- Bad play-off results end a bad year: AJ Brown’s season-worst 53.1 on Sunday’s PFF dragged his final season grade down from 83.0 to 80.9, officially declaring 2025 the lowest-graded season of his seven-year NFL career.
- Next step: It seems increasingly likely that he could demand a trade this offseason, but the Eagles would be left with a whopping $20 million dead cap hit that their veteran roster will struggle to find space for.
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AJ Brown’s years-long frustrations with the Philadelphia Eagles’ offensive coaching staff came to a head on Sunday during the playoff exit at home against the San Francisco 49ers.
Brown’s personal altercation with Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni was the latest in a long-running saga that has been a thorn in the side of the defending Super Bowl champions all season.
Sirianni later revealed that the heated moment occurred after he felt his star receiver coming off the field slowly prior to a fourth-down punt. Although Brown declined to speak to the media after the game, it doesn’t take a football philosopher to guess that Brown’s frustrations were rooted in Philadelphia’s uninspiring offensive performance up to that point.
It was an accurate snapshot of the Philadelphia Eagles’ season as a whole. After Brown failed to accumulate more than 50 receiving yards in six of his first nine games this season, the Eagles eventually found time to appease their frustrated superstar, who completed three straight 100-yard receiving games in late November and early December.
Despite his expanded role, question marks remained surrounding Philadelphia’s offensive plan. Offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo seemed content to strip away the complexity that made last season’s Eagles so powerful, and instead counted on his offense to win thanks to their raw talent — which he did, 11 of 18 times.
But as a byproduct of Philadelphia’s simplistic style, the most talented weapon in their arsenal often felt completely isolated from the game plan. That was evident once again against the 49ers.
Sunday was Brown’s sixth game of the season with 1.0 or fewer yards per route run. He has never had more than three such appearances in the previous five seasons.
Brown’s season-worst 53.1 on Sunday dragged his final season grade down from 83.0 to 80.9, officially declaring 2025 as the lowest-graded season of his seven-year NFL career.
As Sunday’s numbers suggest, Brown didn’t exactly help his own case for more goals coming out of the playoffs in Philadelphia, considering he dropped two of his five catchable targets. It was only the second multi-drop game of Brown’s Eagles tenure – both of which occurred in the playoffs.
Brown’s fourth-quarter slump on a crucial third-and-5, when he trailed by four points, left him without a second-half reception for the fifth time this season. That’s the same amount as the combined totals of Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, Puka Nacua, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Amon-Ra St. Brown, CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens.
When one of the highest-paid wide receivers in the NFL has fewer than 30 yards in a game, you’re often in trouble.
The top 10 receiving receivers in 2025 combined for just 17 games with fewer than 30 receiving yards this season. Of those 17 plays, AJ Brown was responsible for five, capped off with his 25-yard performance on Sunday.
This is uncharted territory for a wide receiver making $32 million a year. That same contract could now be Brown’s worst enemy. It seems increasingly likely that he could demand a trade this offseason, but the Eagles would be left with a whopping $20 million dead cap hit that their veteran roster will struggle to find space for.
While Brown’s frustrations are plain for the world to see, any indication of how serious the relationship is from the Eagles’ perspective is still guesswork.
If Philadelphia were to move in a different direction, almost certainly via trade, their next problem is that there isn’t exactly a top 2026 draft prospect or impending free agent with a similar profile to Brown, 32-year-old Mike Evans could be the exception.
The Tennessee Titans were the last team to try to emulate Brown’s production, and they smelled bad when they drafted Treylon Burks at 18th overall in 2022. Burks has yet to accumulate 1,000 yards as an NFL receiver.
While I don’t want to completely proclaim that AJ Brown is “one-of-one” as a receiving talent, the reality is that his combination of power and finesse is not easy to assess during the draft process.
An offensive coaching change, especially a new face, could be enough to convince Brown to give Philadelphia another chance. He’s probably not the only Eagles player frustrated by the lack of structure or rhythm in Philadelphia’s nearly random assortment of play calls.
It often feels like the Eagles do little to expose their opponent. The wild-card weekend featured numerous examples of crafty coordinators attacking weaknesses in opposing defenses, such as Matt LaFleur’s sustained attacks on broken-down Chicago Bears CB Kyler Gordon and Dave Canales calling a barrage of passes into the territory of Los Angeles Rams safety Quentin Lake, who has missed the past two months with an injury.
The Eagles, on the other hand, asked very few questions of the 49ers defense, which seemed susceptible to it leading up to this game, allowing a passer rating of 106.5 over the final six weeks of the regular season.
Whether or not change is imminent in Philadelphia, the AJ Brown situation is undoubtedly the biggest question mark heading into the offseason.
While it’s unfair to classify an 11-win season and a division title as a “Super Bowl hangover,” the Eagles will rue the opportunity they got to play back-to-back in one of the most open playoff fields in recent memory.
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