge rusher. The Eagles signed him on the first day of free agency in 2024, and he thought that he was going to keep being an edge rusher. 

Fortunately, Vic Fangio is smarter than anyone in New Orleans and made Baun a linebacker. That’s what makes Baun unique: he’s not technically a homegrown player, but he feels like he is because he has a new job and a new life with the Eagles. 

You have to imagine that Fangio was a big reason why Baun decided to stay with the Eagles. There had to have been plenty of teams that were willing and trying to sign him, but they weren’t the team or the scheme that brought the best out of him.

The cool part about this whole situation is that Baun’s best year was in year one in the Fangio scheme, which is a famously complicated scheme. At 28 years old, Baun’s not on the verge of being washed up. Also, it's not like the way he played was fluky either. 

It’s not crazy to think that he can be even better and have even more responsibilities in his second year in the system. Not only is this an A+ signing postitional need-wise, but it’s also great because of the price and the potential of the player. 

When it comes to making sure the Eagles' defense doesn’t fall off a cliff, getting a good player in the spine of the defense will go a long way. It’s great to know that The Bald Eagle will be back. It sure would’ve been a huge waste of a great nickname if he went somewhere else. 

An edge rusher got paid the Maxximum amount

There’s been a whole lot of reporting that the Eagles want to trade for superstar edge rusher Myles Garrett. It makes sense. They’re going to lose Josh Sweat and maybe Brandon Graham, so they’ll have a need at the position. Also, Garrett might be the best defensive player in the NFL right now.

On top of that, a trade for him will have to be at least this year’s first-round draft pick. The Eagles are picking at 32, which is essentially a second-round pick. If you’re looking to trade a first for a player, there’s no better time to do it than when your first is actually a second.

Unfortunately, the other part of this is the money side. Garrett has a contract the Eagles would have to take, and then they’d also have to cover an extension as well. 

On Tuesday, March 5th, the Raiders finalized a three-year, $106 million contract extension with Maxx Crosby. That makes Crosby the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL. That’s not great news for the Eagles, who are looking to get a comparable player at the same position. 

The biggest difference between Crosby and Garrett is their age.  Crosby is 27 years old, and Garrett is 29. That could end up being super important, money-wise.

At this point, the best situation for the Eagles is that they’re able to trade for Garrett and give him the Saquon Barkley treatment. Pay him a lot of money, but not the most money. Then, if he ends up being the insanely, and almost disgustingly, muscular powerhouse that he is, the Eagles can give him an extension in the offseason. 

There’s a very real chance that the Quontract was partially a strategic move. Garrett saw that the Eagles take care of players, specifically older players, when they deserve to be taken care of. And it just so happens that the Eagles showed that days, weeks, or months before he and the Browns have to make a decision.

If that’s the case, this isn’t a situation where the NFL is playing checkers and the Eagles are playing chess … or even 3D chess for that matter. Howie Roseman is playing Calvinball while everyone else is playing hoop-and-stick.