Yesterday evening, ESPN's Jim Trotter reported that the reason that Chip Kelly and the Philadelphia Eagles weren't able to reach an extension prior to the 2015 season was that Tom Condon, Bradford's agent, asked the Eagles to give Bradford an average annual salary of $25 million per season.
Here is the video of Trotter reporting Bradford sought $25 million per year from Eagles: pic.twitter.com/pZ71qUPsfA
— Gym Shorts (@IgglesCoverage) January 20, 2016
As Benjamin Allbright of AM 1340 in Denver points out, the timing of this information becoming public is interesting.
#Eagles FO leaking Bradford contract talk starting point $$ gets them leverage + less blowback from fans when they get him at $15mil per.
— Benjamin Allbright (@AllbrightNFL) January 20, 2016
It certainly is possible that the Eagles, as he said, sat on this information until now, and chose to leak the information to Trotter in hopes that if the Eagles sign him to a deal for less money than that it still looks good.
Regardless of that, Bradford's agent was well within his rights to basically ask to be blown away for Bradford to sign an extension before playing a game for the Eagles.
Bradford, now finished with his rookie deal, has made $78 million in his six years as property of the NFL. He may not have a great legacy, he may not have actually played six seasons, but he got paid at a high clip for six seasons. If he has managed things right, him and his family should be set for life.
So despite the fact that if Bradford sustained a serious injury for the third straight season in 2015 it would have likely ended his career and cost him at least another $78 million, because he was paid so handsomely in his first deal, he could afford to bet on himself.
And prior to the season, especially given how well Bradford looked in the offense in both training camp and the pre-season, there was a fairly widespread belief that Bradford had a chance to blow away the six-year/$78 million rookie deal that he was in the process of finishing. The Eagles were a team that looked loaded with offensive weapons, with an offensive head-coach that some felt could get the best out of quarterbacks, and Bradford looked the part until the season actually started.
Obviously, 2015 didn't go as planned for the team or for Bradford. Bradford came on strong late in the season, but was inconsistent at best throughout the first half of the season and did miss two games with a concussion/shoulder injury. The Eagles as a team didn't turn out to be the offensive powerhouse many predicted them to be prior to the season, or really anything that close to that.
And yet, here's Bradford.
He's not going to get as many years as his rookie deal, but even after an inconsistent season, he's going to be offered more overall money than his rookie contract paid him. And that's whether the Eagles choose to be the team that pays him now or not.
2015 didn't go as well as planned for Bradford on the field, but his agent hit a homerun. He won't get the $25 million annually that his agent asked for, but he bet on himself, which was a smart bet. Had he lit it up in Kelly's system like some had predicted he would, he may have gotten a deal that paid him in that range annually. Instead, he's going to fall back for a deal that pays him in the neighborhood of $20 million per season, which probably isn't all that different from what the Eagles were offering prior to the season.
Tim Kelly (@TimKellySports) is an editorial assistant for Eagledelphia.com.
