Eagles

A Remarkable Inside Account on the Making of The Sam Bradford Trade

By Kyle Scott

Published: Sep 5th, 2016 · 9:33 AM EDT

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From Peter King, who got both Howie Roseman and Rick Spielman to participate in an oral history of The Sam Bradford Trade:

Saturday, 6:30 a.m., two NFL general managers and good friends on the phone, trying to finish a trade. The subject of sleep comes up. Neither Philadelphia’s Howie Roseman nor Minnesota’s Rick Spielman has had any of significance during the night, not since they’d last been on the phone five-and-a-half hours earlier.

“I’m staring at the ceiling, wide awake, at 2:30,” Roseman said to Spielman, “and [wife] Mindy says, ‘You okay?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not okay. We’re about to change a lot of lives here.’ ”

“Same thing with me,” Spielman said in return. “Couldn’t sleep. I was out at 4 a.m. walking the dogs.”

How long did it take to make the stunning deal of the year in pro football? Forty-eight hours. That’s the time from the first phone call from Spielman, in his office in Eden Prairie, Minn., to Roseman, about to engage his three boys in some baseball pitch-and-catch in his yard in Pennsylvania, just before dinner at home Wednesday evening, and the time it got very real and Spielman offered Minnesota’s first-round pick Friday evening. It was so surprising to Roseman that he said “it wasn’t even on my brain” Thursday night during the Eagles’ fourth preseason game.

You awake? Send nudes.

There’s much more to the story as Roseman and Spielman describe in-depth the process of making the trade. Read it here.