The Philadelphia Eagles did not simply move a center on Wednesday. They parted with the player Jason Kelce had helped identify as his successor, a day after Lane Johnson walked away, and did it in a way that still costs them money.
Earlier this week, Philadelphia sent two-time Pro Bowl center Cam Jurgens and a 2027 seventh-round pick to the Baltimore Ravens for a 2028 second-rounder and a 2027 fifth-rounder.
Spotrac’s breakdown of the deal made the sticker shock plain.
Jurgens is in the second year of the four-year, $68 million extension he signed in April 2025. Baltimore inherits a cheap 2026 cap number, about $945,000, then guaranteed money of $16.5 million in 2027 and $17.5 million in each of 2028 and 2029.
Philadelphia keeps the dead money: roughly $4.5 million this season and $15.3 million in 2027. In a follow-up, Spotrac noted that the Eagles actually forfeit about $6.1 million of 2027 cap space.
The trade does not clear the books. It rearranges them.
That is what made the move feel so abrupt. Jurgens, a Nebraska product taken 51st overall in 2022, had already been a Super Bowl starter and a central piece of the line that cleared the way for Saquon Barkley’s 2,000-yard season.
Interior linemen almost never move for a second-round pick or better. By Spotrac’s transaction log, cited by 94 WIP’s Tucker Bagley, Jurgens is the first to do so since at least 2011. Teams protect proven centers.
They do not usually ship them in early October, especially not the week after an All-Pro tackle retires.
The on-field case was thinner than the résumé. After Landon Dickerson went to injured reserve with a knee injury, Nick Sirianni slid Jurgens from center to left guard.
The results were poor, including a second-to-last grade among qualifying players at the position through four weeks, according to Pro Football Focus reporting carried by NFL.com.
Second-year lineman Drew Kendall had taken over at center and, in general manager Howie Roseman’s telling, looked ready to stay there. Roseman framed the return as four assets for one: the second, the climb from a seventh to a fifth, whatever cash the club can redeploy, and Kendall’s emergence. He called it a win-win.
Baltimore’s side of that bargain is easier to read. Tyler Linderbaum left for the Las Vegas Raiders in March, and the Ravens have already burned through their top three centers, all of them on injured reserve.
They were down to rookie first-rounder Olaivavega Ioane, shifted inside from right guard. Jurgens, 27 and under contract through 2029, is a former Day 2 pick with a chance to go back to his natural spot on a team still treating this season as a Super Bowl window. The price is real. So is the hole he is being asked to fill.
For Philadelphia, the surprise is less the draft capital than the timing and the arithmetic. A homegrown Pro Bowl center, hand-picked to replace a franchise legend, is gone before midseason, and the cap relief people assume comes with a big-name departure does not arrive until the dead money is gone.
