Forge Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 1 hour ago, CWood21 said: Why would the Eagles even consider that? You would consider it you've lost faith in him or you want to go scorched earth because its not going to get better for him in Philly over the next two years given the roster and their financial problems. He's set up to fail there. The problem is the optics if he they let him go and he succeeds elsewhere, even though the two situations aren't the same (IE, just because he can be salvaged in Indy, doesn't mean he would have been salvaged in Philly). I do like their odds of making it happen without Pederson slightly better, but the team does not make it better. I mentioned the fifth round during the GDT, and admittedly, it's a little hyperbolic. I don't think that they are getting a first round pick, but I do think that there is a price point somewhere in the middle that makes sense. I believe @ninjapirate said like a 3rd and a conditional, and I could see that making sense. The struggle with moving him is that a team would ostensibly have to commit to him for 2 years, and that's going to hurt his value a little. Will the eagles move him? Probably not. LIS, I think that the optics are terrible if they do, and they definitely don't want to be in a situation where he turns it around elsewhere and look even worse. I mentioned it in last week's GDT and the Jets tanking thread that true tanking is kind of rare, so you're not likely to see a situation where the Eagles just set fire to 2021, which is really what I think that should be done so that they can be over and done with it and it doesn't spill over into 2022, which it is currently slated to do via june 1 cuts next season and Graham + Jackson's expiring deals. Setting fire to 2021 is a viable plan. In 2017, the 49ers carried 40 million in dead space on a 160+ million cap; nearly 25% of their money was taken up by dead hits. They came out clean on the other side and were in the super bowl 2 years later. Miami carried 67 million in dead money last year which was nearly 35% of their overall cap, came out clean on the other side and they are now possibly going to make the playoffs the year after. The eagles have a ton of dead money that is going to hit in 2021 and 2022, and if I were them, I'd be trying to make as much of that land in 2021 as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 Just now, SaveOurSonics said: ? 1) Get his salary off the books.* 2) Wash their hands of any friction inside or outside the locker room. *I don’t have a detailed understanding of Wentz’s contract so the cap relief may be minimal, but I’d still think they’d rather move on entirely than hold him hostage and field constant media attention for it. It's minimal this upcoming season (if they trade him it saves like 800K), but 15 million of his 2022 salary guarantees on the third day of 2021, so it saves them from that as the team that acquires him would pick up that. So if they keep him next year and he bombs again and they want to cut him in 2022, he'd still have a huge dead money cap hit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Buck Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 How about a straight up trade for Mitch Trubisky? Could a change of scenery could save one or both of these guys? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CWood21 Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 16 minutes ago, Forge said: You would consider it you've lost faith in him or you want to go scorched earth because its not going to get better for him in Philly over the next two years given the roster and their financial problems. He's set up to fail there. The problem is the optics if he they let him go and he succeeds elsewhere, even though the two situations aren't the same (IE, just because he can be salvaged in Indy, doesn't mean he would have been salvaged in Philly). I do like their odds of making it happen without Pederson slightly better, but the team does not make it better. I mentioned the fifth round during the GDT, and admittedly, it's a little hyperbolic. I don't think that they are getting a first round pick, but I do think that there is a price point somewhere in the middle that makes sense. I believe @ninjapirate said like a 3rd and a conditional, and I could see that making sense. The struggle with moving him is that a team would ostensibly have to commit to him for 2 years, and that's going to hurt his value a little. Will the eagles move him? Probably not. LIS, I think that the optics are terrible if they do, and they definitely don't want to be in a situation where he turns it around elsewhere and look even worse. I mentioned it in last week's GDT and the Jets tanking thread that true tanking is kind of rare, so you're not likely to see a situation where the Eagles just set fire to 2021, which is really what I think that should be done so that they can be over and done with it and it doesn't spill over into 2022, which it is currently slated to do via june 1 cuts next season and Graham + Jackson's expiring deals. Setting fire to 2021 is a viable plan. In 2017, the 49ers carried 40 million in dead space on a 160+ million cap; nearly 25% of their money was taken up by dead hits. They came out