Eagles Trade for Chase Young or Montez Sweat on NFL Draft Night as GM Howie Roseman 'Surprise'?
There are wholesale changes coming to the Washington Commanders with the impending sale of the franchise.
Daniel Snyder is out, and many will say good riddance to an owner who turned a once-proud franchise into a disjointed mess. He’ll pocket $6 billion, per reports, for his mismanagement.
The rest of the NFC East may not feel that good about Snyder leaving because the Commanders, if that will still be the name they use, probably will get better now.
First, the arrival of the new could usher out some of the old. At least in terms of personnel.
Like Chase Young and Montez Sweat, for instance.
Young, the third overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, is coming into the final year of his rookie contract. The Commanders have until May 2 to pick up his fifth-year option.
Young’s salary cap charge this season is $10.9 million. By waiting until after June 1 to trade him -should they go in that direction – the Commanders would gain $5.2M in salary-cap relief with a dead-money hit of $5.6M.
As for Sweat, Washington picked up the fifth-year option on him last year, so he is entering the final year of his rookie contract with a salary of $11.5M. He was the 26th overall selection in the 2019 draft.
All players sign four-year contracts when they enter the NFL, but it’s only the first-rounders who have fifth-year options that a team can either pick up or not.
Many teams would probably covet both players if made available, including the Philadelphia Eagles.
General manager Howie Roseman pulled the biggest surprise of last year’s draft by trading for A.J. Brown and negotiating a $100 million contract extension before the deal was announced.
Young or Sweat would constitute another big surprise, and they make sense for a team that values the trenches.
A torn ACL suffered in Week 10 of Young’s second season lingered into last year and he played just three games.
The hope would be that he would revert to the form he showed in 2020 when he won the Defensive Rookie of the Year award following a season in which he had 7.5 sacks, four forced fumbles, and three fumble recoveries after bursting onto the scene from Ohio State.
He just turned 24 on April 14 and would be worth betting on.
Sweat is 26 and has put up consistent sack numbers since making it to the NFL. Though he has yet to reach double-figures yet in any one season, he had eight last year and owns 29 in 54 games, all of which were starts.
Contracts, of course, are always an issue, and Washington is paying a king’s ransom for a defensive front that simply isn’t as good as the Eagles.
The Commanders just gave defensive lineman Daron Payne a new deal this offseason, signing him to a four-year, $90 million deal on March 12.
That came on the heels of a contract extension for defensive tackle Jonathan Allen, who signed a four-year contract extension last July worth $72M.
Young and Sweat only add to that cost and maybe the new owners may decide that’s too much to spend on four players, and Roseman finds a way to swoop in.
Ed Kracz covers the Philadelphia Eagles for SI's EaglesToday.
Please follow him and our Eagles coverage on Twitter at @kracze.
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