Philadelphia Eagles Are Cutting Alshon Jeffery
The Philadelphia Eagles are cutting Alshon Jeffery if the opportunity presents itself in the coming days.
There are a lot of good reasons for Philadelphia to rid itself of Jeffery. He is expensive, not as good as he seems to think he is, oft-injured and bad for team chemistry.
Unfortunately, a lot of those things make him extremely difficult to trade.
Fortunately, there are other ways of dealing with the 30-year-old.
According to Jeff McLane of The Inquirer, Jeffery’s contract has a clause that permits the Eagles to move on from him over violations including, but not limited to “engaging in hazardous activates” or “making any public comment that criticizes the team.”
While Jeffery likely is not out riding flaming unicycles, the second violation is one that may apply to him.
Jeffery stands accused of being the Eagles player who bashed quarterback Carson Wentz to the media midseason. The comments were attributed to an anonymous source, but most people saw through the facade.
Back in 2006, violations that qualified as conduct detrimental to the team were used by Philly to get rid of wide receiver Terrell Owens.
There is no reason history cannot repeat itself this time around.
Although Eagles general manager Howie Roseman has generally been pretty supportive of Jeffery, he is also keenly aware of what is in the wide receiver’s contract.
“We had a conversation with Alshon before the season, and he took a pay cut in exchange for guaranteeing,” Roseman said of Jeffery restructuring his deal.
“For us, we were trying to create as much flexibility going forward with our roster to create cap space to improve the football team.”
The only real problem with releasing Jeffery at this stage is the financial ramifications.
Philadelphia would essentially be forced to absorb a $26 million dead money hit and its cap space for 2020 would dip by about $11 million from $41 million to $30 million.
Cap Savings if Cut: WR
Sammy Watkins, KC, $14M
Tyrell Williams, LV, $11M
Mohamed Sanu, NE, $6.5M
Marqise Lee, JAX, $5.2M
Taylor Gabriel, CHI, $4.5M
Marquise Goodwin, SF, $3.6M
Paul Richardson, WAS, $2.3M
Brandin Cooks, LAR, -$5M
Alshon Jeffery, PHI, -$10.4M— Spotrac (@spotrac) February 1, 2020
Then again, that presumes that the NFL and NFLPA do not reach a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
If a new CBA is reached, then the $26 million dead cap hit could be spread out over two years — $16.6 million in Year 1 and $9.5 million in Year 2.
There is no question that getting rid of Jeffery will not be easy for Philadelphia, but where there is a will there is a way.
The time has come for both parties to go their separate ways. How precisely that will happen remains to be seen.
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A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
