It has been assumed for most of the 2026 offseason that the Philadelphia Eagles would be trading WR A.J. Brown to the New England Patriots. The unknown was what exactly the return would be, but on June 1 we finally got the answer — a first-round pick in 2028, and a fifth-round pick in 2027.
Here we’ll examine whether that was good value in return for Brown, you know, even if the headline already gave away where this is going.
What is A.J. Brown as a player right now?
Generally speaking, wide receiver play drops off as players age. #Analysis. Brown will be playing in his age 29 season in 2026.
A look at how many 1000-yard seasons there were in the NFL the last 10 seasons, by age:
Age 1,000-yard seasons, last 10 years 29+ 42 30+ 23 31+ 11 32+ 6
As you can see, those numbers decrease with each age milestone, because of course they do.
Brown’s value around the league is likely to drop substantially from this offseason to next offseason, especially if his numbers aren’t significantly better than what they have been the last two seasons. This offseason was very likely the last chance to get any sort of quality return for him.
Brown was a legitimately elite receiver his first two seasons in Philly. His last two seasons in Philly, less so.
A.J. BrownRec Yards YPC TD 2022 and 2023 194 2952 15.2 18 2024 and 2025 145 2082 14.4 14
Excuses can be made for that drop in production.
In 2024, there were three main things working against Brown’s ability to amass elite production.
- He missed four games.
- The Eagles’ offense was centered around the run game, and rightfully so, as Saquon Barkley had one of the best seasons by a running back ever.
- The Eagles often got big leads and didn’t need to throw the ball much in the second halves of games.
In 2025, Brown’s lack of elite production has often been hand-waived away because the Eagles had a bland, predictable offensive scheme.
However, there were hints that Brown’s standing among the league’s elite was waning.
More alarming than Brown’s basic stats above were his numbers when the ball actually came his way. He had career lows during his time with the Eagles in three of the four following categories in 2025:
- Yards per reception
- Yards per target
- Average yards after the catch
- Average separation
The first three categories above should be pretty easy to understand for the average reader. The separation stat, via NFL’s NextGen Stats, is “the distance (in yards) measured between a WR and the nearest defender at the time of catch or incompletion.” Here’s how each of the five categories above look over the course of Brown’s time in Philly:
A.J. Brown2022 2023 2024 2025 Yards per reception 17.0 13.7 16.1 12.9 Yards per target 10.3 9.2 11.1 8.3 Yards after catch per reception 6.6 4.5 5.4 3.4 Average separation (in yards)2.6 2.4 2.1 2.2
He wasn’t just down in some of those categories. He was way down. But that was just the scheme, right? Eh. Conversely, the Eagles’ other star receiver, DeVonta Smith, had numbers that were more in line with his career averages in those same categories:
DeVonta Smith2022 2023 2024 2025 Yards per reception 12.613.212.313.1Yards per target 8.89.59.48.9Yards after catch per reception 5.23.64.33.8Average separation (in yards) 2.92.83.03.0
In 2022 and 2023, Brown was pretty widely regarded as a top three type of receiver, alongside guys like Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase. The above alarming stats aside, on the eye test he very simply wasn’t that guy in 2025, or anything close to it.
Throw in some concerns about a potentially degenerative knee condition that was flagged by the Rams, and there’s pretty good evidence that this is a player in decline.
Certainly, Brown’s body language during games often sucked in 2025, and obviously he caused his share of distractions off of it. Maybe he was just checked out, and the Patriots will get an invigorated version for a few years? In a weird way that has to be their hope. And frankly, hoping that a player was disinterested on a Super Bowl winning team is a weird thing to be rooting for, but that’s now where they are.
How did the Eagles fare in comparison to other recent wide receiver trades?
When the 2026 offseason began, the closest comp to Brown in terms of recently traded receivers was DK Metcalf, who was traded from the Seahawks to the Steelers during the 2025 offseason, more or less for a second-round pick:
Steelers got Seahawks got DK Metcalf 2nd round pick (52nd overall) 6th round pick (185th overall) 7th round pick (223rd overall)
Brown has averaged 85 catches, 1,259 yards and 8 TDs over his four seasons with the Eagles. Prior to the trade Metcalf had averaged 74 catches for 1,030 yards and 8 TDs over his last four years. When Metcalf was traded, he was 1.5 years younger than Brown is now, but Brown has clearly been the superior player.
A second-round pick felt like the floor on an expected return, but a first-round pick didn’t seem like a given, at least to me, anyway.
And then a couple of notable deals got done for other wide receivers around the league.
• The Bills traded a 2026 second-round pick (60th overall) to the Bears for DJ Moore and a 2026 fifth-round pick. Moore started all 17 games last season, and only had 50 catches for 682 yards. That was the first hint that the wide receiver market would favor the sellers this offseason.
• The Broncos traded 2026 first-, third-, and fourth-round picks to the Dolphins for Jaylen Waddle and a fourth-round pick. More accurately, the Dolphins got the 30th, 94th, and 130th overall picks, while the Broncos got the 111th overall pick pick in addition to Waddle. If you look at the trade value chart, the overall value of that trade was roughly the equivalent of the 26th overall pick. Waddle is a year-plus younger than Brown, but over the last two seasons he has only had 122 catches for 1654 yards and 8 TDs.
The Moore and Waddle trades cemented that Howie Roseman really couldn’t accept anything less than a first-round pick for Brown.
