Source: Eagles trading safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson to the Texans for guard Kenyon Green

Howie Roseman wasn’t kidding at the NFL scouting combine when he said that this offseason would look “different” compared to last year’s.

On Day 2 of the legal tampering period, the Eagles general manager sent safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson to the Houston Texans for guard Kenyon Green, a league source said Tuesday, confirming an ESPN report. The trade also involves a pick swap, with the Eagles sending a 2026 sixth-round pick to the Texans while acquiring a 2026 fifth-round pick.

Gardner-Johnson’s departure is the latest among an exodus of players from the Eagles’ Super Bowl-winning defense, the majority of whom are pending unrestricted free agents. Milton Williams (New England Patriots), Josh Sweat (Arizona Cardinals), Isaiah Rodgers (Minnesota Vikings), and Oren Burks (Cincinnati Bengals) agreed to terms elsewhere on Monday, and Darius Slay has been designated as a post-June 1 release while he has reportedly garnered interest from the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The trade marks yet another notable ending to Gardner-Johnson’s time in Philadelphia. After his 2022 stint with the team, negotiations with the Eagles went poorly and he signed a one-year prove-it deal with the Detroit Lions. The following offseason, in an effort to infuse the Eagles defense with energy and toughness the group had lacked in 2023, Roseman signed Gardner-Johnson to a three-year, $27 million deal.

The 27-year-old safety brought his signature sense of swagger to the top-ranked Eagles defense in 2024, helping the team to its second Super Bowl win in franchise history. He contributed a team-high six interceptions, which matched his 2022 total with the Eagles.

From a salary-cap perspective, while the Eagles will be on the hook for some dead money in 2025 in the aftermath of the Gardner-Johnson trade, his contract will mostly come off the books afterward. The move will help the Eagles keep the nucleus of the team together as key players become eligible for extensions. For example, defensive tackle Jalen Carter has two years remaining on his rookie contract and will be due a massive raise, as evidenced by Williams’ $26 million-per-year deal with the Patriots.

Gardner-Johnson’s trade also frees up cash in 2025 that will be allocated elsewhere, as Zack Baun signed a three-year, $51 million extension last week. Even though Gardner-Johnson had a relatively low cap hit in 2025 at $3.7 million, he is due $8.5 million in cash.

During a Twitch stream on Tuesday, Gardner-Johnson expressed an understanding that the Eagles were motivated from a financial standpoint to make the trade, a perspective he gathered following a phone call with the team.

“It was an amazing phone call, to be all the way thorough,” Gardner-Johnson said. “Great phone call. Situation is, them young guys got to get paid in Philly. Jalen Carter, Reed [Blankenship], Zack, all them guys are going to get their money. They deserve it. Me getting older, so I’ve got to understand, like, it was no bad blood. It was none.

“[Expletive], all I ask them, I was like, ‘Between me and y’all,’ like I told them, I just wanted to go somewhere I could play winning football. I didn’t ask for a specific place. This is honesty. I just wanted to play winning football.”

The Eagles are losing one bona-fide starter on defense and gaining a beleaguered one on offense. Green, who turns 24 on Saturday, has had a lackluster start to his NFL career despite his draft pedigree. The Texans traded back two spots with the Eagles to select him with the 15th overall pick in the 2022 draft out of Texas A&M. Green started 14 games in his rookie season, then missed all of 2023 because of a shoulder injury he suffered in the preseason finale.

He returned to action in 2024, starting nine games at left guard. In 12 games last season (582 snaps), the 6-foot-4, 325-pound Green conceded five sacks and a total of 28 pressures, according to Pro Football Focus. He was sidelined from Game 10-14 with a shoulder injury.

The acquisition of Green suggests that Mekhi Becton, a pending unrestricted free agent who started 15 games at right guard for the Eagles last season, is unlikely to return to Philadelphia. While Green hasn’t lived up to expectations in his young career, he provides offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland with another reclamation project with the draft pedigree and the physical tools that the Eagles typically covet, mirroring their addition of Becton last offseason.

If Becton is in fact gone, Green figures to have an opportunity to compete with Tyler Steen for the starting right guard vacancy come training camp.

The right guard role isn’t the only starting spot evidently up for grabs. Gardner-Johnson’s trade opens up the starting safety gig alongside Blankenship. The Eagles have a number of in-house candidates to replace Gardner-Johnson, most notably including Sydney Brown, the team’s 2023 third-round pick out of Illinois.

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Brown, who turns 25 later this month, has served as a core special teamer since entering the league. He missed the first five games of the 2024 season while recovering from a torn ACL he suffered in the 2023 regular-season finale.

“I didn’t come here to just play special teams, obviously, so I’m motivated,” Brown said of his future role in February. “It’s going to be awesome to have an offseason. Last year was a little weird just because I had one leg [in good health after surgery on the other], so it’s just different. I’m able to approach this offseason that way I’d wanted to — have the OTAs, have a training camp, have every reason to go out there and do what I need to do to show that I was drafted where I was drafted [at No. 66 overall in 2023]. Those are my intentions.”

Tristin McCollum and Lewis Cine, who also finished the regular season on the active roster, could be in the mix for the role. The Eagles could continue to add pieces at the position, too, as free agency continues and the draft approaches.

At the NFL scouting combine late last month, Roseman acknowledged that signing players to lucrative, long-term deals — Baun and Saquon Barkley now being the latest — necessitates contributions from younger, cheaper players on rookie contracts. By moving on from Gardner-Johnson, the Eagles can prioritize spending elsewhere while getting younger at the safety position.

“Every player that we sign, it’s going to have to come from somewhere, so that means that it’s going to open up an opportunity for a younger player,” Roseman said then. “So everything we do going forward is going to have to be taken from somewhere.

“We like to talk about it internally, like it’s like a layer cake. All right, you have this base, and you build on top and on top and on top of it. But we’re at the point where some of those layers are going to have to come out and when we build on, we’re going to have to make decisions.”