Albert Breer on Myles Garrett to Rams, Patriots Land A.J. Brown, OBJ Back with Giants

I think it makes sense on both sides.

All right.

Welcome in to the Brew Report for Monday, June 1st.

Happy June, everybody.

This is a big day in the NFL calendar, of course, for salary cap purposes, and it did enable two pretty big trades in the NFL on Monday.

One, everyone expected, the other one that was probably a little bit out of nowhere for a lot of people watching this.

And we're gonna start with that one.

And that is the trade of Miles Garrett, perhaps the best player in all of football, seven-time All-Pro, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year from the Cleveland Browns to the Los Angeles Rams for pass rusher Jared Burse, a 2027 first-round pick, a 2028 second-round pick, and a 2029 third-round pick.

Outside of a franchise quarterback being traded, you won't see a bigger trade than this one.

And this has been in the works for a while.

So I wanna start with some of the history here.

And this really goes back.

To the Rams' failed attempt to trade for AJ Brown.

And I, I think even calling it a failed attempt to be a little bit of a stretch because what happened there, and this is going back to March, was the Rams had looked at the idea of bringing in AJ Brown and offloading Devonte Adams.

And the idea was to send a first-round pick off way into the future, it would have been a 2028 first-round pick as part of that deal.

Um, which incidentally wound up becoming the return that the Eagles did get for AJ Brown, and again, we'll get to that in a little bit.

Um, and replace effectively Devonte Adams, who is their ex, with AJ Brown, who would have been their ex-receiver.

They didn't do it because they couldn't come up with a corresponding deal of Devonte Adams out of town, and because there was some concern with the condition of Brown's knee, but it got them thinking about pivoting.

And what other big swings can we take?

And they feel like they're so close now with the team that was in the NFC title game, a team that came as close to knocking the Seahawks out of the playoffs as anyone and did so in Seattle.

How could you add to that team?

What would make a team that's already really good better?

And the answer wound up being the very best player in football.

And what facilitated this, interestingly enough, was drafting Ty Simpson 13th overall.

And I've told you guys for a while, if you're looking at this as something that can't help Matthew Stafford, you're looking at it the wrong way cause internally, the way that the Rams saw it.

Was that taking Ty Simpson 13th overall freed them up to use 1st and 2nd and 3rd-round picks in the future to make their team better now because they didn't have to worry anymore about how they were gonna replace Matthew Stafford as their quarterback.

So, around the draft, the Browns and Rams were talking, and they kept talking, and they kept talking, talking, knowing they had the June 1st day to work towards.

Back in late March, the Browns had moved the execution date of an option bonus, which is $29.

2 million of the a little over $30 million he's due this year from March.

To September.

And so that gave the Browns the flexibility to trade all of his money for 2026 instead of having 29.2 million of that tied up.

Of course, the last couple of weeks, you've noticed Miles Garrett has been absent from OTAs, which isn't unusual, but I think, you know, raised some, raised some, sounded some alarms for some people.

And over the last few weeks, they started to hammer out the, the real details here and got to the point where Jarrett versus included as a part of the deal.

Now, the Rams knew this was gonna be uncomfortable, that they were gonna wind up finding a way to get Miles Garrett.

And giving up Jarrett Burs was uncomfortable.

In fact, part of the reason why this thing was kept under wraps as long as it was, and really over the last 24, 48 hours, um, was the Rams wanted to talk to Jarrett Burse one on one.

The head coach in Los Angeles, of course, Sean McVeigh went through this a few years ago with Jared Goff.

He didn't want to mess this up.

He wanted to be able to deliver the news to Verse.

It's a very, very difficult thing for them to move on from him.

They love Verse.

But the opportunity to get the best player in football again, too great an opportunity to walk away from.

So, what does this mean going forward now?

Well, for the Rams, it's pretty simple.

That was a team last year that was playing for an NFC championship, was toe to toe with the eventual Super Bowl champions, lost in the in the final two minutes of that game, and that team is coming back largely intact.

