Philly Front Office

The Eagles have traded John Metchie and a 2027 6th round pick to the New York Jets for CB Michael Carter II and a 2027 7th round pick. Basically, the teams valued Carter slightly higher than Metchie. So, who is Michael Carter II and what does he mean for the Eagles?

NFL Trade Deadline Primer: Eagles Targets

First, Carter isn’t a nobody. It was just a year ago when Carter looked like the best nickel corner in football. For 2 years PFF ranked him as an elite corner so the Jets rewarded the former 5th rounder with a huge contract for the position, 3/$30.75m with $19m guaranteed. The most important part of this for Eagles purposes though is that his 2025 salary only has around $750k left on it, so his and Metchie’s salaries offset. As for the next 2 years, each is worth around $10m in salary, but only around $1m total is guaranteed.

When he was originally selected, the Jets banked on Carter’s exceptional speed to make up for his lack of size. Look at his spider chart and you will see that 4.36 speed makes up for being 5’10” in his case. It isn’t just in line sprint speed though as Carter ranked highly in all of the running metrics. This is ideal for his nickel CB position.

So, what happened? How did he go from being the best CB in the NFL to traded for very little? Injuries. Last year, Carter missed time with a back injury. He only missed 4 games, but even the games he did play, they weren’t risking him with much work. He went from playing about 2/3s of snaps down to about 1/10, basically garbage time and dime packages. This year, the back is fine, but he has dealt with concussion setbacks including missing 3 weeks. The good news was that he was back in the lineup this weekend. The bad news is that he has not been very effective when he has played. Hopefully the Eagles are better with medicals than the Sixers and Phillies and Carter is ok.

John Metchie to the Eagles

If the deal works out and Carter goes back to his old ways, he is an elite addition to the secondary. In his first 5 seasons, Carter only gave up 3 TDs. That’s absurdly good. It is also exactly what this team needed. With Carter in the slot, this likely means Cooper DeJean is your everyday CB2 from here on out. Since Carter has 2 more years left on his deal and no dead money for the Eagles they could go one of three ways assuming they don’t just keep his $10m cap hit on the books:

• They could just cut him regardless of performance. This means they felt he was just a rental, thank him for his service, and move on with no cap consequences other than his $1m guarantee.
• They could restructure his deal. This means he would cost around $3.25m next year in cap hit but $6.75m would be split over the next 3 years. That’s probably what the Eagles will do to keep their options open.
• They could sign him to an extension. With nothing truly on his books going forward, the Eagles can treat it as exclusive negotiating rights with a free agent and clean up his deal. This would get Carter more guaranteed money while making things neat for the Eagles. Pure speculation on my part.

If the deal doesn’t work out, then that only means we lost a barely used WR5 and slight draft position. Thanks to his contract, he can be cut with almost no penalty. Ian Rappaport is rappa-reporting that he also gave up $5m in injury guaranteed salary next year to make this happen.

With the CB situation seemingly dealt with, now look for Howie to add to the pass rush.