The ESSENTIAL Football Show 2025 Cap Space: $21.7 million
2026 Cap Space: $26.0 million
2027 Cap Space: $91.5 million
2026 Draft Picks: Own Picks, Rounds 1-5, 7; plus NYJ Rd 3, ATL Rd 5, HOU Rd 5, and comp picks 3rd, 4th, 5th
The Philadelphia Eagles have a pretty good thing going right now.
Say what you will about the cap - and the Eagles certainly leverage those rules to their advantage - you also have to find good players to pay, and in that respect, the Eagles have exhausted all avenues, developing left tackle Jordan Mailata through the international program, getting huge years out of linebacker Zack Baun and guard Mekhi Becton after position changes, and breaking with conventional thinking about their roster-building “rules” under general manager Howie Roseman when they added running back Saquon Barkley in free agency.
2024 won’t be 2025, but the Eagles are already up to their old tricks, trading safety Chauncey Gardner-Johnson and his relatively expensive contract to the Texans for guard Kenyon Green, whose up and down tape from Houston does have some really good “ups” for offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland to work with as the Eagles look to maintain their line’s performance in front of Barkley now that Becton has departed for the Chargers with his career in a decidedly better place. (As an aside, while it’s not the end of the world, as Becton’s height gave him some problems with rushers getting into his chest in pass protection, I’m sincerely going to miss that man MAULING NFL defenders in front of Saquon; the Eagles play with a nasty attitude across the board and have other freaks like Mailata, but Becton was ridiculously fun to watch, and it wont’ be quite the same without hm.)
The Eagles suffered plenty of losses beyond Becton and Gardner-Johnson, but while players like Milton Williams, Josh Sweat, and Darius Slay made a huge impact last season, there are few organizations better equipped to replace them, because (1) the Eagles already had players in the development pipeline who have flashed promise and (2) they had already been surpassed in their position rooms by younger players who are playing at an All-Pro level on rookie deals.
Quarterback
Starter: Jalen Hurts
Backups: Tanner McKee, Kyle McCord (6th Rd), Dorian Thompson-Robinson
Running Back
Starters: Saquon Barkley
Backups: Will Shipley, A.J. Dillon, Tyrion Davis-Price
Wide Receiver
Starters: A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Jahan Dotson
Backups: Ainias Smith, Johnny Wilson, Terrace Marshall
Tight End
Starters: Dallas Goedert
Backups: Grant Calcaterra, Kylen Granson
Offensive Line
Starters: Jordan Mailata, Landon Dickerson, Cam Jurgens, Tyler Steen, Lane Johnson
Backups: Myles Hinton (6th Rd), Kenyon Green, Drew Kendall (5th Rd), Trevor Keegan, Kendall Lamm, Matt Pryor
Offense Overview
We’ll get to those younger players second, because they’re all on defense; some of the extensions haven’t kicked in yet, but now that center Cam Jurgens has inked a long-term deal, nearly everyone on this Eagles offense has gotten paid.
In the starting lineup, the exception will be the winner of the right guard spot; the Eagles are getting a deal on the last year of Kenyon Green’s deal, paying just his base salary, so that former 2023 third-rounder Tyler Steen has a slightly larger cap hit (per Spotrac) if he wins the job. Given the promise Green has flashed and the fact that Steen was steady enough when he filled in due to injury last year, the Eagles are likely to wind up getting quality play out of this spot, especially since Mailata, Landon Dickerson, Jurgens, and Lane Johnson might be the best foursome of line talent in the NFL.
Everyone else is back; quarterback Jalen Hurts is coming off a heck of a playoff run, Saquon Barkley had a record-breaking season at running back, tight end Dallas Goedert put up absolutely ridiculous numbers in the brief period that he played without his superstar receiver teammates early in the season, then returned to form after a hamstring, and the superstar receiver teammates, A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, continued to produce in the biggest moments in the Super Bowl run, even if the overwhelming success of the Barkley-led run game limited overall opportunities in the pass game.
There’s always the question of players maintaining their standard moving forward, but aside from that, the Eagles seem to face two key questions on offense.
