The Eagles were already planning to move on from Michael Bennett when he went on NFL Network and said he wanted a pay raise.
Later that day, the Eagles traded Bennett to the Patriots with a 2020 seventh-round pick for a fifth-round pick in 2020.
And now Bennett got the pay raise he wanted.
Creating $700,000 in cap space for 2019 is pretty minimal. While Bennett said he wanted a pay raise, it was much more likely the Eagles would have preferred to trim his salary had they kept him on the roster. That, paired with a potentially limited role, would have led to an awkward situation in Philly. Bennett already had a personality that wasn’t for everyone.
When asked about Bennett last week at the NFL owners meetings, head coach Doug Pederson said the trade gave Bennett the chance to be a starter, which was “what he wanted to do.”
It’s likely a big reason Bennett wanted a reworked contract was because there was no more guaranteed money left on his deal. The Eagles traded him without leaving any dead money and they could have cut him without leaving dead money too. With the trade, the Eagles saved his entire cap hit of $7.2 million in 2019.
Without seeing the full contract, this is a relatively modest pay raise, but it does come with $4 million in Bennett’s pocket immediately. His original deal included base salaries of $6 million in 2019 and $7.5 million in 2020 with $1 million each season in per-game roster bonuses. That comes to $15.5 million, not that much less than the base value of his new deal, but apparently there are incentives of some sort in his new contract. By the way, it’s rare for the Patriots to re-do deals like this, so they must want to make Bennett happy. And the 33-year-old has stayed productive.
The Eagles will clearly miss Bennett’s production. Even after a slow start, he had nine sacks in 2018 and was their most consistent and best defensive end. But it also seemed pretty clear the Eagles weren’t going to commit to him either. That’s why they were willing to trade him away for a modest pick swap. They got a little something instead of nothing.
Without Bennett, the Eagles will start Brandon Graham and Derek Barnett at defensive end. They’ll bring Vinny Curry, Josh Sweat (and maybe Chris Long, if he doesn’t retire) off the bench. And it’s also very possible they add another defensive end in the draft later this month.
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