Omaha is right. If Wentz is healthy and playing well, you can't sit him just to protect your draft pick. You just can't. Sitting him may help you in the short term, but long term you've pretty much ruined your ability to make such trades in the future. Nobody will trust you, so they'll demand all trade proceeds up front. That means you'll have to overpay and can't work with the flexibility of contingencies. That restricts your ability to make deals and gives your competitors an advantage because they'll have more negotiating options than you. Maintaining your reputation moving forward is worth far more than than the difference between a 1st and 2nd round pick.

Now. if Wentz gets hurt or sucks, then all bets are off. Then they can justify benching him to play somebody who might be a legitimate alternative moving forward. That means playing a prospect like Eason/Ehrlinger, not a retread like Hundley. If you start a one-year rental like Hundley over a healthy Wentz, then it looks like you're tanking on purpose.

I'm not getting this argument at all. First of all, the deal is being satisfied. If the Eagles wanted a first round pick with no contingencies they should have negotiated it.

Second, if the Colts did something like this in they okay I really doubt the Eagles wouldn't have made this trade this year. It's not like they were getting better deals for Wentz be anyway.

Even though the NFL is a Billion dollar business, it is still in many ways a club, and the owners make deals all the time and how you honor those deals goes a long way is how the rest of the league thinks about your franchise. The deal the Colts and Eagles made was clearly made on Carson Wentz being healthy enough to play 75% of the season...I believe the Colts will honor that agreement.

if the colts didn't want to give up a 1st, they shouldn't have offered it. see how that works?

you don't understand the argument because you lack integrity. lots of people do.

no. you are wrong

No, I’m not. You just lack any semblance of objectivity in matters like this.

Like I said, you’re a loon on this stuff.

Not sure if this will help illustrate the principle, but imagine you are a player with a contract that includes a $1M bonus for starting at least 15 of your team’s games in a season. You play well, but the team does poorly and ends up 4-10 heading into week 15. How would you feel if the team abruptly decides to bench you so they can start a lesser player just to avoid paying your bonus? When the time comes to negotiate your next contract, would you be interested in agreeing to such clauses? Perhaps more importantly, if you are a free agent considering several teams, and you learn that the Colts are treating players like this, wouldn’t that discourage you from choosing the Colts? Or at the very least wouldn’t that make you negotiate your contract differently with them?

The reality is that teams often bend over backwards for players in this situation. Even when the player legitimately doesn’t reach his incentive, but instead comes very close, teams often pay the incentive just to keep the player happy. Why would they do that? It only hurts them, and they’re not legally required to pay the bonus, right? That’s all technically true, but they pay it because they want happy players and they don’t want a reputation for being cheapskates who will take advantage of every loophole to screw over their negotiating partner (the player). It just doesn’t look good when you do this.

As fans it’s fun to see the Colts make a “good” trade where they get a lot of value without giving up much. But the truth is that in negotiating a deal with anyone, the best outcome is one where everyone profits – not one where one team dominates the deal, and the other team gets very little. If Carson Wentz plays well, even if the Colts have a bad season overall, you hand over the 1st round pick without hesitation. The Eagles delivered their part of the bargain, and so did the Colts. Everyone did well on the deal, and neither team will hesitate to work together again in the future.

They did offer it. If he plays 75% of his snaps. That little detail.... Are you just too stupid to grasp it?

It wasn't very clear that it was just "if he's healthy he'll play x amount of the season." It seems it was clearly made on his health, his effectiveness and the Colts being in the playoff race. If one of those factors isn't coming into play then they put that in so the Colts could recoop their pick.

I get the salary comparison, but that one is not quite the same. For one small bonuses like that are a drop in the bucket for an NFL team's revenue stream. There's not much loss for the team if they have to fork over another million to a player for just playing him.

Now, what if there were some real tangible reward for the team to sit the player for that last game? Like the team gets more cap space the next year or something if player X doesn't hit his bonus this year. At that point how much would we see the honor vs. the team benefit?

The bargain in this case is Wentz playing 75% of his snaps. That's it. The hope for the Colts is that he would be good enough and they would be in playoff contention. So far the first part is true...so far the latter part remains to be seen if it's true. If they are in playoff contention in a weak ass AFC South in Week 11, yeah, of course you play him. If they are 1-9 then...why play him? At that point he could get hurt and then you run the risk of having a hurt QB (who was playing in meaningless games) and not having a very high draft pick to brunt the damage to yourself. And at that point the Eagles will have got a high second round pick, so it's not like they got screwed on the deal here. On no planet is Carson Wentz worth a Top 5 pick.