The first is what life looks like with Kellen Moore moving on from the offensive coordinator postion; maybe things have changed since head coach Nick Sirianni’s stint with Brian Johnson as offensive coordinator, but whenever Sirianni has been reported to be heavily involved with the offense, whether that’s before Shane Steichen seized the reins or when Johnson was the coordinator, this offense has appeared extremely frustrated with its own identity, seemingly reluctant to embrace the run-first nature of any offense that’s going to be built around Jalen Hurts, who for all his strengths remains a certain type of player. Maybe things are different with Kevin Patullo, who came over to the Eagles with Sirianni from the Colts in 2021, as offensive coordinator, but I found Sirianni’s comment that “I can’t tell you I make a decision without saying to Kevin first, ‘What do you think?’ That’s in everything…” to be downright alarming. People certainly can change, but if in his bones, Sirianni really wants to be running a different style of offense, then I can see this becoming a problem just as quickly as it did in the 2023 campaign.
The second question is whether or not everyone stays happy, assuming things keep humming the way they are. It’s all well and good to say players should be happy with winning, but superstar players tend to want their props, and if Saquon Barkley’s dominance means that A.J. Brown doesn’t get the volume he needs to be in the discussion as one of the NFL’s premier receivers, you can understand where some frustration might build.
Defensive Tackle
Starters: Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis, Moro Ojomo
Backups: Ty Robinson (4th Rd), Byron Young, Thomas Booker IV
Edge
Starters: Nolan Smith Jr., Jalyx Hunt
Backups: Bryce Huff, Azeez Ojulari, Josh Uche, Patrick Johnson, Antwaun Powell-Ryland (6th Rd)
Linebackers
Starters: Zack Baun, Nakobe Dean (knee)
Backups: Jihaad Campbell (1st Rd), Jeremiah Trotter Jr., Smael Mondon Jr. (5th Rd)
Safety
Starters: Reed Blankenship, Sydney Brown
Backups: Andrew Mukuba (2nd Rd), Tristin McCollum, Lewis Cine
Slot
Starter: Cooper DeJean
Backups: Mac McWilliams (5th Rd)
Outside CB
Starters: Quinyon Mitchell, Adoree Jackson
Backups: Kelee Ringo, Eli Ricks, Mac McWilliams (5th Rd)
Defense Overview
Everything seem to click for the Eagles defense in 2024.
When teams add defenders with their first three picks in the draft, they dream of getting two elite starters and a rotational/developmental player, which is exactly what the Eagles got in Quinyon Mitchell, Cooper DeJean, and Jalyx Hunt.
For pure movement skills, I’ll put Mitchell up with any corner I’ve watched. I don’t think he has the sort of raw, overwhelming powerful speed that Jalen Ramsey ran with during his prime, but to me, Mitchell is smoother, with unbelievably fluid hips, acceleration, and long speed. To top it off, Mitchell will come up and hit you, a trait that led to him missing some time in the back half of the playoff game against the Rams, but in general an awesome trait for a cornerback to have int today’s game. There are some moments to nitpick, but as much as I love watching the following players, I think Quinyon is faster than Derek Stingley, smoother than Sauce Gardner, and could very well wind up surpassing Pat Surtain II in the discussion as the NFL’s best corner if he’s just a bit better in Year Two. His draft classmate, Cooper DeJean, is every bit as much a stud in the slot, with the explosive change-of-direction skills that make him so effective as a punt returner showing up in his ability to challenge a wide variety of routes and receivers from the slot; for all the talk of how Vic Fangio’s two-deep shell is about keeping the opponent in front of you (which is true in many senses) it doesn’t feel that way when Mitchell and DeJean are clamping down on two of the receiving options in the context of that defense.
On top of the immediate hits on Mitchell and DeJean, the Eagles saw continued returns on investments from the 2022 and 2023 drafts. Jalen Carter, the 9th overall pick of the 2023 draft, flashed an absolutely insane toolkit from his first game as a pro, but he developed into a Defensive Player of the Year level player last season, and for all I said about Mitchell’s talent, I’d lean Carter’s way if I had to say which of the two is more gifted.
