It’s been two months since I did my first full off-season Eagles mock, looking at who to release, priority extensions, free agency targets, and what to do in the draft. If you haven’t see it, you can check it out below:

But it’s time for an update as quite a bit has changed – new coordinators, clarity on free agents, the salary cap outlook changed, draft prospects have risen or fallen, and just some things I’ve changed my mind on.

What hasn’t changed are the off-season priorities I previously laid out:

1. Invest in priority positions ahead of future losses, especially on the defensive line – nothing has changed here
2. Add another offensive weapon – again, nothing has changed
3. Finally improve the linebacking group – this one probably becomes even more important with the hiring of Vic Fangio
4. Begin to turn over the secondary as it is old and one of the most expensive in the league – safety is a bigger priority with Sydney Brown’s ACL tear
5. Add depth at OT and TE – again, nothing changed here

One note on the biggest reaction I got from the prior mock – many want to draft Lane’s replacement. I respect this opinion and would not be shocked if Howie did draft one, but I just don’t agree. Unless Howie knows Lane’s timeline is earlier than 2027 (his current timeline), I won’t have “future RT” as a priority. You can find my reasoning here if you haven’t seen it: “Drafting Lane Johnson’s Replacement Is This Year’s ‘Draft Bijan Robinson’.”

To jump to individual sections of this off-season mock, click any of the section links below:

• Release, retirements, and the salary cap
• Extensions and restructures
• Tough decisions and trades
• Free agency
• The draft

Releases, retirements, and the salary cap

Current cap situation 2024-26

Let’s first look at where the Eagles are from a cap perspective. Even though a lot can change, you really need to look a few years out so I will continually look at 2024-26 throughout this mock.

Currently, the Eagles are middle of the league in cap space for 2024 but things get worse in 2025 and beyond where they are projected to be one of bottom teams in the league in cap space.

I’ll primarily use effective cap space throughout as it accounts for empty roster spots – the “regular” free cap number is misleading, especially in the out years, as there are a significant number of empty roster spots.

The one good thing, and something important to remember, is the Eagles currently only have $4.2M of dead cap in 2024 – given they have been running with around $60M of dead cap every year, they can and will grow this in 2024.

The future cap can (and will) change but just remember two things:

The future cap space limits options for the Eagles this year – Any big free agent you may want – Patrick Queen, Justin Madubuike, or Jaylon Johnson – all will likely sign 4-5 year, $70-90M deals. And if you say “Howie will figure it out”, the way he figures it out is to push money into the future… right where he doesn’t have a ton of space right now.

Free agency is a market where teams compete and others have more gunpowder – No matter how much the Eagles may want a player, other teams with more cap space can and will out-bid them. We see it every year where players are bid up – Marcus Williams, Allen Robinson, and others. And Howie (correctly) avoids the top end, believing this is where mistakes are usually made.

But we will start with freeing up cap space:

June 1 designations

Two Eagles legends retire and due to massive dead cap hits on both, the Eagles use their two 6/1 designations (which was the intent with how their deals were structured in the first place)

Jason Kelce

Podcast comments aside, I cannot see Kelce returning for another year. With $25.1M of remaining dead cap and a potential $14.9M hit to the 2024 cap it they don’t use a 6/1 designation, the Eagles have no choice but to use a post 6/1 designation and live with the 2025 dead cap.

Fletcher Cox

On paper, you would give him the Kelce treatment and send him kegs of beer to keep him as his “cost to keep” is only $1.5M in 2024. There isn’t a better option anywhere near that cost, but he likely either retires or there’s no way he plays for that amount.

With $14.3M of remaining dead cap, the Eagles release him post 6/1 which would give a small 2024 cap benefit of $1.5M and push $10.1M of dead cap to 2025. Releasing him prior to 6/1 decreases 2024 cap space by $8.6M but does free up $10.1M in 2025.

Who I am releasing

I said one of the off-season priorities was to begin to turn over the secondary and that’s what I am going after hard here.

James Bradberry

Bradberry is interesting. Howie always has an exit plan with contracts and Bradberry’s was very wrongly set up for a 2025 release. Given his age, it will likely go down as one of Howie’s worst deals.

Financially, you keep him one more year, hope he bounces back, and plan to release him next year. But keeping him is a sunk cost mistake – you are paying him regardless, the question you ask is “is it better to roster Bradberry or whoever is the last rostered CB?”

Beyond his obvious decline, what many miss is there most likely won’t even be room to keep him on the 53 man roster. Usually the Eagles keep six cornerbacks, but in 2023 they kept one extra. There’s no way Bradberry makes it if they keep six and even if they again keep an extra in 2024, I still don’t see it.

