Albert Breer on Possible Rebuild for Eagles, Bills’ Deadline Decisions and Rams’ Injuries at Wide Receiver

Welcome back to the Brewer Report for November the 12th, a mailbag edition of the Brewer Report. As we do every week, we put the call out for questions on Twitter. You guys asked, I will answer. I picked three, and the first question for this week is coming from Joey Bag of Donuts. That's at Joey Bag of Donuts. Joey asks, do the Eagles go with a full rebuild and dump Hurts and Barkley after this season? And The easy answer to that, Joey, I believe is no. I don't think that they will do that. And I think it is instructive to look at some of the history here. And I think they are at the point where they were at the end of the 2020 season, where it was time to get younger. It was time to load up on draft picks. It was time. to move pieces around and reconfigure things and maybe that means a coaching change like it did in 2020. If you remember at the end of 2020 of course they also made the decision going into 2021 to move on from Carson Wentz. There are a couple of key differences here. Number one, they don't have the next guy in the roster. At that point, Jalen Hurts, of course, had gone through his rookie years as a backup to Wentz. They don't have a quarterback behind Jalen Hurts right now that they would view as their future. And then number two, as bad as the cap damage was moving on from Carson Wentz, then the cap damage now moving on from Jalen Hurts would be even more debilitating. I mean, you're talking about potentially a nine-figure. Cap hit if he did move on from him after this season. So I don't know what Jalen Hurts' future holds in Philadelphia. It's just hard for me to see this particular offseason being the end of the road. I'm sure we're going to talk about it. There's potential that there are new people in there. If you have a new offensive coordinator, even a new head coach, could that change the dynamic? It absolutely could. And so it is something I think we'll be talking about. But the cap ramifications are going to make it very difficult. Again, not impossible, but very difficult. As for Barkley, I do think that there's going to be the exploration of trading him after this year. It's something I think they have to look at. The reason why, Saquon Barkley is going to be going into his 10th season in 2027. And so you're looking at a guy who's got a lot of mileage, a lot of injury history. And at some point, you've got to ask the question, if we are going to retool the roster, I do believe they're going to retool the roster. In 2027, then are we looking at a build that is where the timelines just aren't going to match up, where by the time we're really good again, Saquon Barkley's at the very end of his career. And I think that that's going to be the reality that they're going to have to reckon with. The good news is the Eagles have a ton of draft capital coming out of this week. They have the Jordan Davis trade, of course. You had the Davis trade together with the Cam Juergens trade. And before that, the A.J. Brown trade, all trades that happened within the last six months. And now they've got 10 picks in the first three rounds over the next three years. That's not counting compensatory picks, by the way. They have two first-round picks this year, this coming year. They have two first-round picks next year. They have two second-round picks next year. And then they have two second-round picks in 2029. They're loaded with draft capital now as a result of those three trades, the trade of Brown, the trade of Juergens, and the trade of Davis And that really gives you an idea of where they're going fundamentally. Question number two is from Bisma Zara. That's at Bisma Zara 78 on Twitter. Bisma asks, in your opinion, did the Bills do enough at the trade deadline? My answer to that question is yes. And I think sometimes the way we look at these moves is, well, why didn't they take a bigger swing? And you're not looking at the totality of the calendar year. You're just looking at what they did over the last couple of weeks. The Bills already made a big move in trading for DJ Moore. And so when you've already offloaded some draft capital, it does limit to some degree what you can do in the current year because you're looking at the big picture of things and GMs look at like five-year windows and say, okay, well, if we already offloaded this year's second round pick, it becomes a little harder to offload picks in the coming years because that's going to leave a hole in our development, all of that different stuff. In this case, they actually, I think, based on the fact that they already moved on Moore, took another pretty big swing. And this one was interesting because it's a player that they didn't think was going to be available. They had checked in on Amani Hooker last week. Tennessee basically told them he's not available. As the Titans GM Mike Borgonzi mentioned at his press conference, he and Bills GM Brandon Bean ran into each other at the Notre Dame-Miami game on Saturday. There wasn't much trade talk there. There were a lot of people around. My understanding is Borgonzi had his son with them. They're on their bye week. And so, you know, for these two teams, this really came together right at the deadline, on Monday and on Tuesday. The Jesse Bates trade helped set the stage for it because it set the price, and that's a high price. But the Bills view Hooker as a player that's not far off from Bates, a guy who's a true post-safety, who will complement Cole Bishop, who they move around a bunch, they can play down in the box. Um, he has ball production, which is obviously a big piece of picture and they haven't signed for the next couple of years too. So, you know, all the way around, they feel like they were able to add a pretty important piece to make that safety position. Now with Bishop and Hooker, a very real strength. And so the defense has gotten better over the course of the last few weeks. They've gotten a little more comfortable playing in Jim Leonard's system. Now they add Hooker, who they hope can do for the defense, what they're hoping that DJ Moore does down the stretch for their offense. Obviously, Moore's been a little banged up. So that hasn't gone quite the way that they had hoped. But there's still hope that they're going to get there with Moore and now with Hooker too. Question number three, this is from Michael. That's at MPHX, I assume that's Phoenix, 2000. Michael asks, do you think the Rams will add a wide receiver before Davante Adams comes back? We'll be right back. Certainly not impossible based on the circumstances, right? So Puka Nakua is now down. He's on IR. Davante Adams is on IR. You were already a team that was sort of lacking down the field. You're like a physical offense that sort of plays within a box. Adams was the guy that could help stretch the defense. They brought back Tutu Atwell for that purpose. I'm looking at the names available. I mean, if you're talking about wanting to add somebody who can change that dynamic a little bit, Tyreek Hill would be the one. My question would be, can he still run? You know, because that was a very serious knee injury that he sustained. So Hill would be somebody you could look at. Darius Slayton, I got the list of available free agents up here. Juju Smith-Schuster, Curtis Samuel. I mean, because we're past the trade deadline, it's kind of hard to find help. So could you find like a potential stopgap? Yeah. And I think they'll certainly look at that. But there's no sort of fix out there. I think the Rams' ability to go and compete for a Super Bowl very much is going to depend on their ability to get their receivers healthy and have those guys at full speed in January and February. Appreciate you guys coming out as always. You can leave your questions, your comments down below here on the YouTube page, or you can get to me on my social media at Albert Breer on Twitter, at Albert Breer on TikTok, at Albert R Breer on Facebook, at Albert underscore Breer on Instagram. Appreciate you guys coming out. We got one more Breer report coming for you this week. That'll be tomorrow.