Carter’s former Georgia teammates, defensive tackle Jordan Davis (13th, 2022) and edge rusher Nolan Smith (30th, 2023), weren’t working from the same base, but also showed significant improvements. Davis hasn’t fully lived up to his crazy testing numbers, but there are more and more consistent examples of him stacking up offensive linemen, and I think it’s fair to say his improvement from Year 2 to Year 3 exceeded his gains from Year 1 to Year 2, and that he could unlock even more next season. As for Smith, it’s just a matter of scaling things up in terms of snaps played; he’s undersized, but Smith is incredibly explosive, and he uses that to his advantage when engaging linemen in the run game or working around them as a pass rusher. Given his improvement curve in Year Two, it’s reasonable to think he could add even more to his bag in terms of refined pass rush moves, which will only make Smith more dangerous, because the raw tools are there in a very real way.
Another Georgia product, Nakobe Dean, had a breakout year beside Zach Baun, who came out of nowhere, but absolutely did it all as an off-ball linebacker, whether it was identifying and triggering on run plays, using his terrific range in zone coverage or as a sideline-to-sideline pursuit player, or adding to the pass rush, and is now paid accordingly to anchor the middle of this defense. As good as Dean was next to Baun, the Eagles are looking for even more with the addition of Jihad Campbell at the end of the first round. The NFL is several years removed from a golden age of off-ball linebackers, when you had the pairings of Seattle’s Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright, San Francisco’s Patrick Willis and NaVarro Bowman, and Carolina’s Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis playing at elite levels, and while there have been other great pairings since, there certainly aren’t as many examples as there were at that moment.
What made those players so special was they way they worked together; these players were great athletes, and they also played with exceptional awareness. Kuechly and Davis may have been the best example of constantly working both sides of the leverage together to handle the run game, and trying to execute running back screens against them was a laughable exercise in futility, because one of the two would identify the threat to his side and trigger past the linemen before the back had the ball.
If it all comes together, Campbell could put Philadelphia’s defense on par with the 2024 version. They lost some good players, but defensive tackle Moro Ojomo and edge Jalyx Hunt have already shown they are quality contributors in a rotation, and both could take on more work in the upcoming year. There is turnover in the secondary, but Adoree Jackson was a nice value add at his price as a potential starting corner, and whether it’s 2025 second-round pick Andrew Mukuba or 2023 third-round pick Sydney Brown at the safety spot next to Reed Blankenship, the Eagles have some pedigree to throw at the position.
Overall Outlook
Nobody contends forever, but with an extra third-rounder from the Jets in next year’s draft in addition to their own picks in Rounds 1-5 and several projected compensatory picks, it’s hard to point to a better-functioning operation than the Eagles. That doesn’t guarantee anything, but this roster is still stacked even after some offseason losses, and the machine is in position to keep adding pieces into what is undeniably one of the league’s best development programs.
As a microcosm of this, we can look at where Javon Hargrave, a blue-chip player for Philadelphia’s Super Bowl runner-up, is today. The Eagles had the 9th overall pick, courtesy of Mickey Loomis and the Saints, after their Super Bowl run, so they were able to let the aging Hargrave go and draft Jalen Carter to replace him.
Hargrave, who originally signed a 4-year deal for $84 million ($40 guaranteed) with the 49ers, tore his triceps at the beginning of last season, one of many mishaps in San Francisco’s exceptionally disappointing 2024, and now he’s signed on a two-year deal for $30 million with the Minnesota Vikings, who were trying to find a way to spend all their excess money as they attempt to run down the Eagles.
Meanwhile, Jalen Carter has far surpassed Hargrave, and is arguably the best defensive tackle in the NFL.
He’s also set to count for a whopping $5.9 million against the cap in the third year of his deal, per Spotrac.
So while the Eagles wait to eventually pay their rising blue-chip talent, their competition pays through the nose to try to maintain their talent level with the aging star the Eagles let walk.
And more than quarterbacks, or scheme, or any of the rest of it…. that’s how you win in the NFL.