clean on the other side and were in the super bowl 2 years later. Miami carried 67 million in dead money last year which was nearly 35% of their overall cap, came out clean on the other side and they are now possibly going to make the playoffs the year after. The eagles have a ton of dead money that is going to hit in 2021 and 2022, and if I were them, I'd be trying to make as much of that land in 2021 as possible. Let's start this discussion by making one thing very clear. The Eagles aren't releasing Carson Wentz. By releasing him, they lose an additional $25M in cap space. If I had a $1M dollars, I'd bet on them not releasing him. That's just too much dead cap for a guy they've invested in and given the sheer uncertainty with the salary cap for 2021. That being said, there's two realistic and a very distant third option. I'll mention them in what I view as the least likely to most likely option. 1.) Run it back. For a number of reasons, this doesn't make a ton of sense. An Eagles' fan ( @Kiltman) can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Pederson's contract runs through the 2022 season. While not necessarily super cumbersome, the Eagles could go on a cheaper route by not firing Pederson. Given Wentz's productivity prior to 2020, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that they throw the 2020 season out of the window and try and see if Wentz can repeat his production of previous years. 2.) Go scorched earth. Firing Doug Pederson and trading Carson Wentz would signal a full rebuild. That means trading off any of the veterans for whatever draft picks you could get. Again, you can't release Carson Wentz due to the monstrous amount of dead cap that would happen by releasing him. At this point, you're stuck with a relative unknown in Jalen Hurts and a likely top 8 draft pick. But given their roster construction and the amount of veterans they've invested in recent years, it seems unlikely they'd rebuild from the ground up. 3.) Fire Doug Pederson. To me, this is the most realistic option. Since his Super Bowl win, he's got a winning percentage of .477 as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles but he's made the playoffs in the last 3 seasons. If you truly believe that Wentz is broken, then the Pederson/Wentz pairing needs to be broken up ASAP. And they've got a lot less invested in Pederson than they do Wentz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CWood21 Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 1 minute ago, Uncle Buck said: How about a straight up trade for Mitch Trubisky? Could a change of scenery could save one or both of these guys? No. There's hope for Wentz. Not for Trubisky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Buck Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 Just now, CWood21 said: No. There's hope for Wentz. Not for Trubisky. That's pretty much what I was thinking too, but at least Trubisky would be on a new, very affordable, incentive-laden contract. I could see him being a decent back-up. Wentz has that albatross of a contract, but he does have some potential to come back and become good again. Maybe very, very good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 2 minutes ago, CWood21 said: Let's start this discussion by making one thing very clear. The Eagles aren't releasing Carson Wentz. By releasing him, they lose an additional $25M in cap space. If I had a $1M dollars, I'd bet on them not releasing him. That's just too much dead cap for a guy they've invested in and given the sheer uncertainty with the salary cap for 2021. That being said, there's two realistic and a very distant third option. I'll mention them in what I view as the least likely to most likely option. 1.) Run it back. For a number of reasons, this doesn't make a ton of sense. An Eagles' fan ( @Kiltman) can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Pederson's contract runs through the 2022 season. While not necessarily super cumbersome, the Eagles could go on a cheaper route by not firing Pederson. Given Wentz's productivity prior to 2020, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that they throw the 2020 season out of the window and try and see if Wentz can repeat his production of previous years. 2.) Go scorched earth. Firing Doug Pederson and trading Carson Wentz would signal a full rebuild. That means trading off any of the veterans for whatever draft picks you could get. Again, you can't release Carson Wentz due to the monstrous amount of dead cap that would happen by releasing him. At this point, you're stuck with a relative unknown in Jalen Hurts and a likely top 8 draft pick. But given their roster construction and the amount of veterans they've invested in recent years, it seems unlikely they'd rebuild from the ground up. 3.) Fire Doug Pederson. To me, this is the most realistic option. Since his Super Bowl win, he's got a winning percentage of .477 as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles but he's made the playoffs in the last 3 seasons. If you truly believe that Wentz is broken, then the Pederson/Wentz pairing needs to be broken up ASAP. And they've got a lot less invested in Pederson than they do Wentz. I actually agree with most of this. I believe that