Here’s what 2024 looks like right now:

Roster Locks (3): Darius Slay, Isaiah Rodgers, Kelee Ringo
Very Likely (2): Eli Ricks, Josh Jobe
Others (5): Zech McPhearson, Avonte Maddox, Mario Goodrich, Tiawan Mullen, Mekhi Garner, Bradberry

That’s 5 locked in for 2024. If they get somebody in free agency or the draft, there is at most one spot left. Do you keep JBJ over Zech, Avonte, or Goodrich? No, absolutely not.

I included a trade line in the table above which is the ideal situation. With how he ended the season, this is much harder to pull off but it isn’t totally crazy. Would some CB-needy team give up a 7th or a pick-swap when the Eagles are eating most of the charge and Bradberry would only cost them $1.5M for 2024? We will see if Howie can pull some magic off.

Avonte Maddox

If I had to bet, the Eagles return Maddox for 2024, especially with the injury to Sydney Brown and Maddox’s ability to play safety. But I am releasing him. He’s missed 22 games over the past two seasons and his play was concerning before the injury. Take the cap savings.

Kevin Byard

Byard is another interesting one. The hate was a bit misplaced and I fully expect him to go somewhere else, play well, and repeat the Barnett “look at him now” conversations. But the Eagles just can’t afford him and the free agent safety market hasn’t been strong, meaning they likely replace him more cheaply.

Updated cap picture

To get a better cap picture, you have to include very probably future departures like Darius Slay in 2025 and Dallas Goedert in 2026 that have big cap hits. With these and the above moves, we put ourselves in a worse spot for 2024 but a better cap position moving forward.

The point isn’t just to save money in the future and there’s still work to do, but this extra space gives the Eagles more flexibility to go after guys on multi-year signings.

Extensions and Restructures

Restructures

Restructures for me are easy – none. This isn’t worth spending much time on but we always get the “the cap doesn’t exist for Howie” responses, so I wanted to at least touch on it.

To look for restructure options, you need three things:

1. Players with a high current year salary
2. Players with multiple years remaining on their deal because it requires converting salary into future year bonuses
3. And players who aren’t in risk of decline (this isn’t mandatory, but this is the Bradberry example and I won’t restructure anybody I felt there was risk on)

The problem is that there is nobody to restructure. The Eagles have already either restructured everybody or set up contracts that are low salary / high bonus deals.

Only four players have 2024 salaries over $2M – Kevin Byard and Avonte Maddox (who we already released), Jake Elliott (who I will extend next), and Haason Reddick (more on Reddick later). Lane and Slay have 2024 salaries of $1.2M… Mailata, Goedert, AJ, and Sweat are at $1.1M. There’s nothing to restructure.

Extensions

I dove into the extensions I’d sign this off-season in the previous mock and they haven’t changed, so I will just summarize here. If you want to read more, you can see it here.

One note on Sweat vs. Reddick. You can flip them if you like, but the Eagles are only going to afford one of them. I am choosing Josh over Reddick for a couple of reasons. First, he’s 3 years younger and if there is one thing Howie makes mistakes on, it’s allocating too much money to older guys. Second, I think Sweat is better than most give him credit for.

Nick Waters has a good article at Philly Film Room here where he dove into Reddick and Sweat’s 2023 seasons. If you look at the headline stats, they are really similar: Sweat with an 11.7% pressure rate vs. Reddick’s 11.5%, Reddick was better with 13 sacks vs. 8, but Sweat had nearly double the run stop rate at 6.4% vs. Reddick’s 3.4% rate. But Nick looked at the quality of OT’s each went against and Sweat consistently had much harder assignments and rushed against better tackles – his average OT was ranked 25th vs. Reddick’s at 52nd.

Cap impacts

If you want to see how Howie will typically set up bigger contracts, look at the Hurts, AJ Brown, Lane, and Mailata extensions:

• Generally around half guaranteed
• Usually mostly bonus with salaries accounting for less than 10% of the total deal (AJ is the exception with half his deal being salary but it is all in the last two years, setting up a trade / release / or restructure)
• Using 3-4 void years to push current dollars into the future
• Ability to reasonably get out of the deal typically a year early but always with a decent sized dead cap hit

It’s always more complicated with roster and workout bonuses and staging of the payouts, but if we broadly go by the above, you can reasonably lay out these extensions:

One note on DeVonta – since the Eagles have the 5th year option, they will use it and then extend him. The 5th year option gets a slotted guaranteed salary based on several factors and DeVonta is expected to have a $15M option for 2025. We’ve backloaded his contract to keep his cap hits low while AJ Brown’s cap hits are high.