Now it's losing Jarrett Burse, but it's adding Trent McDuffie and Miles Garrett to the defense.

Has now the reigning MVP, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year on the same roster.

And And they're doing this at a time when the Super Bowl is in Los Angeles, the same way when they initially traded for Matthew Stafford, the Super Bowl was in Los Angeles.

We all know what wound up happening at the end of that year.

We'll see if they get a similar result this time around.

For the Browns, there was a principle here for Andrew Barry, their general manager, and it was really a three-pronged thing, right?

And what it was gonna take for him to move on from Miles Garrett.

Number 1, This could not be a normal standard to first-round picks for an elite player, for an elite non-quarterback trade.

It had to be more than that.

It had to serve both the Browns short term and their long-term, and that meant getting an active player as part of the deal.

It couldn't just be picks.

Number 2, as part of that, they wanted to get a player who was already a star at a premium position on a cost-controlled contract.

They accomplished that with verse.

And then number 3, they wanted to walk away with premium draft capital.

They, of course, are now doing that with the 1st-round pick next year, a 2nd-round pick the year after that, and a 3rd-round pick the year after that.

So they essentially have added top 100 picks in 3 consecutive years on top of getting A Pro Bowl pass rusher, and Jared Burse, who is just 25 years old.

Here's the other thing.

It matches up with the way that the, the Browns are building now.

And if you want to go back to 13 months and look at the Travis Hunter trade, when the Browns traded out of the 2nd pick and traded out of the opportunity to draft Hunter, who they viewed as a special talent.

They did it as an acknowledgement, we're not a player away.

We need to reboot.

We need to get younger across the board.

They felt the effects of losing those three first-round picks in the Deshaun Watson trade, and they needed to create a, a layer of young talent.

That's happening now.

Last year's draft class showed a lot of, a lot of, a lot of potential, um, with the Defensive Rookie of the Year, Carson Schlesinger, a disruptive defensive tackle and Mason Graham.

Two running backs who can be a part of the equation, and Quinhaw Judkins and Dylan Sampson, a move tight end, Harold Fannon, who looks like he's gonna be a real player.

You got the two young quarterbacks as part of that too.

And then you come back this year, you got 3 top 40 picks, those wind up being offensive tackles, Spencer Fno, who they expect to be their left tackle of the future and two receivers in Casey Concepcion, perhaps the best run after the catch player in the draft.

And Denzel Boston, who is a great contested catch guy, a bigger body than Concepcion, a more physical target, more of your big outside X type of weapon.

So, into that group now, you're injecting the 25 year old verse versus timeline matches up with those guys' timeline in a way that maybe Miles Garrett's timeline didn't match up.

If they waited a couple of years and moved Miles Garrett a couple of years from now, they probably couldn't have gotten this sort of return.

And now it sets up a course for them to go and find their next quarterback.

Whether that quarterback is Deshaun Watson, Shado Sanders, or somebody who's not on the roster now, I think that's probably the more likely scenario, somebody they get 27 or 28.

But by the time they get there, by the time they get to 27 or 28, they should have a really good young team that's got a lot of assets to continue to improve.

So, again, I think it makes sense on both sides.

All right, our second topic for today is AJ Brown being traded to the New England Patriots.

This is the one everyone expected now.

The, the, the details of the deal.

The Patriots will send a 2028 first-round pick to Philadelphia and also a 2027 fifth-round pick.

They got a 5th-round pick um earlier in the offseason from Chicago in return for Garrett Bradbury.

The 5th-rounder, they said to Philly will be the higher of those two picks.

OK, so, why did the Patriots do this?

Well, they're taking advantage of being in a window with their young quarterback.

He's on a rookie contract.

They want to try to take advantage of that.

They've got the financial flexibility to do so.

AJ Brown's contract calls for $50 million over the next 2 years.

