October 18, 2020
In each of the last three seasons, the Philadelphia Eagles have been buyers at the trade deadline. In 2017, they traded for RB Jay Ajayi. In 2018, they traded for WR Golden Tate. And in 2019, they traded for DE Genard Avery.
In 2020, there's a good argument that the Eagles should be sellers at the deadline, since, you know, they are not a good football team. Selling would allow them to shed contracts of older players in decline, maximize the draft capital return on those players (the trade deadline has historically been a seller's market), allow for 2021 to be a rebuilding year, and attempt to seriously contend again in 2022 and beyond.
According to Jason LaCanfora of CBS, however, the Eagles are poised to be buyers once again.
The Eagles have had a slow start and been ravaged by injuries to certain position groups but remain very much alive in a brutal NFC East and are aggressively approaching the trade deadline, league sources said. General manager Howie Roseman is among the more proactive executives in the league and has already sent signals to multiple teams that he is interested in acquiring some of their talent if they are open to it.
"Howie is on the prowl already," one rival general manager said. "He's looking for action. If there is a trade to be made he'll do it. Bringing in a free agent from the outside is tougher now and more risky with COVID, and he loves to make trades anyway. I'll bet you anything he gets something done before the deadline." [cbssports.com]
Of course, the horrid NFC East is winnable again this season because the New York Giants and the Washington Football Team are both bottom five NFL franchises, and the 2-3 Dallas Cowboys lost Dak Prescott for the season for a broken and dislocated ankle.
As we noted earlier this week, since the Eagles won the Super Bowl in 2017, they have steadily gotten worse and worse as a football team, while also becoming older, more prone to injury, and more cap constrained, with fewer young players making an impact.
The window for this roster to contend for a Super Bowl is closed. We all saw what a championship team looked like in 2017, and very clearly, this isn't it, or close in any way. Sacrificing valuable draft assets to attempt to win the worst division (by far) in football, in the hopes that "anything can happen in the playoffs" would be a delusional overvaluing of what this roster is capable of this season, and is only going to further weaken their chances of adding good, young, cheap talent down the line.
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