With a small restructure of Elliott’s 2024 salary, we improve 2024’s cap a bit but are in a bad spot for 2025 as DeVonta’s 5th year option hits and Hurts and Aj’s hcap numbers go up.

This isn’t meant to be perfect as nobody can predict how these contracts will exactly be laid out, but it’s an exercise to show how these signings and decisions eat up cap space and the tough decisions that need to be made.

And we haven’t even gotten to free agency yet. But if you want to keep DeVonta and Landon? Those have real costs. Could they backload these more? Sure. But there’s a limit to how much you can push and both Hurts and AJ’s cap numbers get bigger each year.

Which brings us to tough decisions…

Tough decisions and trades

I’m trading Reddick this off-season.

Most will hate this and it probably doesn’t happen. And if you think I picked the wrong pass rusher, then flip to extending Reddick and trading Sweat. But it isn’t crazy. And it’s what I would do, freeing up playing time for Nolan Smith.

Haason Reddick (adding a day 2 pick and $16M of cap space)

Besides young players like Jalen Carter and DeVonta Smith that are untouchable, Reddick likely has the most trade value on the team. What could he return? Looking at past examples, it’s varied:

• Khalil Mack (2022) – at 31 years old and 3 years left at $21M AAV, the Chargers trade 2nd and 6th round picks to Chicago
• Bradley Chubb (2022) – Only 26 and in the final year of his rookie deal requiring an extension, Miami trades a 1st, 4th, and RB Chase Edmonds to Denver
• Za’Darius Smith (2023) – Entering his final contract year and 31 years old, Smith was sent with a 6th and 7th for two 5th rounders

There just aren’t a lot of good comparisons because not many top pass rushers get traded. Which may be a good thing.

This year there are good free agent EDGEs with Josh Allen, Brian Burns, and Danielle Hunter headlining the class. But they will go for huge contracts. If Reddick was in this free agent class, he’d probably be right after this group.

If the Eagles could get a day 2 pick for Reddick closer to Mack’s deal (which may be a stretch) and gain $16M of cap space with it, I do it.

Some other tough decisions coming…

You may hate the idea of Reddick getting traded. I’d love to keep him, but teams need to move on and there is risk extending high-cost 30+ year olds at skill positions.

But some other future tough decisions coming:

• AJ Brown – He’ll be 29 years old entering the 2026 season with a massive $41M cap hit, he’s movable after the 2025 season with a $21M cap savings. For the people questioning drafting a WR this year, maybe not this year but the Eagles need to probably look to get another top guy by next year. I’m not pulling a WIP here and saying trade AJ, he is way too good and I’m keeping him as long as he is, I’m just pointing out that the Eagles need to start preparing.
• Lane Johnson – For the “draft a R1 right tackle this year” crowd, if you do draft one and they are good, you have to be ready to trade or release Lane before he may be ready. Lane is movable after 2025 with a 6/1 designation. An Eagles legend at this point… we getting rid of him or sitting the new guy if we draft one?
• Dallas Goedert – He’ll be 30 entering 2025, his last contract season. At some point you need to either extend him, let him walk, or look to trade him and he is very movable after 2024. He may be another “sell high” guy, could he be moved early?

I’m not advocating moving on from these guys, the Eagles are still in a window to compete every year and they need to keep every good player they have. But these decisions are coming and what I mean by investing ahead of needs.

Free agency

If you remember, at the top we started the off-season with $16M effective cap space in 2024 and $17M in 2025. After all of the above moves we have an additional $11M of cap in 2024 and freed an additional $31M over the next three years. We did increase the dreaded dead cap for 2024 to over $57M which is in line with where they have been the past couple of years.

There will likely be a bit more cap space as there are some restructure candidates (likely $15-18M) moving forward so I am not going to overstress on perfectly balancing free agency here. But I’m also not going to totally ignore the reality – there just isn’t the space to go after a Patrick Queen ($18M a year) or Justin Madubuike ($23M) unless that is the only person you want.

Howie won’t play in the very top end of free agency anyway. But here are targets that should interest the Eagles and expected contracts:

The Eagles have around a dozen roster spots to fill so keep that in mind when picking who you want. Several spots will be filled by UDFAs and won’t count towards the top-51 contracts used to calculate cap, so there is now some decent flexibility.

