Getty Philadelphia Eagles QB Carson Wentz has been cleared to play in Week 3.
Sign Jadeveon Clowney and Logan Ryan. Make a trade for Yannick Ngakoue. Make all the moves!
That has been the mantra this offseason for most Eagles fans and even reporters looking at Philadelphia’s current salary cap situation. The team ranks fifth in the NFL in financials with around $24.7 million in cap space heading into the 2020 season.
However, the Eagles are going to be scraping for cash in 2021 when Carson Wentz’s massive long-term deal hits the books in a big way. The quarterback’s cap hit will rise from $18.6 million in 2020 to $34.6 million in 2021, per Eagles vice-president of football administration Jake Rosenberg. That means the Eagles will go from being $24.7 million under the cap to about $50 million over the cap in 2021.
#Eagles rank 5th in the NFL in cap space with $24.7 million in cap room. That’s a $1.2 million cap change since free agency and the draft.
Redskins are only NFC East ahead of them, at No. 2 with $35.5 million in cap room. Browns top the list at $38.4 million. #FlyEaglesFly
Does that hamper the franchise from making subsequent moves to improve the roster this year or in the future? Not necessarily but it does explain why the Eagles focused so heavily on investing in speed and youth through the draft.
“I don’t know if it’s hampered us. We talked about the planning side of things, I mean we were planning for this for a long time as far as Carson’s contract,” Rosenberg told Eagles Insider Dave Spadaro. “We had planned from a negation standpoint, a structure standpoint, and from a team-building perspective we were also planning for it and understood what it meant to have a quarterback on a market-adjusted deal rather than a rookie deal.”
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Winning Championships is Basis for Every Decision
It’s all a numbers game in the NFL, and the organization will no doubt tweak contracts and release players to keep the cap in check. (For example, the Eagles just restructured Rasul Douglas’ contract this year and did the same with Zach Ertz in 2019).
Rosenberg was quick to stress that the motivation behind every decision and each contract negotiation has to take into account how it sets them up to win future Super Bowl titles. It’s a small nuance that showed up when the contract details for Darius Slay were revealed. Yes, they made Slay the highest-paid cornerback in the league but they did it in a creative way that will save the team nearly $19 million in cap space over the length of the deal.
The Darius Slay trade and contract extension is “exceptional value” for the Birds, says @JoeBanner13.
#On94WIP🎙️
“I think that we are always in the business of trying to win and trying to win a championship,” Rosenberg told Spadaro, as transcribed by SportsRadio 94WIP. “We are not trying to take years off and we are not trying to reset the table or anything like that. So we are managing every decision that we make, we are looking at a multi-year period and just understand what does this get us in the short term, and how does it affect us in the long term, and we are going to do our best to manage that way, and always, if we have anything to do about it, keep ourselves in a position to compete for championships.”
Salaries for Undrafted Rookie Free Agents Revealed
Meanwhile, Dave Zangaro of NBC Sports Philadelphia was able to uncover the salaries for each of the Eagles’ 13 undrafted rookie free agents. The numbers are interesting to note when trying to predict which players might make the final roster.
Luke Juriga, the son of former Broncos starter Jim Juriga, leads the pack with $116,000 in guaranteed money ($16,000 signing bonus). The Western Michigan product has been floated out there as a potential replacement for Jason Kelce at center.
Raequan Williams, the athletic defensive tackle out of Michigan State, was next on the list with $100,000 in guaranteed money ($15,000 signing bonus), followed by Oregon State tight end Noah Togiai at $100,000 in guaranteed money ($10,000 signing bonus).
Want to know how much the #Eagles like their undrafted rookies?
Follow the money. Here’s a look at how much they’re paying all 13 UDFAs:
The remaining free agents shook out like this, in terms of guaranteed money: Grayland Arnold ($90,000), Michael Jacquet ($90,000), Michael Warren ($57,500), Elijah Riley ($50,000), Adrian Killins ($42,500), Prince Smith ($34,000), Manasseh Bailey ($32,500), Julian Good-Jones ($32,000), Dante Olson ($10,000) and Khalil Tate ($10,000).
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