Eagles named as Josh Sweat’s most likely landing spot, per NFL GM: “I think Howie takes him back”

The Eagles and Josh Sweat just will not leave each other alone, and at this point I’ve stopped pretending I want them to.

Jason La Canfora dropped a piece this week on the pass rusher trade market, and buried in it is a quote from an NFL GM that should perk up every ear in this city: “If nothing else, I think Howie takes him back.” That same GM believes Philadelphia is going to beef up its defensive line somehow, some way, before this thing is over.

I know. I know. We’ve done this dance all offseason. Sweat skips OTAs in Arizona. The rumor mill catches fire. Then Ian Rapoport shows up with a bucket of cold water and tells everyone Sweat is not being traded, not to the Packers or anywhere. Carry on, he says. Nothing to see here.

Except people keep seeing things.

Why the Eagles reunion talk refuses to die

Here’s what La Canfora is reporting. Multiple GMs keep naming the same teams gauging the pass rusher market: Buffalo, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New England, and Jacksonville. One GM who’s been active in that market says there are going to be two or three more deals like the Myles Garrett trade, because the value’s been set and nobody considers it taboo anymore.

And then there’s Sweat himself. La Canfora says he finally reported to mandatory minicamp so he wouldn’t get fined, but the entire league knows he wants out of that rebuild. He didn’t sign up for 3-14 football. He signed up for Jonathan Gannon, and then Arizona fired Jonathan Gannon, and now he’s a 29-year-old coming off a career-best 12 sacks watching his prime evaporate in the desert.

The contract is the part that makes this real instead of fan fiction. Three years left at $18 million per, pay-as-you-go, no significant guarantees. That’s a deal built to be moved. Arizona can trade him tomorrow and barely feel it.

Meanwhile, the asking price is reportedly out there. Per the Packer Report’s Easton Butler, the Cardinals want either a second-round pick, or a third plus a Day 3 pick. For a guy who just put up 12 sacks. For a guy who already has a Super Bowl ring from this exact building.

The Eagles let him walk once. So what?

The counterargument writes itself, and Bleeding Green Nation already wrote it: the Eagles didn’t keep him last year, they traded for Jonathan Greenard, they’re high on Jalyx Hunt, the room is full. Fine. All true.

But rooms stop looking full the second someone gets hurt in August, and Howie Roseman has never once in his life looked at a crowded defensive line and said “that’s enough defensive linemen.” The Eagles collects pass rushers the way the rest of us collect parking tickets. It’s a compulsion. It’s the entire organizational philosophy. You can never have enough pass rush, that’s literally the adage La Canfora opens his whole article with.

And Sweat isn’t some project. He spent seven years with the Eagles. He had 2.5 sacks on Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl. He knows the building, the city, and exactly what playing meaningful football feels like, which is precisely the thing Arizona cannot offer him for the next half decade.

So no, I’m not treating one Rapoport tweet from June 3 as the final word on this. Insiders kill rumors in June and report the trade in August. That’s the business.

Sweat wants out. The price is reasonable. The GMs around the league are openly predicting where he lands.

He lands with the Eagles. You know it. I know it. Howie knows it.

Welcome home in advance, big fella.