Philadelphia Eagles news and links for 3/3/23.

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Previewing the Eagles’ next calendar year, in stick figure form - PhillyVoice
The Eagles are going to lose a whole lot of free agents this offseason. In the case of most of the players likely to score big money this offseason, lean “go” more than “stay.” And actually, if I had the chance to start my stay/go series over from the beginning, I might change some “stay’s” to “go’s.” [...] I believe the 2023 Eagles will still be good, but it will also be a “get cap healthy” speedbump year, and they’ll be poised to more aggressively compete for a Super Bowl in 2024 and beyond. I also believe that this is a logical approach, if indeed my projections are correct.

Eagles news, notes and thoughts from Nfl Scouting Combine - The Athletic
1. Don’t bet on the Eagles using the franchise tag. There has been speculation that they could exercise the tag to at least hold the rights to one of their free agents — the tag deadline is Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET — but my sense from the combine is Philadelphia won’t pursue that option. That includes a tag-and-hold situation to buy time. The Eagles would presumably bypass this route to avoid the one-year cap hold on their books. If they keep a key free agent such as Javon Hargrave or C.J. Gardner-Johnson, it could come independent of the tag. But as of now, I don’t expect the Eagles to use the tag before the deadline. [...] 2. The Eagles will have a list of headliners signing elsewhere in two weeks. General manager Howie Roseman has actually been transparent about this reality in his public statements. It doesn’t mean they won’t try to keep some of their top free agents — you’ll find those who speculate Philadelphia will be aggressive trying to keep Hargrave and Gardner-Johnson — but the way the Eagles are banking on 2024 compensatory picks shows they’re resigned to the reality that they won’t re-sign top free agents.

Bold offseason moves for all 32 NFL teams - ESPN+
Say goodbye to an elite defense and rebuild from scratch: The 2023 Eagles defense is going to look very, very different from its 2022 counterpart. So much of the Eagles’ defensive talent was sourced from expiring and one-year contracts. The Eagles had nine players play at least 700 defensive snaps in 2022; seven of them are pending free agents. With $6 million in cap space, it might just be best to start from scratch. Midseason additions Robert Quinn, Ndamukong Suh and Linval Joseph are natural players to let walk away. Philadelphia mainstays such as Fletcher Cox, Brandon Graham and Javon Hargrave might be tough goodbyes to make, but it could be sensible given their age. Some of the players who helped shape the league’s best passing defense by DVOA are going to be the toughest to bring back. After career seasons by cornerback James Bradberry and safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, both players may have priced themselves out of the Eagles’ offseason plans. However, they also may help lay out a plan to help Philadelphia retool in 2023. Eagles general manager Howie Roseman snagged Bradberry after he was made a cap casualty by the Giants. That one-year, $7.25 million contract was enough to bring on the cornerback with a league-low 35.6% completion percentage allowed and 4.2 yards per target, third among qualifying corners. Philadelphia landed Gardner-Johnson for future Day 3 draft picks and walked away paying the league co-leader in interceptions $2.54 million. These shrewd deals are not going to hit every time, but Philadelphia could supplement its 2023 defense by scouring the buyout market and making low-risk trades for players. This keeps the Eagles’ defense competitive without eating into too much cap space, and it still allows Philadelphia to stockpile and develop rookie-contract talent.

10 leftover Eagles nuggets from the 2023 NFL Combine - NBCSP
2. Howie Roseman gave a little preemptive strike on Tuesday when I asked him about the team’s approach this offseason with so many pending free agents. “Are we going to get all the free agents back? We’re just not,” Roseman said. “We’re not capable of getting all those guys back, but we also understand we’re in a good situation in terms of picks that we have going forward. We have a lot of guys under contract, not only for this year, but going forward. We’re not going to make excuses for the position we’re in.” In a way, that felt like a warning to fans who are looking at the high-profile names of the Eagles’ soon-to-be free agents like C.J. Gardner-Johnson, James Bradberry, Javon Hargrave, Fletcher Cox, Brandon Graham, Miles Sanders and more. The Eagles might be able to keep a couple of those big-name guys but they understand they’re going to lose a lot of them too. There’s just no way to keep them all, especially as the Eagles transition to becoming a team with a quarterback who has a mega salary. Roseman said they’ll just try to be honest with the players they’re interested in retaining and tell them the price range. They don’t want to insult these players with bad offers.

The Top 100 NFL Free Agents of 2023 - The Ringer
6. Javon Hargrave, DT, Philadelphia Eagles (30). Hargrave was hands down one of the best interior pass rushers in the NFL last year. According to Next Gen Stats, his 11 sacks from a defensive tackle alignment ranked third, and his 53 pressures ranked second. Hargrave was productive in 2021 too, notching 7.5 sacks and 18 QB hits. The only thing working against him is his age. But Hargrave is likely looking at a deal in the neighborhood of $16 million to $18 million per year.

5 NFL Draft prospects who could fit Sean Desai’s Eagles defense - BGN
Devon Witherspoon, Cornerback, Illinois: In Chicago, Desai was not married to man or zone coverages. He liked players who could press at the line of scrimmage but also play well in zone. Witherspoon is probably the best cornerback in the class in terms of playing both man and zone coverage. He is also a strong tackler, which is a plus on a defense that is sure to blitz much more.

New Eagles coordinators + NFL Combine takeaways - BGN Radio
*The guys experienced technical difficulties while recording this episode. We apologize for this, thank you for listening.* Brandon Lee Gowton and Jimmy Kempski are back to talk about Eagles coaching staff changes, takeaways from the Howie Roseman/Nick Sirianni press conferences at the NFL Combine, and more. Interact with us on Twitter: @BrandonGowton, @JimmyKempski, @BGN_Radio, @BleedingGreen. Use discount code BGN15 at RighteousFelon.com for 15% off your order! Same promotion applies at WildRangerPet.com.

