Plenty of time has been spent over the past week on the question of whether coach Nick Sirianni will be back with the Eagles. There’s another question that has yet to be explored.
Will quarterback Jalen Hurts return?
While there’s no specific reason to believe the Eagles or Hurts are ready for a fresh start, the general sense of dysfunction within the locker room seemed palpable toward the end of the season. It feels like something big happened, something we don’t know about. Something we might never know about. Whatever it was/is could be enough, in theory, to make the team or the player interested in making a change.
Unlike many high-end quarterback contracts, Hurts’ deal makes it fairly simple — if the Eagles want to do it (and if Hurts will waive his no-trade clause for it).
He has been paid $24.3 million so far. The cap hit for a pre-June 1 trade would be only $18.632 million for 2024. He’d then be off the books for 2025.
The bigger question becomes finding a suitor or Hurts. Would one or more teams be inclined to trade for him?
Hurts has a fully-guaranteed option bonus for 2024 in the amount of $38.875 million, with an exercise window of the first day through the 10th day of the league year. He also has a fully-guaranteed 2024 base salary of $1.125 million.
The contract also has a fully-guaranteed 2025 option bonus of $40.83 million, and a 2025 fully-guaranteed base salary of $1.17 million.
That’s $82 million, fully guaranteed, over the next two years; that’s $41 million per year.
The contract includes $51 million for 2026, $3.696 million of which is fully guaranteed at signing, $16.5 million of which becomes fully guaranteed in March 2024, and $30 million of which becomes fully guaranteed in March 2025.
It works out to $133 million over the next three years, an average of $44.33 million.
Again, the Eagles would have to find a team willing to take on that contract. If they can, and if Hurts is willing to waive his no-trade clause, the structure of the contract allows it to happen.
That’s not to say it will happen. It’s just to say it could happen, given the manner in which the deal was structured.
