The Cleveland Browns really seem to love to try to trade for quarterbacks, so much so that they don’t even care how many times they fail. While they finally managed to trade for Tyrod Taylor following a year of trying to trade for a number of different quarterbacks, one has to wonder how things might have gone differently if another trade had panned out.
Especially the trade for Jimmy Garoppolo that they had hoped for for a while. He was their top target and frequently pursued him through the 2017 offseason but were repeatedly rebuffed by Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, at least according to reports, which are not always right.
Case in point, there was a report from last year or so stating that the Browns attempted to trade for Nick Foles with the Philadelphia Eagles. While nobody has stated that there were not talks about the possibility of this trade, at least one aspect of the report was refuted.
According to Foles himself, he had never even heard of a potential trade talk with the Browns—which would have occurred back in March, prior to Cleveland acquiring Taylor—until the report originally surfaced a week or so ago, and he was flooded with text messages about it.
The original report claimed that the Eagles discussed the possibility of a trade with the quarterback and he declined, implying that Foles’ desire to not go the Cleveland (or to stay in Philadelphia) was a key factor in the deal ultimately falling through.
That would be pretty hard to be true if he really hadn’t even heard of the possibility of a trade before the report about it coming out. Nobody aside from those in the front offices of the two teams involved, apparently, had knowledge at the time that a trade was even discussed.
“I haven’t turned down anything”, Foles recently told reporters. “We haven’t told about anything”. The Eagles later in the offseason reworked the Super Bowl MVP’s contract to give him greater opportunities to earn money should he have to play to help entice him to stay, but he also seems to be comfortable there, even if he would like to start.
He added that he has a good relationship with Eagles General Manager Howie Roseman “to where if something happens, we could have a discussion. But at the end of the day, he gets to decide”, making it clear that the team in no way would have needed him to sign off if they wanted to make a move.
The Browns were supposedly prepared to part with their 35th-overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft for Foles, which they later used on running back Nick Chubb. They gave up a third-round pick in order to add Taylor to the roster from the Buffalo Bills, who drafted Josh Allen in the first round.
