The Eagles are continuing to work on trading Haason Reddick per ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler.
The report is that the Eagles have pushed back Reddick’s roster bonus of $1 million by 16 days.
That will keep the team from having to pay that money and could buy them some time to complete a trade without having to encumber more cap penalties for the pass rusher.
The #Eagles are moving Haason Riddick’s $1M roster bonus, originally due March 15, to April 1, per sources.
This in theory buys Philly time for a potential trade before having to pay the money.
— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) March 19, 2024
Reddick can continue his press tour to make it seem like he wants to stay in Philadelphia, but all reports indicate that’d not really the case.
Reddick’s camp reportedly wants $25 million per year and the Eagles are not willing to match. His camp has not budged in a month of negotiating, so all of the talk he’s made about wanting to stay in Philly is half true at the most – best case scenario that means he is prioritizing the money and he means if every team were to offer him $25 million each season he’d choose the Eagles.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with prioritizing the money in the NFL, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of fans when the player talks so much about wanting to stick with a team but makes no effort to even adjust their asking price and make no progress on a deal whatsoever.
The Eagles are likely hoping for a day two pick in the draft, but it’s unclear what they’ll get. It seems that teams like the Jaguars and Titans have inquired on Reddick, but they are also unwilling to meet his $25 million per year demand.
The only team currently thought to be potentially willing to meet that rate is the Atlanta Falcons, who were a bad team unable to convince any of the top free agent edge options to join them this offseason.
Reddick has four straight seasons of over 10 sacks and managed 16 on the defense in Philadelphia in 2022 when he was surrounded by other strong pass rushers.
He’s shown to be a streaky player rather than a consistent force in his time in Philadelphia – last season he managed 11 sack, but over half (6.5) came in just three games. He managed just four and a half sacks across the Eagles other 14 games throughout the season.
When the Eagles were slipping at the end of the year, he showed up big for the Dallas game and then disappeared, registering just seven tackles during the Eagles final five games (including the playoffs) despite his playing over 70% of the snaps. Two of the tackles (and all four of his QB hits) had come against the lowly Giants. He was otherwise a non-factor as the Eagles faced an epic collapse.
Of course, Reddick was frequently played out of position by a poor defensive coaching staff so that’s part of that problem.
The $25 million deal would make Reddick top-five in AAV among edge rushers in the NFL instead of 20th, where he ranks now. It’d also make him the oldest player in the top-10.
He’d be the only player in the top-five that’d already be 30 at the time of his new deal.
Spotrac estimated his AAV valuation to be $16,461,000.
Based on that and the fact that no teams seem to have shown an significant interest in working out a new deal with Reddick’s camp, it would seem highly likely they are overestimating his value despite the fact they have reportedly not given up any ground.
The Eagles don’t need to trade Reddick, but they’d be best served doing so and keeping Josh Sweat around if Reddick’s camp is demanding a deal that it seems there may only be one franchise in the league would be willing to agree to (and even that’s because they couldn’t get the younger guys in FA to join them).
The team would not figure to get much cap relief this season by trading him before June 1st, so they’d need to be receiving good value in order to pull the trigger and not just have Reddick play on the final year of his deal and net a potential comp pick for him in the 2026 draft.
Eagles Offseason Recap:
