You're gonna laugh but if the Chargers were to trade Justin Herbert this off season they only would have lost an incremental $40 million by giving him that contract extension.

He was due $8.5 million in 2023 and $29.5 million in 2024 already. They gave him a contract that has paid him $78.0 million for 2023 and 2024, which is $40 million above what he was already set to collect.

The acquiring team would be on the hook for his $45 million fully guaranteed option bonus due in 2025, his $15 million fully guaranteed salary due in 2025, and then presumably he would have his $24 million salary for 2026 guaranteed by being on his new team's roster on the 3rd day of the 2025 league year.

He has a no trade clause so he would get to exercise discretion over who trades for him. But that just means it would need to be a mutual parting of ways.

The acquiring team would essentially be getting him on a 5 year, $222.5 million contract with $60 million cash due in the first year, able to be restructured however you like. And I'm sure Herbert would be all about it because he signed his deal before the salary cap jumped up as much as it did in 2024, which made his deal look underpaid. So he'd probably be of the mindset he goes to his new team, rocks their socks off, and gets a new deal by 2026.

No doubt the Chargers would be pulling in a nice haul in trade for Herbert and they could use that to pull J.J. McCarthy out of Minnesota as it seems almost a no-brainer (particularly if he takes them far into this year's playoffs) to stick with Sam Darnold.

Or are we only allowed to ponder unorthodox trade ideas like this when it's Tua Tagovailoa doing the disappointing?