Will the Atlanta Falcons trade or release Vic Beasley this summer

Other than Matt Ryan, the two most polarizing words among the Atlanta Falcons fan base is Vic Beasley.

When someone mentions the name “Vic Beasley” to those among the Atlanta Falcons fan base, you are assured to get one of two responses:

1. He is a bum, bust or trash
2. He just needs another year. Dan Quinn will get him right.

That is it, no other descriptors are used when discussing the former Top 10 pick. Coming out of Clemson in 2015, there were legitimate concerns on his path to success in the NFL. A former team captain and college all American, was seen as a high-risk-high-reward type of player.

High expectations coupled with an injury and lack of success as a rookie had most fans ready to give up on Beasley heading into 2016. However, Vic would bounce back in a major way when he led the NFL is sacks in 2016, giving everyone hope that he had figured out the NFL way and was able to work past whatever hindered him in 2015.

The problem is, the two seasons since that success has had Vic looking a lot like 2015 and light years away from what we saw in 2016.

Spotrac put out an interesting list on Wednesday “Potential trade/release candidates” and low and behold, Vic Beasley is sitting on this list.

Before anyone gets ahead of themselves, please understand with a fully guaranteed $12.81 million in 2019, the Falcons cannot and will not release him. So the only other option is wanting to know what the trade market for his services look like and are they worth it at this point.

As Matt Siegman wrote about yesterday on Blogging Dirty, regardless of how great Beasley is in 2019, there is no chance he is back in a Falcons uniform in 2020. If he has a great year, he will not be affordable with players like Deion Jones, Keanu Neal and Austin Hooper needing to be extended and paid; if he has his fourth bad season of his five-year career, the Falcons will simply move on.

Falcons reporter for 929 the game told me via twitter that the market for Vic last year had a lot of interest and he thinks that it could be the same this year. The only challenge to that would the fact that Vic had another terrible year, which surely sent his value plummeting even further.

If that is the case, what is a trade the Falcons should entertain? Should the team allow him to leave after the 2019 season, they would surely be awarded a compensatory pick in next year’s draft and one would assume the team would factor that into their decision should they receive a trade offer for Beasley in the near future.

No one expects June and July to be an interesting one on the Falcons front as the team expects to sign Julio to new money and they will keep working on Grady, however, Vic Beasley could provide some unexpected fireworks should a team make an offer the Falcons cannot refuse.