Philadelphia Eagles: Stafford-Goff trade forever changes the QB landscape

With one trade a little after midnight on a sleepy Sunday morning, the NFL quarterback landscape was changed forever.

In a move that was both expected and deeply, bone-shakingly surprising, the Los Angeles Rams opted to trade franchise quarter Jared Goff – the first overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft who signed a monster four-year extension worth $134 million with $110 million guaranteed – despite having a near non-existent market for his services. While the decision to get off of Goff’s contract wasn’t particularly surprising, as general manager Les Snead pretty clearly telegraphed the move in an Aaron Rodgers quoting media availability session, what was incredibly truly gobsmacking and woefully consequential – was who the Rams got back in the deal and what else they needed to surrender to get it done.

That’s right; despite the aforementioned Rodgers quote and a lack of market interest, Snead opted to go all-in on winning now by trading for longtime Lions signal-caller Matthew Stafford, marking the first time in 12 years, save a 2014 Pro Bowl appearance, the former first overall pick played quarterback in anything but Honolulu blue, silver, and white jersey.

If it was a one-for-one swap, that wouldn’t be particularly noteworthy from a historical standpoint. While teams don’t often swap starting quarterbacks one-for-one via trade, the most recent example being Sam Bradford for Nick Foles back in 2015, the decision to trade a young yet flawed quarterback fresh off three playoff runs in four seasons for an older signal-caller with much more natural talent but no real postseason success would be a character study in team building.

But what actually happened, the full deal that was agreed to in principle but can’t technically go down until March, may very well change the quarterback landscape as we see it moving forward.

The Philadelphia Eagles QB competition just became more complicated.

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As you may or may not know, the Philadelphia Eagles are engulfed in a bit of a quarterback controversy.

In one corner, we have Carson Wentz, the player selected one pick after Goff, who has played like an MVP candidate at times but struggled immensely in 2020. His fans love him wholeheartedly, while his detractors want nothing more than to ship him out of town to Indianapolis, or Iowa City, or really wherever else they play organized football and would be willing to surrender draft capital for the 28-year-old’s services.

And in the other? We have Jalen Hurts, the 53rd overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft who wasn’t exactly a sure-thing prospect coming into the league but brought a spark to Doug Pederson’s 2020 offense that almost single-handedly turned the Eagles season around down to the stretch.

Does one quarterback have an inside track to win the job outright and continue on as the Eagles quarterback indefinitely? Not if you believe Nick Sirianni, who said the position is still being evaluated moving forward in his opening press conference, but objectively, the line does appear to be slightly favoring Wentz depending on whether or not he demands a trade.

Why is this relevant? Well, there is a very, very small chance the Eagles actually finish out the 2021 season with both of those quarterbacks on their roster if things are close, assuming, of course, Hurts doesn’t clearly lose the competition cleanly – and the one who “loses” will surely at least have their representatives look into the possibility of a trade, right?

Right, but that move just became a whole lot harder to pull off if Wentz is the quarterback on the move.

Want to trade Hurts? Sure, no biggie. He’s signed to a four-year, $6 million deal and can be moved with no more than $2.9 million left on the books in dead money over the next three years. Will the Eagles get back a second-round pick for his services? Maybe so. Maybe they’ll even get a higher pick, or, more realistically, they’d have to settle for a Day 3 selection and maybe a marginal player.

But if the Philadelphia Eagles want to move off of Carson Wentz? My goodness, things just got very complicated.

You see, according to Ian Rapoport, the Lions had seven total offers on the table for Stafford, including a few worth more than a first-round pick. What exactly were these offers? We may never know, but according to the reporting of Ed Werder – and others – we do know that the Rams had to “overpay” for Stafford to explicitly get off of Goff’s massive cap hit.

That, my friends, is what you call a precedent.

Now sure, this isn’t the first time a team traded an asset to another team NBA style to get out of a bad contract. The Texans famously traded Brock Osweiler, a second-round pick, and a sixth-round pick to the Browns for a fourth-round pick in a move many initially criticized profusely in 2017 and that helped them to free up money to build a team around a rookie quarterback. Granted, that isn’t really what happened, as the Texans haven’t fielded a serious contender during the Deshaun Watson-era, but hey, that was the idea.

With a second example now on the books according to Werder, teams with excess cap space are going to start weaponizing it, especially when they are in a position of power.

So, just for the sake of argument, let’s say Indianapolis thinks Wentz is worth two first-round picks. He probably isn’t, but hey, it’s just for the sake of simplicity; let’s say he is. While the Colts could surely surrender those picks and walk away with their new franchise QB, why wouldn’t they offer a first-round pick and say final offer? Like the Rams, the Eagles would have to do some seriously heavy lifting to keep Wentz around, so they aren’t really operating out of a position of power. If the Colts want to give up less because they are the only bidder and the Eagles need to sell, they can now point to the Rams-Goff situation as an inverse example of the very same situation.

Is Wentz a better quarterback than Goff? Yes, even after a down 2020 season, I imagine most talent evaluators would say he is. But is he that much better to the point where his bloated contract becomes an asset? Even with the Eagles eating a good portion of the dead money on their books, I imagine there aren’t a ton of GMs willing to stake their career on being able to get the 28-year-old back to MVP form with millions less money to play with and a few fewer draft picks on the books.

Remember, there really wasn’t a market for Goff. This deal with the Lions was pretty much the only opportunity the Rams had to get off his contract and still walk away with an upgrade at the QB position – especially without a first-round pick in 20201. While there would presumably be a bigger market for Wentz because of his higher upside, there are only so many teams capable of taking on his contract without surrendering money in return, which is a no-no for Howie Roseman and company, and even fewer who would pay the sort of price the Lions got for Stafford without getting something in return for their cap space (aka cap relief off of a bad contract).

If all things are equal, this new financial paradigm may be the thing that keeps Wentz in an Eagles jersey and sends Hurts to the bench or even the Philadelphia International Airport.

Next. Nick Sirianni not having roster control is a good thing. dark

Is Matthew Stafford specifically the missing piece to a championship roster? No. While the Los Angeles Rams clearly consider him a clear upgrade over their long time signal-caller, I imagine they would have just as happily made a deal for Dashun Watson or Aaron Rodgers if they were on the table. The difference is, neither the Houston Texans nor the Green Bay Packers were willing to accept the packages LA had to offer, especially with Jared Goff’s contract having to be included in the deal, and the Detroit Lions had the cap space/desire to facilitate it. While this may ultimately have little effect on the Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback competition, the deal’s precedent-setting conditions that cap space = draft compensation could come back to haunt Howie Roseman and company if they need to ship out their own $100 million man a few months down the line.

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