Philly Front Office

I was convinced that Dallas Goedert wasn’t coming back next season. He was owed $15m and had a big ol’ dead cap number set to rise to the top of the balance sheet like indigestion after eating bad pizza. It was already bad, but if we kept eating, it would only get worse. Then, almost like the pizza had some built in Tums, it relented. Dallas Goedert took a $5m pay cut to remain with the Eagles this season. He did NOT have to do that.

About a week ago, George Kittle signed a 4/$76m extension which works out to about $19m per season. Kittle is about 14 months older than Goedert. Why should one be getting an extension while the other takes a pay cut? The answer wasn’t about money. Goedert must believe that the Eagles have something special and he just simply wants to be a part of it. He is not the only one.

DeVonta Smith

When it comes to Eagles contracts, the first one you should think of is DeVonta Smith. Before last season, he signed a 3/$75m contract extension. He did this early on in the process, well before the other top receivers in his draft class. Even when it was signed, it looked like a discount. Even though he is WR2 on the Eagles, he would be #1 on most teams. His production isn’t what it could be because the Eagles run more than any other team. On the open market, he could have received $30m+ per year.

Just a month before Smith signed, Calvin Ridley opened a WR spending spree by signing a ridiculous deal with the Titans at 4/$92m. He had just missed the whole season due to a gambling suspension and had no leverage, but he set the market floor for everyone else anyway. That spring and summer WR salaries went off thanks to the crazy 2020 and 2021 WR Draft classes. A week after Smith, Amon-Ra St. Brown signed for 4/$120m. Jaylen Waddle received 3/$85m from Miami with almost $25m more guaranteed than Smith. DJ Moore resigned with Chicago for 4/$110m. Nico Collins received 3/$73m from Houston. CeeDee Lamb got 4/$136m from Dallas. A few days after Lamb, Brandon Aiyuk signed the most absurd deal of the run with a 4/$120m contract from the 49ers. Are you telling me Aiyuk is worth more than DeVonta?

The guy who signs last, gets paid best in the NFL. Smith did the opposite. He saw a “good enough” number at $25m and took it. He had to have known that this would be immediately eclipsed by his contemporaries.

Jordan Mailata

Right before Smith signed his extension, the Eagles locked up Mailata for 3/$66m. $22m seems fine for an ascending LT, but oh was it a steal. He had signed an extension in 2021 that paid him around $16m per year through 2025. That means his old contract still had 2 years left when he signed his extension. That’s right, the extension Mailata signed before last season doesn’t kick in until after this coming season!!! When it was signed, the $22m per year would be the 3rd highest at the position. Like Smith though, it was signed before everyone else that year. Tristan Wirfs, Trent Williams, Penei Sewell, and Christian Darrisaw all passed him that summer. Since then, Jake Matthews passed him too with coming extensions for Charles Cross, Bernhard Raimann, Kolton Miller, and Rashawn Slater likely pushing him further down the list.

Did I mention that Mailata was PFF’s top rated player last year? Not top rated LT, top rated player! The Eagles will be paying him like a middle of the pack LT for the next 4 years!!!

Jalen Hurts

It’s crazy to think that making Hurts the highest paid player in league history at the time was a discount, but it was. He signed a 5/$255m contract in April 2023. Here we are 2 years later and the Super Bowl MVP is about to fall out of the top 10 for the position once Brock Purdy signs his deal. He knew this would happen when he signed the deal. Coming off an outstanding performance in the Super Bowl, Jalen had all the leverage to wait out coming extensions for Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, and Lamar Jackson. Instead, he set the market for those 3 guys. He set the market for the next year’s lackluster crop of QBs too. This resulted in better contracts for Trevor Lawrence, Jordan Love, and Tua Tagovailoa. If you want to see what could have happened, just look at our friends down in Dallas. While Jalen was signing his contract, the Cowboys spent another year haggling with Dak Prescott. Because of this one year delay, Dallas ended up paying him almost 20% more to be a worse QB than Jalen.

Dallas Goedert

Earlier this offseason Trey McBride set the new TE market with his 4/$76m extension. McBride is 25. George Kittle topped that despite being 32 not too long after. Travis Kelce signed a $17m per year contract last offseason at 34 years old. Goedert was under contract this season for about $15m ($1m salary with a $14m option bonus). This put him 5th on the TE list. The Eagles let a lot of players go this offseason because they had competent backups at all of these positions. The one they didn’t have a plan for was linebacker and that’s why Zack Baun was the only big free agent to come back. They do not have a succession plan in place for TE. Without Goedert, TE1 would be Grant Calcaterra. What I’m getting at, is that Goedert had leverage.

So, with two older guys getting paid more than him and the younger guys already starting to move the market, Goedert probably could have received a 3/$45m deal from someone as a free agent. His options were to stay on his contract and receive $15m or get a longer term deal at around the same price. Instead, he is taking a 1 year $10m deal which amounts to a $5m pay cut. This is astonishing. Instead of trying to remain in the top-5, he drops to around 13th, just above Taysom freaking Hill!

I have been writing about this for weeks that I thought he was done, because I just didn’t see any reason for him to do something like this. Something not to forget when evaluating Goedert is that there might not be a better deal out there for him next year. My estimate of 3/$45 is there for a 30 year old coming off a Super Bowl, not a 31 year old coming off a season we haven’t seen yet. He knows this. He signed this deal anyway. I seriously underestimated the kind of team culture the Eagles have built here.

As always, numbers courtesy of Spotrac.com. They are the best.