Um, and this will allow for them to slot some of their other skill position players into roles that are probably more suitable for who they are.

Romeo Dobbs becomes a really good number 2.

Um, Hunter Henry, of course, is the tight end, doesn't need to be as much of a focal point in the red zone anymore.

They've got Traveon Henderson now, a running back.

They've got a young receiver in Kyle Williams, who can be the burner, you know, when you've got Brown and Dobbs, neither of whom are, are, are bringing that speed element to the offense.

So, if you're talking about building the skill group like a basketball team, AJ Brown kind of completes that paradigm for them.

And I think if you want to look at like how he'll be used in Josh McDaniel's offense, Devonte Adams, the way that Devonte Adams played for Josh McDaniels in Vegas as the ex, he led the NFL in targets, had over 100 catches over 1500 yards in 2022.

Like that'll be the sort of role they carve out for AJ Brown.

As for the Eagles.

This to me is just sort of where they are, and they've poured so much into the last 4 or 5 years, and that is such a credit to Howie Roseman and Jeffrey Laurie, and how aggressively they built.

They went to 2 Super Bowls, they made the playoffs 4 years in a row, they won a championship.

Um, they've spent cash over cap consistently.

And so, you do have to start to manage that.

And to me, this is the start of the management of that, of course, there was the issue between Brown and Hurts, which is a big piece of this.

Um, and they have been preparing through the offseason for it.

While the Patriots didn't spend a single draft pick on a receiver, not in the 1st round, not in the 7th round, not in any round in between.

The Eagles traded up to get Makai Lemon in the first round.

They bring in Hollywood Brown on a one-year contract.

They trade for Jontavian Wicks from the Packers and extend him for a year.

And oh by the way, they have Devonta Smith on hand, and Devonta Smith, I think you'd argue, became the Eagles' number one receiver over Brown last year.

So, it's just where the Eagles are, and I think they have prepared themselves in that receiver room for the departure of Brown.

So, that would be the logic on both sides.

Finally, our third topic, speaking of receivers, Odell Beckham is returning to the New York Giants.

And I think it's important first, as much as I like this story, and I love the fact that Odell Beckham loves football enough to keep fighting to get himself back on the field.

I think it's important that we look at what we're talking about here.

You're not getting the Odell Beckham of 2016 if you're the Giants.

And he was a great, great player back then, but I'll just give you some facts, all right?

And I have them written down here.

He's heading into what will be his 13th NFL season if he hadn't sat out the 22 and 25 seasons.

So, yeah, he's the same draft class as Johnny Manziel.

He's the same draft class as Jadeveon Clowney.

He's the same draft class.

As Mike Evans.

Like you look at all those guys as being far on the back end, that's the stage of, of, of a career that Odell Beckham is in.

He turns 34 in November.

His last 1,000-yard season came in 2019 with the Browns.

That was also the last time he even went for 600 yards.

And the last time he had more than 20 yards receiving in a game was in December 2023.

So, let's just take a very sober look at this.

This is a guy who's coming in along with Juju Smith-Schuster, as, as I see it, as insurance for Malik Neighbors.

And Malik Neighbors coming off the ACL.

He's had the follow-up surgeries.

Uh, you know, there's, there's, there's hope that he's gonna be out there for a week one, but I think given all that Malik Neighbors has been through, it's tough to count on that now.

So you bring in guys who've got some experience in both Smith-Schuster and, and, and Beckham, and you get Beckham with a coach that he's worked with before in John Harbaugh, good insurance policy, but again, I don't think anybody should expect to see the fountain of youth here.

If you have proper expectations , it's a really nice.

Story and we'll see what the Giants and Beckham are able to do with it.

Appreciate you guys coming out, um, especially on a big day like today.

Please leave all your comments and questions down below here on the YouTube page.

You can also get to me on my social media at Albert Breer, on Twitter at Albert Arbreer, on Facebook at Albert_Breer on Instagram.