The Philadelphia Eagles cleared out of of their bigger mistakes of recent times by trading EDGE Bryce Huff to the 49ers for a mid round pick according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. As part of the trade the Eagles will pay out $9.05 million of Huff’s 2025 compensation as a bonus, as detailed by ESPN’s Field Yates. The Eagles had signed Huff as a free agent in 2024 to a three year, $51.1 million contract with $34 million guaranteed that seemed to go south the minute the season started.
Huff’s contract was a “Philly special” that gave the Eagles a tremendous amount of flexibility in the contract due to the option structure that was in the original contract. As is typical of Eagles contracts they contain option bonuses every year to reduce the cap charges but the dates of most of these options are mainly tied to the start of the regular season so they can take their time before making trade decisions each year. In this case the Eagles, likely knowing how bad a fit Huff was, declined his options, inflating his cap number and setting the stage for the trade.
The trade, which will be processed after June 1, will result in the Eagles taking on $4.94 million in dead money this year. They will defer $16.6 million to next season. While there is a lot of chatter about the Eagles creating over $15 million in space this year the reality is Huff’s original cap number was just $7.4 million so really the team is only $2.4 million better off than originally expected. They will be about $5 million worse off in 2026 than his original contract’s salary cap number. I believe the Eagles will get a $250,000 cap credit in 2026 for a guaranteed workout bonus that already counted on the cap for the Eagles.
Overall the signing of Huff from the Jets was a miss for the Eagles. Huff was a specialist player in New York that the Eagles thought could play a bigger role. He ended up playing in just 12 games and only had 2.5 sacks while appearing in about 40% of the snaps, the same use level as with New York. The final bill for the Eagles will be $26.05 million for those 12 games making this one of the bottom free agent deals of recent times. Still better to just cut ties now and get a little something in return than to pay another $7.95 million for the same poor results.
The 49ers defensive coordinator, Robert Saleh, was Huff’s head coach in New York and was able to find a role for Huff where he could thrive as a wide pass rusher. He exploded in his walk year for 10 sacks which earned him the contract with the Eagles. The 49ers will be responsible for $7.95 million in salary this year, of which, I believe, $7.7 million will count on the cap and $250,000 will be a downward adjustment to the 2026 salary cap. His 2026 salary will be $17 million if that remains unchanged, essentially making this a contract year again for Huff.