Free and clear
Eagles are under salary cap and then some. They will not be shut out of free agency.
Say what you will about Eagles general manager Howie Roseman.
The only football he ever played involved a joystick controller. He can’t draft his way out of a paper bag. He undermines his coaches at times with odd personnel decisions.
But here’s what’s undeniable about Roseman: He’s a savant-like wizard with the NFL salary cap. There’s essentially no jam he can’t untangle with a series of contract adjustments and personnel moves that almost always need to be made anyway. He did it last year. He’s done it again this year.
Sure, he created the mess the Eagles were in, heading to the offseason originally around $45 million over the $182.5 million figure that turned out to be the 2021 cap. But he fixed that without letting go of anyone the Eagles felt they really needed to keep.
By the time the 2020 season ended, everyone knew wide receiver Alshon Jeffery and defensive tackle Malik Jackson had played their last games with the Eagles. But just before their final game, Roseman adjusted their contracts in such a way that the Eagles would save more than $4 million rather than incur a charge by releasing them at the start of the new NFL year on March 17.
He made other adjustments to the contracts of high-paid stars such as cornerback Darius Slay, guard Brandon Brooks, defensive end Brandon Graham and defensive tackle Javon Hargrave.
Because wide receiver Marquise Goodwin opted out of the 2020
season following his acquisition in a trade with the San Francisco 49ers, the Eagles were able to send him back to the Niners, ostensibly annulling the transaction while lopping more than $4 million off the 2021 cap and getting their draft pick back.
All of this put the Eagles under the cap even before letting go of Jeffery and Jackson on Wednesday.
Although the Eagles aren’t considered in great cap health by any means, they aren’t exactly chewing off their talons to escape the trap.
They will have to be sensible during free agency, but they won’t be completely locked out. They might even be able to make a splash move.
If they do become able and are serious about improving their defense while switching to a Cover-2 base scheme, which likely will be the preferred method of new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, they should make a run at safety Justin Simmons, the former Denver Bronco who has 16 interceptions and 385 tackles in 74 career games (64 starts).
Simmons, 27, has played every defensive snap the previous three seasons for Denver. His durability alone might make him more valuable than any player the Eagles have had in their secondary since Brian Dawkins.
But he would obviously bring a ball-hawking presence to the back end of a defense that will require outstanding safety play to be functional. When playing Cover 2 or Cover 3, lockdown cover corners are not necessarily needed. But smart, quick safeties are.
Before we go any further, three things:
1. Nobody is certain about Gannon’s approach.
The Eagles apparently are affording him the same unreasonable protections as with former defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, which means we might not get a chance to ask him anything until they convene at one of their offseason camps. If offseason camps are even allowed by the NFL this year. Last year, they were not because of a coronavirus pandemic that continues to rage.
2. Nobody is certain exactly how much cap space Roseman has cleared.
The best anyone can do is estimate based on projections from sites such as spotrac.com and overthecap.com. But it always seems the Eagles have more flexibility than anyone believes.
3. Nobody is certain how much the Eagles may value a player like Simmons.
But here’s my understanding of the Eagles and how the salary cap impacts their ability to procure players under Roseman: If they really want somebody, they get him. Something like that.
Just making it this far this fast, though, is a remarkable thing.
Just because they can’t spend as much as New England or the New York Jets or just about any other team, it doesn’t mean they will be shut out of free agency, either in the ongoing first wave or the second wave, which will come after even more space is opened by trading away tight end Zach Ertz.
The Eagles always somehow find a way to be players, even in the worst of times.
For that, Roseman must be given credit.