The Eagles weren’t able to complete a trade of cornerback Asante Samuel to the Broncos, but they’re not done trying.
The Samuel-to-Denver trade apparently broke down not because the Eagles wanted more than the Broncos were offering, but because Samuel and the Broncos couldn’t come to terms. Samuel is due $10 million this season and $11.5 million next season, and no team will agree to acquire him in a trade unless he agrees to take less money. Samuel has expressed a willingness to do that, but he and the Broncos weren’t able to reach an agreement. Ultimately, Samuel can nix any trade: If the Eagles try to trade him to a place he doesn’t want to go, he’ll just tell that team he isn’t willing to take a pay cut.
But the Eagles are still attempting to get a deal done, hopefully within the next few days. Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the Eagles appear willing to take whatever they can get in an effort to trade Samuel before the draft starts on Thursday.
At one point the Eagles reportedly thought they could get a third-round draft pick for Samuel, but they have now reached the point where they want to get Samuel’s salary off their books badly enough that they’d take a lot less than that. For the Eagles, there’s a risk associated with having Samuel on the roster now: If he were to suffer some kind of injury during the team’s offseason workout program, they’d be stuck with that $10 million salary this season.
The best bet for the Eagles may be to wait until after Thursday night’s first round and see if they can trade Samuel to a team that had missed out on a first-round cornerback it hoped to acquire. But one way or another, the Eagles are itching to get a Samuel deal done, at whatever price they can get.