A.J. Brown walks off the field after the Eagles lost the the Denver Broncos, 21-17, on Oct. 5.The word distraction is one of the worst words in sports, maybe the worst. A distraction brings unnecessary and unwanted attention to a franchise. A distraction causes his or her teammates to lose focus and increases the likelihood that his or her team will lose games. A distraction has to be dealt with, has to be muted, and will have to be removed if, like a tumor, it threatens to destroy a team from within. So … by what standard, then, is A.J. Brown a distraction? I ask this because our relatively long local nightmare ended late Tuesday afternoon, when the NFL’s trade deadline passed and Brown — to the surprise of no one with even a slight familiarity with Howie Roseman and the 2025 Eagles — remained on their roster. Yet someone asked Roseman on a Zoom call Tuesday to address the notion that the Eagles might have traded Brown, because someone had to ask Roseman to address the notion that the Eagles might have traded Brown, because so much groundless speculation and cynical poo-stirring on talk shows and social media had conjured, without any semblance of logic or connection to reality, the impression that the Eagles might have traded Brown.Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown with coach Nick Sirianni during the victory against the Vikings on Oct. 19. “When you’re trying to be a great team, it’s hard to trade great players,” Roseman said. “A.J. Brown’s a great player. He wears the ‘C’ for a reason. He’s an important part of this team, this organization. He cares about winning. He cares about his teammates. I think when you’re a team like ours that’s looking forward to an opportunity to compete for a championship, you just don’t get rid of guys like that. Feel very lucky to have him on our team and excited about the second half of the season with him.” To put this as simply and directly as possible, the Eagles were never trading A.J. Brown. They were never, ever, ever trading A.J. Brown. Not now. Not in the middle of the season. Not when they’re 6-2 and are tied for the best record in the NFC and have a realistic chance of winning the Super Bowl for the second straight season and the third time in nine years. A.J. Brown could have held up a handmade sign at his locker that read THROW ME THE BALL, and the Eagles wouldn’t have traded him at the deadline. A.J. Brown could have acknowledged what pretty much everyone around the Eagles already acknowledges — that when it comes to friendship, Brown and Jalen Hurts aren’t exactly Woody and Buzz, Maverick and Goose, or Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart — and the Eagles wouldn’t have traded him. A.J. Brown could have logged on to Twitter/X and posted a photo of an ampersand, an umlaut, and an iguana with a Bob Dylan lyric as the caption, and the Eagles would have said, Hey, you know A.J. Always mysterious … and then not traded him. A.J. Brown could have read Tropic of Cancer on the sideline of a game, and Mr. Bookman could have led Brown’s flashy, scene-making, convention-flaunting rear end off to the library hoosegow, and the Eagles still wouldn’t have traded him.Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown is not going anywhere. The Eagles had two games to get themselves right before their bye. They did that and then some. Why wouldn’t they have traded him? Let us consider the obvious reasons. For one thing, trading Brown now would have reportedly saved the Eagles less than $1.2 million in salary-cap space this season, but it would have cost them $43.5 million in dead-cap space next season. Given that his cap hit in 2026 is scheduled to be $23.5 million if he’s on the roster, it would have cost the Eagles an extra $20 million to have him not play for them. You can wave all those numbers away under the premise that Howie will make it work all you want, but the man can make magic only so many times. For another thing, the notion that Brown’s idiosyncratic behavior is such a drag on the Eagles that it overrides his talent, his production, and his status as one of the most liked and respected players in their locker room is ridiculous. There are two kinds of teams that would trade a player like A.J. Brown: bad teams and dumb teams. Fortunately for our purposes here, two such clubs collaborated on a big trade Tuesday, when the Dallas Cowboys acquired star defensive tackle Quinnen Williams from the New York Jets. A.J. Brown, the social-media age, and another weird week for the Eagles Three months after getting rid of a truly great player in Micah Parsons, Jerry Jones — whose team, at 3-5-1, has the 11th-best record in the 16-team NFC — decided to acquire a very good player in Williams … presumably so the Cowboys could make a run for second place in their division. Meanwhile, the 1-7 Jets commenced with their latest rebuild, jettisoning two former first-round picks — Williams and cornerback Sauce Gardner — so they could hoard several future first-round picks … presumably so they could use those picks to draft players who might turn out to be as good as Williams and Gardner. But hey, maybe the Eagles should have been as proactive as those teams. Since Brown joined them, the Eagles are 51-16 (including games in the postseason) and have won two division titles, two conference championships, and a Super Bowl. Imagine how much they might have accomplished if he weren’t such a … well, you know. ©2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
