Biggest naysayer of possible Carson Wentz trade changes his tune

Biggest naysayer of possible Wentz trade changes his tune originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

For months, former NFL executive and MMQB contributor Andrew Brandt has been unwavering in his belief that Carson Wentz would not be traded.

After this past week, even Brandt is changing his tune.

This is a significant reversal for Brandt, who has said it wouldn’t happen, and at times even laughed at the idea of the Eagles’ trading Wentz because of the $33.8 million in dead money it would leave behind. But if Brandt now thinks it’s going to happen, that financial hurdle pretty obviously isn’t going to prevent the Eagles from pulling off the trade.

As a reminder, here are just a few of Brandt’s tweets over the last couple months when he insisted Wentz won’t be traded.

Brandt is an expert at the business side of football and while he’s most known for his time with the Packers, has even worked with the Eagles in the past. It was Brandt who once helped negotiate Jason Peters’ first contract in Philadelphia. And to be clear, based on the history of the NFL, Brandt was probably right to think the Eagles wouldn’t trade Wentz and eat a dead cap hit of $33.8 million, but things are clearly changing.

Just last week, the Matt Stafford-Jared Goff trade pretty much showed how times are changing. The Lions will end up with $17.8 million in dead cap space for Stafford and the Rams will end up with $22.2 million in dead space for Goff. That Goff dead space is the NFL record, although it looks like Wentz’s dead space will top that by a significant margin pretty soon. Wentz’s dead cap space will be $33.8 million after a trade.

And now it’s starting to look like a matter of when, not if, Wentz gets traded.

The other part of this is compensation. The Eagles clearly want to get back a first-round pick and teams won’t be in a hurry to give them one. But the best case scenario for the Eagles is that they play the market right and get two or more teams bidding against one another. All signs are pointing toward a trade happening.

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