Why The Eagles Should Trade Up and Draft Patrick Surtain

We have one more day until the NFL Draft. Today as you can see by the title, I am going to talk about why the Eagles should trade up and draft Alabama cornerback Patrick Surtain.

The Eagles, before getting star corner Darius Slay from the Lions last year, had one of the worst cornerback groups I have ever seen. The Eagles were relying everything on Slay to cover the number one receiver on the other team, in which Slay would usually win the matchup. But on the other side you had 5’10” corners covering good receivers such as Michael Gallup, Tyler Lockett, and Chase Claypool who were exposing these corners while Slay was most of the time locking up his guy he was matched up against.

For this year the Eagles are going to face a lot of good receivers twice in the NFC East such as Terry McLaurin, Kenny Golladay, Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, Curtis Samuel, and more and outside of the NFC East. You would be facing Tyreek Hill, Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, DJ Moore, Keenan Allen, Julio Jones, Calvin Ridley, should I keep on going? Those guys I just mentioned are some pretty dang good receivers. If the eagles want to have any chance of competing in this division they should have a guy next to Slay to help cover some of these receivers. Now do I think Surtain can lock his man up every game? No. I don’t think he will be perfect and he may struggle but I do believe he is the best corner in the draft and that he will be a superstar corner wherever he goes. I trust this new coaching staff to develop and I’m sure Darius Slay would love to take him under his wing and teach him the ways of how to be a good corner.

Now why do the Eagles have to trade up? What should it take to trade up? What teams would want to trade down with the Eagles?

I am going to answer these questions right now.

So the reason why the Eagles should trade up is because I don’t see him falling to pick number twelve. Like I said before I think he is best corner in the draft and I think a lot of NFL scouts would agree with me. Now a short answer for the second question is that it should take a first, a third and maybe a day three pick to move into the top 10 if a team is greedy. Now for the last question what teams would want to move down to 12? According to Adam Schefter, the Panthers have been looking at offers for their eighth pick and I can see the Broncos also looking to trade down after the Teddy Bridgewater trade that happened.

So let me close out this article by saying this. The Eagles badly need a corner. They couldn’t acquire any good corners in free agency or in the trade market and this is the perfect time to get your corner of the future.