There are few trades in the history of my fandom that have been more satisfying than the Eagles getting rid of Sam Bradford. It had the total package of making the team better, making room for a rookie, and getting value for something that had none. Let’s remember…
Shortly after Howie Roseman lost his control of the roster to Chip Kelly, Sam Bradford became an Eagle. This was the infamous Nick Foles trade that had the Rams getting the better QB AND the #43 pick. It was terrible the minute it happened and never got better. He was coming off a completely missed season for God’s sake!
Anyway, the season went predictably bad. In 14 games, Bradford managed 14 picks and only 19 TDs. The offense flopped in Chip’s second season and he was mercifully fired by the end of the year. Good riddance. Howie Roseman was back.
Howie was hell bent on trading up in that year’s draft with his eye on Carson Wentz. A few trades were made and the Eagles had the #2 overall pick. In the process though, Howie also signed backup QB Chase Daniel to a 3/$21m free agent contract and gave out a 2/$36m extension to Bradford. What in the world was going on? Were we really going to go into the new season with 3 QBs?
I have no idea what the original plan was, but a Howie optimist could read this as the Bradford extension giving him more value for having a locked in contract and more leverage seeing as how the eagles were never going to just let him go and eat the contract. That would be giving a LOT of credit to taking a gamble though.
As the season drew closer, the Eagles still had their 3 QBs except it was pretty clear in training camp that the rookie, Wentz, was performing way better than the other two. What the hell were we going to do with Bradford and why the hell did we sign Daniel? Howie better have a trick up his sleeve.
Then the news hit out of Minnesota, on August 30th Vikings starting QB Teddy Bridgewater tore his ACL and basically everything else in his knee.1 The Vikings had legitimate Super Bowl aspirations that year and their only QB was journeyman backup Shaun Hill. They also just moved into the brand-new US Bank Stadium. They were desperate.
Vikings GM called up Howie Roseman and got Bradford for the ridiculous price of a 2017 1st round pick and a 2018 4th.2 Despite a relatively bad to mediocre year in Philly, the Eagles were somehow able to profit from the original Bradford trade with the Rams. This also paved the way for Carson Wentz to start AND to further cleanse the roster from the Chip Kelly stain.
That 2017 1st was extra important for the Eagles. Since the Carson Wentz trade cost their own first that year, the Eagles were without. The Draft just happened to be in Philadelphia that year too. Imagine the Draft in a city without a pick? The pick turned out to be Derek Barnett who would recover the Brandon Graham strip sack of Tom Brady in the Super Bowl just 10 months after he was selected. The 4th round pick ended up being Josh Sweat who just happened to have 2.5 sacks in Super Bowl 59.
Just an All-Time great trade.
Photo: Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- He was never the same after that ↩︎
- I always love thinking about the extra picks in already lopsided deals. Was Howie really going to walk away if he didn’t get the 4th as well? ↩︎
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