Eagles are in rare air with 3 minority coordinators, and it’s ‘a big deal’ - NJ.com
When the Eagles hired Johnson, who is Black, and Desai, who is of Indian descent, it was significant for several reasons. For the first time since Emmitt Thomas was the team’s defensive coordinator in 1998, the Eagles will have a minority coordinator. It also marks the first time in the team’s history that they have three coordinators who were minorities. The last team to do that was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who had Byron Leftwich, Todd Bowles, Keith Armstrong, Larry Foote, and Kacy Rodgers as their coordinators from 2019 to 2022 (Larry Foote and Rodgers were co-defensive coordinators in 2022).

Spadaro: Eagles know they have something special in Jalen Hurts - PE.com
This is a common thought process and goal for every NFL team, and that’s why the period we’re in right now, with free agency starting within two weeks and the NFL Draft opening on April 27 is the most exciting and risky of the offseason. How do you find a quarterback, and not just any quarterback, but a “great quarterback who plays at a high level,” as Executive Vice President/General Manager Howie Roseman puts it? There is a reason teams are expected to jump over each other and vault into the top 10, the top 5, probably even the very top, of this year’s NFL Draft. And why just about any quarterback who is available on the streets right now – that’s you, Derek Carr – is meeting with every team looking to solve its hole at the position. What happens if Aaron Rodgers says he wants to play in 2023 and the Packers make it known the future Hall of Famer is available? That is going to be interesting to watch. Anyway, the importance of having an outstanding quarterback cannot be overstated, and having one, as the Eagles do in Jalen Hurts means, well, what does it mean?

Ranking all 32 NFL teams by offseason assets: Bears and Texans lead the way, Buccaneers are on the brink of a rebuild - PFF
[BLG Note: The Eagles rank 11th.]

Potential 2023 NFL Cuts - Over The Cap
All players who are officially released will be added in our free agency pages with a SFA (street free agent) designation. These players do not count against the compensatory pick formula.

Globally, 56 million watched Super Bowl LVII - PFT
It’s a big world, and more and more people living in it are watching the NFL’s biggest game of the year. The league has announced that 56 million international viewers watched Super Bowl LVII. It’s a seven-percent increase over last year’s audience.

Report: Cowboys focused on making ‘impactful addition’ to offense, Tony Pollard also expected back - Blogging The Boys
As you can see the DMN noted that no sort of trade is close, but again this all feels somewhat significant. This is either an indication that the Cowboys are working on something somewhat legitimate or just an outright declaration of “the Cowboys want to add good players to their offense” which doesn’t exactly seem like breaking news. It is certainly interesting that the tight end position is mentioned here, and while this draft class is regarded as deep at that position, it isn’t exactly common for rookie tight ends to make a huge impact. Perhaps that is a tea leaf in noting that the Cowboys may consider trading for an elite tight end over the offseason? This is admittedly reading a bit into things now, but we are a point where we are throwing things out for discussion. Maybe this is something. Maybe it is nothing. The truth is, we are at the point in the year where we don’t know how much of something nothing really is.

Giants, Daniel Jones reaching crunch time in contract talks - Big Blue View
Schoen added that they will “hopefully find a comfortable landing spot for both parties.” Dianna Russini of ESPN reported earlier in the week that the maximum dollar amount, or “walk-away number”, the Giants are believed have set is below the value Jones’ reps are willing to accept. If the Giants and Athletes First cannot bridge that gap, Schoen will reluctantly use the franchise tag.

The Commanders should provide an offseason of headlines & ‘entertainment’ whether they appear on Hard Knocks or not - Hogs Haven
With Washington being one of only 4 qualifying franchises in 2023, and with so many reasons why producers would consider the team along with other story-line laden teams (most notably the Jets), it seemed like a good idea to poll the Hogs Haven members on the question of whether they’d like to see the team featured on the HBO series this year or not.

2023 NFL Scouting Combine: What We Learned during Thursday’s activities in Indianapolis - NFL.com
But that wasn’t Smith’s only explosive mark on the day, as he also soared 41.5 inches in the vertical leap and 10-foot-8 in the broad jump. Just extraordinary twitchiness for an edge defender. A number of undersized rushers have thrived in the NFL in recent years, including the Eagles’ Haason Reddick and the Patriots’ Josh Uche, so perhaps the size-related concerns with Smith might be overblown following his banner workout in Indy.

Nolan Smith had a historic day at the NFL Draft Combine - SB Nation
Watching the NFL Combine from inside Lucas Oil Stadium is a rather surreal experience. Instead of the raucous atmosphere you usually see in an NFL stadium, it is a much more subdued, even sterilized environment. The only sounds you really hear are the instructions from the NFL coaches and scouts running the drills, and sometimes the exasperated exclamations of the prospects after a dropped pass, a slow 40-yard dash time, or something else. There were moments when an impressive drill drew the attention of the fans in attendance, or even the journalists in the building, but for the most part, Thursday afternoon at Lucas Oil Stadium was more subdued than your usual NFL environment. That near silence, however, could not overshadow the day that Georgia pass rusher Nolan Smith had on Thursday afternoon.

2023 NFL Scouting Combine: RBs to watch - DraftKings Nation
Tank Bigsby, Auburn. Where Bigsby was considered among the next backs in the second tier of this year’s class, Bigsby seems to be slipping closer to the third tier. He performed well against top SEC competition this year, but Auburn also ran a run-heavy offense Bigsby won’t see in the NFL. As a bigger, stockier back, it’s hard to project whether he will be the every-down back teams are looking for in the early rounds.

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