Vic Fangio said C.J. Gardner-Johnson was a salary-cap casualty, but the now-former Philadelphia Eagles safety begs to differ.
Gardner-Johnson pushed back against the Eagles defensive coordinator’s assessment that his trade from Philadelphia to the Houston Texans was due to the safety’s lofty $9 million cap hit for 2025.
Gardner-Johnson led the Eagles with six interceptions and the team’s lone pick-six and 14 tackles while helping the Eagles win the Super Bowl in his second stint with the team.
But Gardner-Johnson was traded to Houston in March for offensive lineman Kenyon Green and a sixth-round pick in 2026, in what the team called a salary-cap move.
Yet, Gardner-Johnson posted to Instagram that he doesn’t agree with those sentiments.
Why Does C.J. Gardner-Johnson Think The Eagles Traded Him?
Both Fangio and Eagles general manager Howie Roseman called the Gardner-Johnson trade a cap maneuver, but the safety has his own theory.
“I was a test dummy for them,” Gardner-Johnson shared on his Instagram story. “Now [Fangio] can be like ‘my scheme worked.’ Or did my skill set make it work?
“So yeah, let the salary cap be the ‘excuse.'”
Despite his terrific skill, Gardner-Johnson is developing a reputation around the NFL, since Houston will be his fourth team in seven seasons, and the third in his past four — not considering the fact he left Philadelphia for Detroit before re-signing a three-year, $27 million contract with the Eagles last March.
His social-media use and outspokenness has made Gardner-Johnson the two-time winner of the NFL’s most annoying player award, according to The Athletic.
“Yap yap yap,” one player told The Athletic of Gardner-Johnson.
Why Did The Eagles Say They Traded C.J. Gardner-Johnson?
Until Gardner-Johnson pushed back against the Eagles’ public statements about his trade, it was widely acknowledged they traded him because of his $9 million salary.
“That was a salary cap-type thing, and Howie made that decision,” Fangio told reporters recently. “I was fine with it.”
Roseman was public about the cap crunch Philadelphia was facing.
“Every dollar that you spend is a dollar less that you can spend on some of these younger players that maybe you want to retain,” Roseman said according to NBC Sports Philadelphia. “Getting out in front of it was important to us, and again, hard decisions. Not asking anyone to agree with them, but that’s part of our job.”
The Eagles GM also acknowledged Gardner-Johnson’s move specifically, since he has been a standout player and helped the Eagles reach the Super Bowl in both seasons he played with them.
“[Gardner-Johnson] did a great job for us in both the years that he was with us, obviously making the Super Bowl twice in two years with him as our starting safety,” Roseman said. “When you look at our team and you look at the amount of highly paid players who have earned their contracts — we’ve got eight guys who are making $15 million or more. … We have eight starters who are on the Super Bowl team. None of those guys have long-term contracts.
“So you have a lot of players coming through that aren’t under long-term contracts, plus a lot of guys who are on long-term contracts, and we never want to be in a situation where we have one year where we’re getting rid of 20 guys.”
