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A.J. Brown is Not Some Depreciating Asset
Published:
One of things you may have seen or heard during this A.J. Brown saga is the concept of depreciating value. You buy a car with 20,000 miles on it for $8,000 and then sell it for less money a few years later. Why? Because it’s older and has more mileage. So it’s not worth as much as when you bought it.
People are trying to apply that same logic to the Eagles receiver when trying to figure out how much a team should have to give up to acquire him. The Eagles sent the Titans a 1st and 3rd round draft pick to get A.J. in 2022, and the 1st rounder was mid-tier, #18 overall. Naturally, you have a bunch of people now saying there’s no way the Birds bring back a 1st and 3rd with A.J. now four years older and an additional 72 games of tread removed from the figurative tires.
Two problems with that:
1) A.J. hasn’t dropped off very much at all. He was a Pro Bowl, 1,000-yard receiver with the Titans and is a Pro Bowl, 1,000-yard receiver with the Eagles. He pushed 1,500 yards in his first two Philadelphia seasons and then saw his targets and productivity drop back to the same level as 2019 and 2020. So while teams may not be getting 2022 and 2023 A.J. Brown, they’re still getting one of the 20 receivers who went for 1,000 yards last season, and without playing a full 17 games. There are not a lot of these players in the NFL.
2) Buffalo sent a 2nd round draft pick to Chicago and returned D.J. Moore and a 5th. Denver sent Miami a late 1st and a late 3rd and returned Jaylen Waddle while swapping fourth round picks. Neither Moore nor Waddle is as good as A.J. Brown, and they aren’t years apart in age. So if those guys are bringing back these picks in value, then A.J. is surely worth a late 1st, at bare minimum.
Therefore, this thought that A.J. Brown is some depreciating asset is incorrect. He was a 1,000-yard receiver on a lame offense this year and a 1,000-yard receiver the year prior, despite getting fewer targets on an Eagles team that ran the absolute hell out of the ball en route to a Super Bowl victory. He may be older than when the Eagles first got him for a first and a third, but he’s still an elite player who demands high value in return because of the market that was set by Buffalo and Denver.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com