Despite what Joe Burrow said, the Philadelphia Eagles can't pay everyone.
Explaining the much-questioned Chauncey Gardner-Johnson trade on Monday from the NFL's Annual League Meeting, general manager Howie Roseman blamed financial restraints.
"Every dollar that you spend is a dollar less that you can spend on some of these younger players that maybe you want to retain," Roseman said, via NBC Sports Philadelphia. "Getting out in front of it was important to us. And again, hard decisions. Not asking anyone to agree with them, but that's part of our job."
The Eagles shipped Gardner-Johnson to Houston in exchange for beleaguered guard Kenyon Green and a late-round pick swap in 2026. The deal gave Philly financial flexibility now instead of kicking the can down the road.
The starting safety was one of several players Philly lost this offseason, watching Josh Sweat, Milton Williams and Mekhi Becton sign bigger deals elsewhere in free agency. Philly prioritized keeping linebacker Zack Baun and extending Saquon Barkley and Lane Johnson.
Roseman has nailed many of his draft picks in recent seasons, and with that comes the need to budget to pay those players eventually -- and some the team already has extended. With that in mind, CJGJ became the odd man out in Philly. The GM understands the criticism of the trade, even saying the "premise is fair" about those panning it, but noted that the deal has to be evaluated in context.
"Well, I think if you're just taking the C.J. move in a vacuum, obviously, it's kind of not giving the whole perspective of where we're at," Roseman said. "Chauncey did a great job for us in both the years that he was with us, obviously making the Super Bowl twice in two years with him as our starting safety. When you look at our team and you look at the amount of highly paid players who have earned their contracts -- we've got eight guys who are making $15 million or more. We have, from 2022 to 2024 drafts, we have eight starters who are on the Super Bowl team. None of those guys have long-term contracts. In those drafts, we probably have five or six players that will be competing for starting jobs. So you have a lot of players coming through that aren't under long-term contracts, plus a lot of guys who are on long-term contracts, and we never want to be in a situation where we have one year where we're getting rid of 20 guys.
"And we've been very fortunate to be aggressive in keeping our guys and signing guys in free agency. And it's also gotta align with (the) draft and having young players. Certainly, that's the important thing to do is draft well and then keep your players. We've got to make sure that going forward we have an opportunity to do that as well. A lot of those players that we're talking about are good young players that we're excited about."
The key to building a sustainable winner in the modern era has always been about getting productive young players to bolster those highly paid players on the roster. At times, that means making tough decisions to let good players walk. To keep his team competing for Super Bowls year in and year out, Roseman decided to part with a popular player for pennies on the dollar -- so that he could spend that coin elsewhere. It might not be the prettiest deal, but the Eagles GM has earned the benefit of the doubt even on questionable moves.
