Intra-division trades are rare in the NFL. They’re rarer still when one team is desperate to unload a player with a big cap hit without the skill to justify it and doesn’t address a need for the other team.
But that’s exactly the kind of deal I’m about to suggest.
After benching Nick Foles after a horrid start on Sunday and then naming Garnder Minshew the starting QB for Week 14, the Jaguars pretty much admitted what we all suspected back in the offseason: Signing Foles to a four-year, $88 million deal was a mistake.
This contract is already an albatross…
After 117 passes with the Jags, Nick Foles has been benched. Jacksonville still on the hook for:
– $15.1 million in guaranteed base salary for 2020
– a $5 million roster bonus that triggers in March of 2020 for 2021
– $12.5 million in dead money on their cap in 2021 https://t.co/BtayZkNP2F— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) December 2, 2019
It somehow gets worse. As CBS Sports’ Joel Corry points out, there will be no “post-June 1 treatment” in the final year of the CBA, so if the Jaguars cut Foles, they’d have to eat the full $33.8 million in dead money remaining on his deal. It would be cheaper to keep the expensive backup on the roster.
If they want to recoup any of that money, their only option is to trade him to a team in need of a quarterback, but based on the way Foles has played in 2019 — and most of his NFL career — any team that traded for him would still be in need of a quarterback. Foles is not an answer.
The Jaguars need to be content with the fact that Foles is a sunk cost at this point and they won’t be getting anything in return for him. Any trade would be a salary dump, so they’ll need to find a trade partner willing to take on his $15.9 million cap hit in 2020 (and $5 million roster bonus in 2021) in exchange for a draft pick.
Enter the Colts.
Such a deal would make sense for the Colts. Indianapolis is slated to have over $100 million in cap space next offseason. They aren’t going to come close to spending that money. GM Chris Ballard is uninterested in overpaying for veteran free agents and is likely hoarding that money for contract extensions down the line. Well, there’s no point in letting that money just sit there. Why not put it to good use by trading it for draft picks? Otherwise, it’s just cap space for the sake of cap space. The equivalent of stashing your money under a mattress instead of a savings account.
The Browns, under the so-called Moneyball front office, already laid out the groundwork for such a trade when they took Brock Osweiler’s unwieldy contract off the Texans’ hands for a second-round pick. Osweiler cost the Browns around the same amount that Foles would cost the Colts, so the Jags would likely have to give up similar compensation in order to make that deal happen.
Ballard, who knows how important it is to stack draft picks, seems like a guy willing to buy a draft capital…
“I’ve always been under the premise,” Ballard said at the NFL Combine earlier this year, “the more picks you have, the more darts you have at the dartboard, the better chance you have to hit on players … I still think we need to continue to add young talent. I like having draft picks.”
Giving up a second-round pick will be hard for the Jaguars, but they might not have a choice. They have very little in the way of cap space and would have to part ways with some of their better players in order to clear up enough space to improve the roster next offseason. Having the extra first-round pick they got back in the Jalen Ramsey trade will make it easier to give up a Day 2 pick.
If the Jaguars want to hold onto their picks, then they have no choice but to keep Foles around and pay him over $22 million to hold a clipboard for at least one more year.
[opinary poll=”bigger-contract-mistake-by-the-jaguars_f” customer=”forthewin”]
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