Eagles Ship Arnold Ebiketie to Bengals for a 2027 Pick as Philadelphia's Season Spirals
Ian Rapoport: 'The #Eagles aren't done, trading edge Arnold Ebiketie to the #Bengals in exchange for 2027 6th round pick.'
The are officially having a fire sale, and the Cincinnati Bengals are the ones holding the shopping basket. Ian Rapoport reported Tuesday that Philadelphia is shipping edge rusher Arnold Ebiketie to Cincinnati in exchange for a 2027 sixth-round pick.
A 2027 sixth-rounder sounds less like a football asset and more like a kid currently trying to pass his sophomore year geometry class. But for a Bengals team desperate for defensive help, giving up a lottery ticket three years from now is the easiest business decision of the week.
Cincinnati needs this. Joe Burrow has been publicly begging the front office to spend some of their $53.5 million in cap space to fix a historically porous defense that dragged them to a 6-11 record last year. They just beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-17, and adding a healthy edge rusher to the rotation keeps that momentum alive for bettors eyeing their divisional futures.
On the flip side, the Eagles are waving the white flag. You can hardly blame them when their injury report reads like a triage unit. Jalen Hurts is out for the season with a calf injury, and guys like Saquon Barkley and DeVonta Smith are battling hamstring issues. They just dropped an ugly 19-11 game to the , which is the football equivalent of stepping on a rake in your own front yard.
What makes this trade wild is the timeline. The Eagles just signed Ebiketie to a one-year, $7.3 million deal earlier this year, only to flip him months later for a draft pick that will not materialize until the next presidential administration. That is not roster building. That is hitting the panic button and hoping nobody notices the wasted cash.
Ebiketie now gets to pack his bags for a Bengals team actually trying to win football games while Burrow is still in his prime. Meanwhile, the Eagles are staring down a long, miserable winter, hoarding future late-round picks to keep themselves warm.