option 2 is the best option, and option 3 is the most likely option. Their roster and cap situation is a disaster. I'm slightly more bullish on him getting right without Pederson, but not much more if he's still on this roster. I'd be most bullish on him returning to form away from this coach and this team situation. His supporting cast here isn't likely to get better. They are going to run this back for one more year in similar circumstances roster wise because they don't have the money to add guys and they have to trim the fat on others (perhaps Ertz, for example, Slay is a guy that could realistically be traded) and I don't know why anyone would believe that there are substantially different results. You have to be really, really bullish on the offensive line being healthy and flat out good, which I think most eagles fans will attest, isn't something you should be hopeful about given the team's injury luck. If you bring him back 2021, you're locking in another 15 million for 2022...so now you're looking at potentially keeping him for 2 years rather than just the one. Obviously that is a lot easier to navigate, and if you can still trade him that would go with him, but at the same time if he bombs in 2021 and is 3 years removed from being the player people used to associate him with being, I'm not sure who's ponying up for him. He's already circling the drain with a benching; if you bring him back for a year, he bombs...you're just stretching this out for another year and maybe longer..and that's on top of the dead cap you're going to get hit with by others because of the way their contracts are structured. You keep him for 2021, you could theoretically have 20+ dead million from him in 2022, plus 20+ million from Graham and Jackson in 2022 (they could maybe get around this by extending them out further in 2022, but nobody is going to tell me that given all the options that the best one is extending a 34 year old Brandon Graham and 32 year old Malik Jackson), and before considering any 2021 jun 1 cuts that you may have made just to get your 2021 salary together. Another problem is that the situations of the teams I mentioned earlier and the Eagles aren't fully comparable. The 49ers just started a new regime with 6 year deals; they could have started nothing but mermaids and there wasn't much York could do about it. Last year was the start of the Flores regime. So these guys had a lot of wiggle room to jump start their rebuild. I don't know if Howie has that. Can he sell ownership on setting fire to a season to right the ship? I honestly don't know...and I understand the impetus to try and save your job if you can't convince ownership that is the play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CWood21 Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 48 minutes ago, Forge said: I actually agree with most of this. I believe that option 2 is the best option, and option 3 is the most likely option. Their roster and cap situation is a disaster. I'm slightly more bullish on him getting right without Pederson, but not much more if he's still on this roster. I'd be most bullish on him returning to form away from this coach and this team situation. His supporting cast here isn't likely to get better. They are going to run this back for one more year in similar circumstances roster wise because they don't have the money to add guys and they have to trim the fat on others (perhaps Ertz, for example, Slay is a guy that could realistically be traded) and I don't know why anyone would believe that there are substantially different results. You have to be really, really bullish on the offensive line being healthy and flat out good, which I think most eagles fans will attest, isn't something you should be hopeful about given the team's injury luck. If you bring him back 2021, you're locking in another 15 million for 2022...so now you're looking at potentially keeping him for 2 years rather than just the one. Obviously that is a lot easier to navigate, and if you can still trade him that would go with him, but at the same time if he bombs in 2021 and is 3 years removed from being the player people used to associate him with being, I'm not sure who's ponying up for him. He's already circling the drain with a benching; if you bring him back for a year, he bombs...you're just stretching this out for another year and maybe longer..and that's on top of the dead cap you're going to get hit with by others because of the way their contracts are structured. You keep him for 2021, you could theoretically have 20+ dead million from him in 2022, plus 20+ million from Graham and Jackson in 2022 (they could maybe get around this by extending them out further in 2022, but nobody is going to tell me that given all the options that the best one is extending a 34 year old Brandon Graham and 32 year old Malik Jackson), and before considering any 2021 jun 1 cuts that you may have made just to get your 2021 salary together. Another problem is that the situations of the teams I mentioned earlier and the Eagles aren't fully comparable. The 49ers just started a new regime with 6 year deals; they could have started nothing but mermaids and there wasn't much York could do about it. Last year was the start of