While I normally use this space to discuss the issues related to player representation and evaluation, occasionally, I like to turn it over to friends well-qualified to discuss various issues. Today, former Titans team executive Blake Beddingfield analyzes this week’s big deal between New Orleans and Philadelphia.

The trade between the Philadelphia Eagles and New Orleans Saints three weeks before the draft says a lot about each team. I love these trades because they show two teams and front offices that are confident in their respective team-building approaches and how they individually view this draft and how they can upgrade their teams.

First, the trade: the Saints received the Nos. 16 and 19 picks in the first round and the No. 194 pick in the 6th round of the 2022 draft. The Eagles received the No. 18 pick in the first round, along with the 101st pick in the 3rd round and 237th pick in the 7th round. Also, they were able to acquire New Orleans’ first-round pick in 2023 and their second-rounder in 2024. Let’s look at how the trade benefits each team.

SAINTS

The Saints part of the trade allows them to take two different avenues with those first two selections. First, the Saints now have the ammunition to trade up into the top 10 of the first round and take the young quarterback that can be a long-term replacement for future hall of famer Drew Brees. The Saints struggled down the stretch in 2021 after a serviceable Jameis Winston was lost for the season due to injury.   

Based on the offseason trades of Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan, Carson Wentz and Deshaun Watson, along with a big new contract for Aaron Rodgers, NFL teams have realized they can’t win the Super Bowl without a top quarterback. To wit: Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes and Matthew Stafford have won the last three Super Bowls. 

Most personnel people (including myself) do not see a quarterback in the 2022 draft worth the draft capital it would take to trade into the top 10. That is why I question the Saints acquiring the extra picks to move up to select a QB. Could they sit at pick 16 and get their future signal-caller while also having an extra selection to upgrade their roster? It’s possible. 

The second road the Saints can take is to use those first-rounders to acquire youth and upgrade a roster that has gotten older while replacing some long-term starters that left in free agency. Cameron Jordan, a Pro Bowl regular at defensive end, will be 33 this season. Wide receiver Michael Thomas is 29 and has back-to-back, injury-riddled seasons. Also, linebacker Demario Davis, another standout defensive player, is 33. With two first-rounders, the team could replace the left tackle they lost in free agency, Terron Armstead, and add a wide receiver or pass rusher. The 2022 draft has enough left tackles, wide receivers and pass rushers to give the team the confidence they could shore up two of those three positions with the 16^th and 19^th selections. This would allow Winston to continue to quarterback the team, add youth and also position the team for a future run in a division that doesn’t have a clear long-term leader presuming Brady doesn’t play for another decade.   

I feel the Saints are looking for sustainability, and replacing Armstead and adding another playmaker is the way to go. My guess is that the Saints are not looking to package the picks to take a rookie quarterback who may or may not be a franchise player.

Now the Eagles.

EAGLES

The Eagles side of the trade is obvious. The Eagles continue to acquire future draft choices to sustain roster-building and youth, because of the current draft capital they have. Trades with the Colts (they acquired a 2022 first-rounder for Carson Wentz) and the Dolphins (also giving them a 2022 first-rounder), they still have plenty of ammo in the ’22 draft with two first-rounders, one second, two third-rounders and a total of 10 selections. 

Eagles GM Howie Roseman has done a very good job of acquiring these current and future selections. Philly can upgrade its pass rush and offensive line and add another playmaker on offense with its first three selections.

Very rarely is a trade on paper good for both teams, but in this case I believe both teams benefit from the early draft-day trade.

At Inside the League, we focus on the representation and scouting side of the game. That’s why see the moves of Mike McCartney, Jaymeson Moten and Kyle Dolan (and their draft clients) from Chicago-based Priority Sports to New York City-based VaynerSports as pretty big.

We more than just broke the story; we devoted quite a bit of space to it at our main site. For garden variety NFL fans, it’s a blip on the screen, but for people who follow the business of the game, like yourself, it’s something much more. Here are a few questions, and our answers, in the wake of Vayner’s expansion.

Is this unusual?: Regarding the timing and the stature of the players, yes. Last year, Houston-based Nicole Lynn left Young Money APAA Sports for Klutch Sports Group the week of the draft, but she took only two players, and they were both Day 3 draftees (Alabama OG Deonte Brown went 6/193 to the Panthers, while North Carolina WO Dazz Newsome went 6/221 to the Bears). That’s the only transfer of agents and players between March 1 and draft day in at least the last 10 years.

What prompted this?: There are a lot of factors, but one of them has to be the social media expertise and bandwidth provided by the three agents’ new home. Though rival firms like Rosenhaus Sports, CAA and Steinberg Sports, among others, got into the name, image and likeness race immediately last July, Priority Sports wasn’t nearly as aggressive. The NIL era promises to change the face of player representation, and indeed, already has. Both of VaynerSports’ clients heading into the ’22 draft, Cincinnati QB Desmond Ridder and Purdue WO David Bell, were their NIL clients starting last summer/fall.

What does this move say about the business of player representation?: That you’re either a big fish or your’s fish food, put very simply. Where once there was a solid cache of middle class agencies who could sign and manage a handful of mid-rounders each year, those firms are largely gone. The demands of the NIL era demand a larger commitment. In the past, an agency’s relationship with a player didn’t really begin until shortly before his draft year. Today, agencies are signing players barely out of high school, then expected to produce for 3-4 years. That’s a big ask for a smallish firm with meager resources.

