Howie Roseman details the last-minute negotiations to get the A.J. Brown deal done
To acquire wide receiver A.J. Brown, Eagles General Manager Howie Roseman had to get two deals done on draft day: A trade with the Titans, and a new contract with Brown and his representatives. That wasn't easy.
Roseman detailed on Bussin with the Boys how he made a deal with then-Titans General Manager Jon Robinson on the day of the first round of the draft, but the trade of a first-round pick and a third-round pick was contingent on the Eagles reaching an agreement on a new contract with Brown, who at the time was heading into the final year of his rookie deal.
"We had the trade done, the terms agreed to in the morning. We had to get a contract done with him," Roseman said. "I said, Jon, if we can't get a contract done, we can't do this trade. We can't trade you a one and a three for one year of a player. We've got to get the contract done first."
Roseman didn't want word to leak out that the Titans had agreed to trade Browns to the Eagles, because he didn't want to be left holding the bag if Brown declined to sign a new contract with the Eagles.
"I'm trying to finish the contract, and so nobody knew except a couple people that we were even doing it because I said, Imagine this falls apart, I'm going to be the GM who can't get a deal done with AJ," Roseman said.
Once Brown agreed, a few picks before the Eagles' first-round pick came up so they could send it to the Titans and make the trade official, Roseman told Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and head coach Nick Sirianni that the rest of the team's personnel department and assistant coaches could find out about the deal once the Eagles were on the clock.
"I turned to Jeffrey and Nick and I said, We're going to surprise our room when we're on the clock. They don't know anything about it. When we get ready to pick I'm going to say, We're picking AJ Brown. And they're all going to look at me like, What the fuck is going on? But they're going to be excited as shit. It was really fun. It was great energy," Roseman said.
Roseman's comments point to how easily such a deal can fall through, and the likely fact that other such deals have fallen through - there likely have been other big trades that were close to finalized on draft day, only to fail to reach the finish line before the team trading its pick was on the clock. The Eagles are very glad that they got the trade done.