The Philadelphia Eagles and New Orleans Saints connected on another offseason trade earlier this week.
C.J. Gardner-Johnson vocalized his issues with the Saints early in the offseason and the Eagles took advantage of that by acquiring the defensive back and a 2025 seventh-round pick for a fifth-round pick in 2023 and a sixth-round pick in 2024.
WWL’s Jeff Nowak and Steve Geller of Audacy’s “Inside Black & Gold” podcast shared their frustrations about the Gardner-Johnson situation that dragged out all offseason, eventually resulting in an underwhelming return in a trade with the Eagles.
“Now that doesn’t scream top-end return to me,” Nowak said (4:10 in player above). “I think what you’re seeing there is the Saints had to trade him. They knew that they could not hold onto him. They didn’t trust that he was going to be a good sport about not getting his contract and not be an issue in the locker room. And as we know, C.J., he’s a vocal guy. He’s not a guy who’s gonna just sit there and be quiet. So you understand why a team might be like ‘We can’t deal with this’ and move on, but it’s aggravating to me because the issue with C.J. wasn’t a salary cap thing.
“This wasn’t a salary cap thing. This was a fundamental roster-building thing where the Saints don’t feel like the value is there at slot corner to pay at the top of the cornerback market and you knew that going in,” he said.
“So why was it allowed to get to this point? Why didn’t you handle this at the beginning of camp at which point the organization knew that it wasn't going to pay C.J. what he wanted? So why did we get all the way through camp and then at the end of camp, when all of your leverage is gone and all the teams you’re going to be potentially trading with know that you have no bargaining power? Then all of a sudden you’re just giving him away for peanuts, right? That’s what bothers me the most. It was just poor planning. And I’m usually a fan of how this front office operates and how they build out their long-term strategy in terms of the salary cap, in terms of the roster. This, I think, is an example of them tripping over their own feet and the Eagles were the ones that benefitted from this.”
Gardner-Johnson is expected to step into a starting role for the Eagles at safety, a much more lucrative than the nickelback position he played with the Saints.
“What’s funny is there was no other team, especially somebody in the AFC, that you could’ve done a deal with? There wasn’t this big return, obviously, that we saw,” Geller said. "We didn’t hear from C.J. Gardner-Johnson at all during training camp, only during it was either OTAs or minicamp where he went on his rant on how he was the top corner in the NFL. And we knew then, right then, he was sending that message of ‘I am looking to get paid,’ and the Saints weren’t willing to do that.”
Not paying safeties seems to be a trend for the Saints. Malcolm Jenkins, Kenny Vaccaro, and Vonn Bell are among the defensive backs that have left New Orleans.
“But with C.J. Gardner-Johnson, you got the sense that it was going to be a locker room issue and they were kind of forced their hand on having to do something now,” Geller continued.
While Gardner-Johnson may have wanted a better contract, Nowak doesn’t think it was a matter of a salary cap crunch.
“I don’t think it was an issue of ‘OK, we can’t afford to pay this guy.’ They could’ve figured it out if they felt like it made sense to do,” he said. “The salary cap is not in dire straits to the point that you couldn’t have found a way to pay this guy 9 to 12 million dollars. The issue was they don’t feel like slot corner -- specifically slot corner -- merits that type of payday.”
The Saints traded for cornerback Bradley Roby at the beginning of last season, which is proving to be a good move as he can fill in for the loss of Gardner-Johnson. Paulson Adebo, the Saints’ 2021 second-round pick, has also transitioned nicely to the NFL.
“My issue is not so much that you traded C.J. It was the fact that you wasted reps all training camp,” Nowak said. “You should’ve been able to plan for this. I get that things happen that are outside of your control as an organization, but this should have been predictable. We should’ve been able to see this coming, that if you’re not going to give him that contract, he’s not going to be a good sport about it. I don’t know how many ways he could’ve possibly told us other than the way he told us. He feels like he’s the top slot cornerback in the NFL and deserves to be paid that way.”
Nowak noted that this is a unique situation with Gardner-Johnson because he wasn’t a top draft pick. He was on a cheaper rookie contract as a fourth-round pick. Now he wants to be paid after playing his first three seasons at what he views as a steep discount.
“Why didn’t the Saints get this early on?” Nowak wondered. “‘Cause if you’re trading him -- you made a major trade with the Eagles in the offseason!”
“The Saints kind of did get it with the drafting of Alontae Taylor in the second round,” Geller chimed in.
“Right! They drafted his replacement. The thing is you made a deal with the Eagles early in the offseason where you gave up a good amount to get an extra first-round pick,” Nowak continued.
“If you work C.J. into that trade, you’re telling me you couldn’t work C.J. into that trade then and maybe massaged some more assets or maybe limited what you had to send back? No, it was just poor planning. It was the team thinking that they could find a way and they didn’t.”
“The issue to me is not the trade. The issue is there’s no redeeming quality to this trade. There is no silver lining,” he said. “The team is worse today than it was on Monday.”
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