Usually I do my best to avoid posting about completely baseless rumors with nothing to back them up, but I just can't resist with this one. It's one thing when message boards toss around this kind of nonsense, but when I see places like The Dallas Morning News, The AZ Republic, The Wilmington News Journal and elsewhere... I just get annoyed.
Why? Because some simple research would tell you why the Eagles would never offer to trade Reggie Brown and Lito Sheppard for Larry Fitzgerald.
Reggie Brown has just over $8 million of his signing bonus proration left. So, to trade him the Eagles would immediately take an $8 million hit on this year's cap. Lito's remaining proration is $2.9 million. So in all the Eagles would have $11 million in dead money on this year's cap were they to make this trade.
Now, Larry Fitzgerald is due $14.6 million in base salary in 2008. Surely if the Eagles were to trade for Fitzgerald it would be because they had worked out a restructured deal with him. Still, even in a restructured deal his 2008 cap hit will be significant likely in the area of $9 or $10 million.
So, if this trade offer is to be believed... The Eagles would be spending over $20 million of this year's cap for one player. Fitzgerald. That's insane. The only reason the Cardinals would ever think about trading Fitzgerald is because they think his nearly $15 million cap hit is too much and we're supposed to believe the Eagles will take a $20+ million hit to have Fitzgerald in 2008? Give me a break.
Just to further illustrate the complete and total lack of thought put into this rumor, don't forget that Asante Samuel's 2008 cap figure is just over $9 million. So essentially, the Eagles would be paying just about $30 million for two players in 2008 were this trade to go down. Keep in mind that the NFL salary cap is $116 million.
I'll say it again. Nonsense.