the Flores regime. So these guys had a lot of wiggle room to jump start their rebuild. I don't know if Howie has that. Can he sell ownership on setting fire to a season to right the ship? I honestly don't know...and I understand the impetus to try and save your job if you can't convince ownership that is the play. I just can't envision a scenario where the Eagles are paying Wentz $30M+, and he's not on the roster. Especially given the cap uncertainty as well as the current Eagles' roster construction. There's some clear cap casualties in there (Namely DeSean Jackson, Alshon Jeffery, etc.), but largely their core is in place. EDIT: His contract starts to let up after next year. The problem is that 2021 roster bonus is guaranteed. They save nearly $7M if they release Wentz after next season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MWil23 Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 What would be the cap ramifications for the Eagles if they were able to restructure Wentz's contract? Could they end up paying more money to Wentz to make him just as desirable to another team in a trade while giving themselves more flexibility? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 7 minutes ago, MWil23 said: What would be the cap ramifications for the Eagles if they were able to restructure Wentz's contract? Could they end up paying more money to Wentz to make him just as desirable to another team in a trade while giving themselves more flexibility? Not really; they are in cap hell as it is. Eating more money from his contract kind of has to be a non starter if they trade him. And honestly, the cap hit for any team acquiring him isn't an issue. The biggest hurdle would likely be the 15 million guaranteed in 2022 because if he bombs in 2021, a team isn't going to want to be saddled with that. Any team trading for him ostensibly has to commit for 2 years, which isn't a deal breaker, but not ideal either. His cap hits for teams taking him on are 25 and 22 million which is awesome is you can get him back to where he was a couple of years ago and easily doable for just about anyone (any team acquiring him could also restructure some of that to lower the cap hits if they wanted, but obviously then they have concerns regarding dead money in future years if they cut him). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MWil23 Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 Just now, Forge said: Not really; they are in cap hell as it is. Eating more money from his contract kind of has to be a non starter if they trade him. And honestly, the cap hit for any team acquiring him isn't an issue. The biggest hurdle would likely be the 15 million guaranteed in 2022 because if he bombs in 2021, a team isn't going to want to be saddled with that. Any team trading for him ostensibly has to commit for 2 years, which isn't a deal breaker, but not ideal either. His cap hits for teams taking him on are 25 and 22 million which is awesome is you can get him back to where he was a couple of years ago and easily doable for just about anyone (any team acquiring him could also restructure some of that to lower the cap hits if they wanted, but obviously then they have concerns regarding dead money in future years if they cut him). If/Since this is the case, MAYBE a reunion with Reich would make sense, and Philly paying someone $30+ million of their cap not to even be on the roster would be interesting/almost impossible to think about...but he's been THAT BAD where you'd almost have to consider it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minutemancl Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 2 hours ago, Manny/Patrick said: FTFY I think that Shanahan gets his hands on Darnold this offseason and (tries) to fix him instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiltman Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 2 hours ago, CWood21 said: Let's start this discussion by making one thing very clear. The Eagles aren't releasing Carson Wentz. By releasing him, they lose an additional $25M in cap space. If I had a $1M dollars, I'd bet on them not releasing him. That's just too much dead cap for a guy they've invested in and given the sheer uncertainty with the salary cap for 2021. That being said, there's two realistic and a very distant third option. I'll mention them in what I view as the least likely to most likely option. 1.) Run it back. For a number of reasons, this doesn't make a ton of sense. An Eagles' fan ( @Kiltman) can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Pederson's contract runs through the 2022 season. While not necessarily super cumbersome, the Eagles could go on a cheaper route by not firing Pederson. Given Wentz's productivity prior to 2020, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that they throw the 2020 season out of the window and try and see if Wentz can repeat his production of previous years. 