Philadelphia Eagles Report: James Bradberry vetoed multiple trades

In case you haven’t heard, ex-New York Giants cornerback James Bradberry, who was named to the Pro Bowl as recently as 2020, is officially a member of the Philadelphia Eagles.

That’s right, despite signing a massive three-year, $45 million deal back in 2019 to facilitate a move north from North Carolina, new Giants GM Joe Schoen had to cut bait on his premier defensive back due to the poor cap management of his predecessor, Dave Gettleman, and allowed him to test the open market and sign wherever he’d like.

After drawing interest from about a dozen teams around the league, Bradberry chose to take a quick trip down I-95 and join a defensive backfield that also features Darius Slay and Avonte Maddox on a one-year, $10 million contract.

But what if I were to tell you the Philadelphia Eagles almost didn’t have a chance to sign the former second-round pick out of Samford? What if I were to tell you James Bradberry was almost traded away, but he vetoed the deals because he refused to rework his contract?

Bradberry almost ended up in a different green jersey, Philadelphia Eagles fans.

Heading into the offseason, it was no secret that the New York Giants wanted to trade James Bradberry, even if the return wasn’t particularly rich.

With two first-round picks on the books, a tight salary cap situation, and needs at backup quarterback and guard, the Giants simply couldn’t afford the final year of Bradberry’s contract, which had a cap hit of $21.9 million. While the two sides could have agreed to a contract extension, or a contractual re-work that lowered his hit in 2022, Bradberry apparently wasn’t particularly interested in that, as he was already going to earn $2 million from the team if released and would certainly draw robust interest on the open market.

So, to avoid letting Bradberry walk for nothing, Joe Schoen started fielding calls to find a new home for his soon-to-be-former CB1 and actually drew interest from two teams in particular, the Houston Texans and the New York Jets, according to Dan Duggan, who writes about the team for The Athletic. According to Duggan, both teams had talks with the Giants that apparently went pretty far, but both teams ultimately bowed out of discussions after Bradberry refused to agree to a contract re-working that would have paid him roughly $16 million over the next two seasons.

With Bradberry unwilling to accept such a deal, which would eat up the rest of his 20s, the Texans and Jets opted to draft cornerbacks Derrick Stingley and Sauce Gardner with the third and fourth overall picks in the 2022 NFL Draft respectively, and the Giants essentially paid their top cornerback $2 million to sign with the Philadelphia Eagles.

All in all, that worked out pretty well for all parties involved… except for the Giants, of course, as they lost their best cornerback and only replaced him with Cordale Flott, a third-round pick out of LSU that few expect to be a lockdown starter as a rookie.

In the NFL, you can’t keep everyone. While teams can make moves, restructure contracts, and even tack on void years to create “free money” – I’m looking at you, Howie Roseman – sometimes it’s just better to say goodbye to a player, especially if they aren’t interested in working with the team. Had Joe Schoen been more committed to keeping James Bradberry, maybe he’d still be a member of the New York Giants to this day, but because he was very open about his desire to move off of the Pro Bowl cornerback, the player in question took his power into his own hands, refused to re-work his deals with teams that weren’t projected to be very good, and ultimately landed with the Philadelphia Eagles as a result.