Carson Wentz, Philadelphia Eagles. (Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports)
There is a way for the Philadelphia Eagles to trade Carson Wentz and avoid salary cap hell.
If the Philadelphia Eagles were to trade former No. 2 overall pick Carson Wentz this offseason, he would cost his former team upwards of $34 million in dead money.
Wentz was benched in favor of second-round rookie in the last quarter of the 2020 NFL season. While it seems like a move off Wentz feels inevitable, the Eagles may not be prepared to eat all that money in dead cap for 2021. But what if I told you there was a slim, albeit largely improbable way for the Eagles to get roughly only a third of that amount in dead cap. So let us investigate this.
The ball is entirely in Carson Wentz’s court here to save the Eagles’ tails
Matt Mullin of The Philly Voice outlines the narrow line in which the Eagles can walk and not have to swallow $34 million in dead cap. The idea Mullin suggests is for Wentz to agree to pay $20 million of his roster bonus to the Eagles before March 2021. This would lower the Eagles’ dead cap to about $13 to $14 million or so. But why would Wentz even want to agree to this nonsense?
This would be a good faith gesture by Wentz to get a clean break out of town so he could be traded to another club, where he could theoretically ink a signing bonus to recoup the difference. So he would be able to make a fair salary and not put the Eagles in major financial dire straits for trading him. While this sounds great in theory, there are not enough incentives to make it work.
Wentz would be doing the Eagles a huge favor to pay them back $20 million to be traded to a team like the Indianapolis Colts or the New England Patriots. Those are two of the likeliest potential trade destinations for him. Colts head coach Frank Reich was Wentz’s former Eagles offensive coordinator. New England must accept that Cam Newton is not the long-term answer.
The other caveat here is teams like the Colts and the Patriots would have to agree to pay Wentz the amount of money he gave back to the Eagles as part of a signing bonus. Surely, a new team would give him something, but maybe not the $20 million he would have to theoretically give up to the Eagles as a favor to be traded. It is incredibly messy, but it could yield a clean break any way.
If Wentz were to be dealt this offseason, this would be the most amicable divorce possible here.