2.) Go scorched earth. Firing Doug Pederson and trading Carson Wentz would signal a full rebuild. That means trading off any of the veterans for whatever draft picks you could get. Again, you can't release Carson Wentz due to the monstrous amount of dead cap that would happen by releasing him. At this point, you're stuck with a relative unknown in Jalen Hurts and a likely top 8 draft pick. But given their roster construction and the amount of veterans they've invested in recent years, it seems unlikely they'd rebuild from the ground up. 3.) Fire Doug Pederson. To me, this is the most realistic option. Since his Super Bowl win, he's got a winning percentage of .477 as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles but he's made the playoffs in the last 3 seasons. If you truly believe that Wentz is broken, then the Pederson/Wentz pairing needs to be broken up ASAP. And they've got a lot less invested in Pederson than they do Wentz. Yep, Howie and Doug are signed through 2022. Lurie is fine eating money, but maybe coming off the pandemic he decides to wait. Or maybe only firing one of them. You are right, Carson is here in 2021 no matter what. Only way I can see that change is if Hurts somehow turns the team around in these last couple games...making Wentz want to leave bad enough he reworks the money in his deal to do it. I think Doug is cooked. He’s failed the majority of the games since the Super Bowl to call a good offense, push his coaches/players, have any real accountability in the building aside from a few egregious situations. I think it’s not all his fault, he doesn’t have a lot of power here and Howie’s flawed roster building has hurt us badly. Eagles are likely in a controlling seat in the east (crazy I know) if Howie could draft. As a fan, my number one thing is Howie should be gone. Lucking in to a couple of low buy FAs can’t make a career. Largely Howie has been fairly bad at the football part of his job, and this year he’s getting worse at the business side. We are backed into a corner cap wise with stupid moves like the Alshon deal, bumping everyone’s money back, resigning old guys. Im good with Doug leaving, he seems almost resigned to it. Reports are he even wants it to happen. Carson I’d like to see get a new coach, one who will build around him and play to his strengths. Over the years Wentz has been one of the best QBs on the move...why we don’t implement it at all in the scheme?!? I have zero clue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 5 hours ago, CWood21 said: EDIT: His contract starts to let up after next year. The problem is that 2021 roster bonus is guaranteed. They save nearly $7M if they release Wentz after next season. This is actually incorrect. His bonuses would escalate, and that's about 24 million in dead money, but 15 million of his base salary for 2022 guarantees in 2021, which means his actual dead money via cut would be 39 million and make it about 5-6 million more expensive to cut him than keep him in 2022. OTC / Spotrac doesn't include that because the money hasn't guaranteed yet, but obviously if they are keeping him in 2021 it will, so it has to be added manually (also, if they were to trade him that would go to the new team, but if you're trading him in 2022, that means something probably went wrong and I'm not sure which teams would take that on at that point) Also, it's important to note that we are discounting real dollar application, which in a season of lost revenue, should absolutely be considered. You can trade him this year, not pay another dime, have him for 34 million against your cap for 2021 and be done with it. Or you can keep him another year, have him on the cap in 2021 for 34 million and pay him potentially another 40 million dollars in real cash. Maaaaaaybe you trade him to save 7 million on cap in 2022 (a situation which worst case scenario could require a brock osweiler type move if he's completely awful in 2021) and only have to pay him 25M in real dollars more with a dead cap cap of 24M in 2022, or cut him, have a dead cap hit of 39 million (which could be spread over 2022 and 2023 if you want to make it easier) and pay him 40M more in real cash than you are at right now. I know that we are a bit in the heat of the moment, but if you're an owner, which option appeals to you more? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted December 10, 2020 Share Posted December 10, 2020 1 hour ago, MWil23 said: If/Since this is the case, MAYBE a reunion with Reich would make sense, and Philly paying someone $30+ million of their cap not to even be on the roster would be interesting/almost impossible to think about...but he's been THAT BAD where you'd almost have to consider it. It would be bold and fairly unprecedented. Suh was only a 22 million dollar dead money hit when he was released by the Dolphins. For that reason alone, I think it's highly unlikely, and completely understandable. I still think that is the best way to go about it, but I should mention (because its very possibly true) that Howie has looked at his contracts and cap and realizes that he can't get away from damaging his cap in 2022 regardless and so he isn't as driven to try and put everything on 2021. I could break it all down, but it's a big task just to get them down to the 220M they will need to be at when adding in the 10 million rookie pool if not using any june 1 cuts. I think it's possible, but not sure how much they would want to do it lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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