What’s next for Priority Sports?: The cupboard isn’t entirely bare. Los Angeles-based Kenny Zuckerman, who has two projected mid-round picks in this draft (Virginia Tech OT Luke Tenuta and UCLA DT Otito Ogbonnia), has been an NFL contract advisor for three decades, and he remains with the firm. Zuckerman was tied for 56th in total clients in our latest count. What’s more, Priority’s Rick Smith represents 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and Lions head coach Dan Campbell as well as, on the college side, Tennessee’s Josh Heupel and UTSA’s Jeff Traylor, two of the hotter young coaches on the FBS level. Time will tell if Priority chooses to restock its lineup with new agents on the NFL side.

If the business of the game interests you, and you don’t already get our newsletter, the Friday Wrap, now’s a good time to start. Register for it here.

Today, for the first time ever, we took our deepest dive ever into the individual results of everyone who ran the 40 and did drills at last week’s NFL Combine. We broke out all 324 participants by school and position, agency and training destination, as we’ve done for weeks now, but also much more. 

We also broke out (all behind the pay wall, sorry):

• Combine participants by 40 time
• Combine participants by Relative Athletic Score
• Combine training facilities by their clients

Obviously, what it all told us was that this was a really, really fast combine. One trainer, Brent Callaway of EXOS’ Frisco training facility, said he had six sub-4.4 times in his first 15 years in the business, then had six more (Sam Houston State’s Zyon McCollum, South Dakota State’s Pierre Strong, Iowa State’s Breece Hall, Memphis’ Calvin Austin III, SMU’s Danny Gray and Nebraska’s Cam Taylor-Britt) this year alone. How could this be?

Sure, speed training is getting better at colleges these days; several trainers I spoke to pointed that out. Athletes are better, too. There’s no mistaking that nutrition, time on task (many athletes start training to run the 40 early in high school) and pure raw ability are all better than ever before. If all that were true, we’d see a gradual increase, but not a sudden explosion of sub-4.3 times and nine tackles running a sub-5.0 40. 

There were a lot of good observations made by the trainers we spoke to this week, and we pass along their thoughts today in our Friday Wrap, that comes out this evening (you can register for it here). However, there was one theme I heard from trainers that had nothing to do with track backgrounds, new surfaces, skipping the bench press or other factors. Instead, it had to do with the value the league places on the entertainment that comes from today’s combine. The NFL was planning on a lot of would-be draft gurus glued to their televisions, and they sought to give them a show.

“It’s made for TV now,” said one elite speed specialist. “(The league needs) you to run. If you don’t run, they will have to start paying (the players) to run, which they don’t want to do. If they start putting up bad times, it shuts down their TV show.

“(Agents, trainers and combine invitees) were about to shut down their TV show because of the Covid rule, so (the league) changed that in 12 hours. If they run slow on that official time, kids will stop running. It will ruin their show.”

It’s a valid point. The NFL — much to the chagrin of everyone I know, from agent to scout to trainer — moved all the workouts to primetime. That was done for one reason: ratings. There are a lot of good reasons that times were better this year, which we’ll discuss in today’s Wrap, but it’s impossible to discount the league’s desire to juice its show with splashy times as one factor.

This year’s speed times are something many have celebrated but few have questioned, at least as far as I’ve seen. There’s more to come tonight. I hope you check out the Wrap.

Many people aspire to represent NFL players and live the fast-paced life of an NFL contract advisor. I can tell you that the jobs of NFL agents are not easy, and these days, their jobs are harder than ever.

Last night, we hosted a Zoom with about 30 NFL contract advisors, most of them certified last summer. Hosting the Zoom, along with myself, was Rodrik David of Agent Live 360. Rodrik was an NFL scout with the Falcons until last fall.

After an hour-long session that turned out to be pretty far-reaching, here are the issues on agents’ minds with the USFL draft next week, the combine the week after, and pro days kicking off immediately following the events in Indianapolis.

USFL: Most people last night remained frustrated for a number of reasons with the new league. Frustrations are related to the following:

• Lack of consistent communication and answers to questions on the league.
• Lack of transparency on who’s in the player pool and how to get a yes/no on players under consideration.
• Questions on how to get acknowledgment that a player has been correctly submitted for consideration in the player pool.
• Lack of clear direction on whether or not players can attend their pro day, an NFL training camp, or an XFL tryout over the next two years if he signs a USFL contract.

Pro Days: Given that so many players took their Covid “bonus” year last year, it’s a crowded draft class this year. That’s one reason why so many FBS schools have gone from requiring two referrals from NFL scouts to gain entry to a pro day to three scouts. I was even told today that one Big Ten school is requiring 10 scout referrals. Obviously, that’s tantamount to saying their pro day is closed.

Combine: The last combine in Indianapolis is setting up as a downer. Though Covid protocols are being loosened across the nation, the NFL is still acting like it’s the latter months of 2020. Players will be restricted in their movements, and while some trainers will still have full access to them, others won’t. Combine that with the NFLPA’s decision to make this year’s agent seminar virtual and the NFL’s decision to have players work out at night, during primetime, and it could be a much quieter and less busy downtown Indianapolis this year. That would be a disappointing end to two-plus decades in Indiana.

We’ll have a lot more answers by the time March rolls around. Make sure you’re following us at the Friday Wrap so you can keep up. Register for it here.