Of course, the trades for Moore and Waddle involved 2026 picks. The Eagles’ trade for Brown involved 2027 and 2028 picks. Which brings us to the next question…
Does it matter that the first-round pick the Eagles acquired is in 2028?
If you read Eagles mock draft roundups during draft season, a lot of the guys projected to them were kind of like, “Ew, no.” It just wasn’t a very good draft this year, with fewer than normal true first-round talents. And that was at pick 23, where the Eagles’ original pick was this year, before they traded up for Makai Lemon. If the Eagles would have traded with the Patriots for a 2026 first-round pick, it would have been for pick 31, the second-to-last pick of the first round.
(Of course, they also wouldn’t have been able to get the benefit of immediate cap relief if they traded Brown before June 1.)
So a 2027 first-round pick was far more preferable to a 2026 pick, in my opinion. The Patriots did not want to give up a 2027 pick, probably because it is widely projected to be a very good draft. So the focus shifted to the 2028 draft.
Make no mistake — the Eagles would have much rather gotten a 2027 pick than a 2028 pick for Brown. But a 2028 pick could be just as good, even if the Eagles have to wait a while to use it.
Why might the 2028 draft be just as good? Well, it should be noted that the 2027 draft is widely perceived as being strong partly based on the assumption that underclassmen will declare. But because of NIL, college players are staying in school longer. For example, if Oregon QB Dante Moore had declared for the 2026 draft, he might’ve been picked second or third overall by the Jets or Cardinals, but he chose to stay in school another year. Absent NIL, my guess is that he would have declared. That’s just one example. But, spoiler: Some of the players that many are anticipating will declare for the 2027 draft will wait to declare in 2028.
But also, the Eagles as an organization do not believe that future picks should be drastically devalued.
“We’ve always been in the mindset that a pick is a pick,” Roseman said after the Brown trade was finalized. “A first round pick is a first round pick. Doesn’t matter. The team is still going to be playing football in 2028. We did that with Haason [Reddick] with the Jets where we took a third-round pick two years later, because it was really important for us to get the right value.”
One of the advantages Roseman has over many other general managers around the league is that he has extreme job security. He isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, whereas other GMs might feel pressure to win games in the short term. As such, he is willing to trade for picks down the road a bit because he knows he’ll be the one who actually uses it.
He has the flexibility to make moves that are beneficial short-term — like their draft-day trade for Jonathan Greenard, for example — while also balancing their long-term Super Bowl contention sustainability.
(And, obviously, if the Eagles wanted to trade that 2028 pick for a very good veteran player who becomes available, that is an option on the table as well.)
Where might the 2028 pick land within the first round?
Obviously, that is an unknown, but the Patriots sure do feel like an ideal trade partner.
In 2025, the Pats had about as easy a schedule as you can get.
Their six games against a bad AFC East aside, they played the following opponents (we’ll leave the AFC East teams out of the following analysis since the Pats get to play them all again in 2026):
• The entirety of the NFC South, arguably the worst division in football. Combined record and point differential of those teams: 30-38, -225.
• The entirety of the AFC North, arguably the worst division in the AFC last year. Combined record and point differential: 29-39, -142.
• They finished in last place in the AFC East in 2024, so they had a fourth place schedule in 2025. The three last place teams they played in 2025 as a result were the Giants, Raiders, and Titans. Combined record of those three teams: 10-41, -443. Lol.
Add up all their non-AFC East opponents, and you get a combined record and point differential of 69-118, -810.
This year they play the entirety of the NFC North (38-29-1, +136), the AFC West (34-34, -39, but with the likely-to-rebound Chiefs), and their three first place opponents are the Seahawks, Jaguars, and Steelers (37-17, +339).
Add that all up, and you get a combined record of 109-80-1, +436.
In chart form:
Patriots non-AFCE opponents Record Point differential 202569-118 (0.369)-810 2026 (based on 2025 record)109-80-1 (0.576)+436
Credit the Pats for compiling a 14-3 regular season record and getting through some highly flawed teams in the playoffs (even if via some pretty ugly football), but they also wildly overachieved and the 2026 season is going to be far, faaar harder.
Of course, what matters to the Eagles is how the Pats finish in 2027, not 2026. But there’s reason to believe the Eagles found a trade partner in the Pats that is delusionally willing to go all-in on an aging player like Brown because of their improbable 2025 success.
In comparison to the value of the 26th overall pick in a bad 2026 draft that the Dolphins got for Waddle, personally, I would much rather have the potentially much higher pick in a what should be a far better draft in 2028.
Conclusion
When the Eagles traded for Brown four years ago during the 2022 draft, the cost was first- and third-round picks. He was only 24 years old at the time. That trade has already long since been deemed a successful one by the Eagles, and a disastrous one for the Titans, who fired GM Jon Robinson two days after Brown went off for 8 catches for 119 yards and 2 TDs against the Titans later that season.
The Eagles got four years of Brown’s prime, and he amassed more than 5,000 receiving yards during his Eagles tenure. The Eagles also made the playoffs all four of those seasons, went to two Super Bowls, and won one.
If Brown had simply retired this offseason, that trade would still be a resounding success.
But, on the back end of Brown’s tenure, Roseman was still able to land first- and fifth-round picks in return.
In other words, Roseman more or less got four years of a potential Hall of Famer’s prime for a swap of third- and fifth-round picks, and are now shipping out the aging, declining, recently disinterested version of him to a franchise that is probably delusional about its recent success for more than he is worth. And he did it even though every single team in the NFL knew that there was only one team interested.
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