• Xavier McKinney, Willie Gay, and Kenny Moore shore up the defense and costs around $21-23M per year.
• Or help both sides, adding L’Jarius Sneed and Jordan Fuller and bringing back Zach Cunningham and D’Andre Swift which costs around $25-27M per year
• Or fortify the lines with Connor Williams (a center with blocking grades equal to Kelce) and pass rusher Van Ginkel for around $12M a year, leaving plenty to invest in the back-7

For me, I’m going back to my off-season priorities and targeting the following, totaling around $25-28M:

SAF: Xavier McKinney
LB: Blake Cashman
TE: Colby Parkinson
WR: Jauan Jennings
DT: Maurice Hurst
P: Braden Mann
OL: Jack Driscoll, Connor Williams

The big signings are at LB and SAF where both McKinney and Cashman are big upgrades and better talent than the Eagles have had at those positions in years.

Kellen Moore runs a lot of 12 personnel and I’m a sucker for giant tight ends. At 6’7″, Colby Parkinson is more than just a tall guy – he blocks almost as well as Goedert and while underused and buried behind Noah Fant, he is an underrated receiver with receiving stats close to Goedert’s. As mentioned above, the Eagles will need a plan for Goedert in the next couple of years and Colby is a cheap, young option.

Eagles fans should remember Jauan Jennings who caught a pass, made Eli Ricks look like a rookie as he swatted him out of the way, and ran in for a TD. Jennings blocks harder than almost any other WR. At 6’3″, 212 lbs and playing out of the slot 60% of the time, he would be an upgrade over any recent WR3s the Eagles have had.

Depth is added at DT with Maurice Hurst, not a splashy name but one of those really underrated free agency signings. He’s had injuries but when he has played, he’s been disruptive. His 14% pressure rate was 13th best in the league and better than any Eagle DT except Jalen Carter. And Hurst would be the Eagles highest graded run defender.

One other note. Connor Williams is an interesting free agent target. One of the highest graded centers the past several years, he can also play guard and at 6’5″, 317 lbs, brings some size. If you are really comfortable with Jurgens and Steen, you can get by just returning Opeta most likely. But if Jurgens already-decent injury history is concerning and you aren’t sure Steen can start at RG, Williams would be a great pickup. I debated this one but worried the Eagles OL depth is a big concern if Kelce retires.

The draft…

I won’t go into draft approach too much here as I’ve written recently on this in more detail, but will:

• Prioritize premium positions (difficult and expensive to get in free agency) that the Eagles need in the next year or two
• Look to draft a RB as the alternative is to live in 1-year rentals or overpay in free agency
• Take upside shots at depth positions like TE, WR, and OT

R1: CB Nate Wiggins, Clemson

There’s currently optimism on the Eagles CB room with Slay and Isaiah Rodgers as the top two CBs and the young group of Kelee Ringo, Eli Ricks, and Josh Jobe all having promise. But Slay will be gone after 2024, Rodgers is on a 1-year and will get expensive if he plays well, and no matter how much you like the young guys, you can’t plan on all three hitting. From the above, you can see getting a good CB in free agency is really hard to do as most never hit free agency and the ones that do are really expensive.

The frequent comp for Wiggins is Darius Slay and he’s been my CB1 all along. I’ve ignored him as a target because I expected him to go top 12, but for some reason, he’s been dropping with Terrion Arnold and Quinyon Mitchell projected to go before him. Wiggins now with an expected draft position of 20, it may require a small trade-up but if he gets close, the Eagles should take him.

Other options: CB Kamari Lassiter (trade down), EDGE Chris Braswell

R2: DE Darius Robinson, Missouri

Another premium position that the Eagles appear set at but, like CB, one that is really expensive to get in free agency and one that the Eagles will need after 2024.

At 6’5″, 290 lbs, Robinson doesn’t look like a pass rusher but he is disruptive and brings great versatility – Brett Kollmann listed his pass rush win rates at different alignments below:

Other options: EDGE Austin Booker, EDGE Adisa Isaac

R2: LB Edgerrin Cooper, Texas A&M

We invested in LB in free agency but even then, the Eagles only have three rostered LBs. Maybe Edgerrin will be gone by this point, but he is still projected in the 50s. For more info, I wrote on why it is time to fix the linebacker group here and the guys in this draft that make sense.

Other options: RB Trey Benson, LB Payton Wilson, OG Christian Haynes

R3: RB Audric Estime, Notre Dame

This is a position I changed my mind on, previously saying we should re-sign D’Andre Swift (who absolutely earned it). But as I wrote on RB positional value, longevity, and free agency risk here, you either live in an world of 1-year rentals or invest in the draft every 3-4 years. I am investing now. Estime rarely gives up negative plays, is a plus blocker, and has surprising explosiveness for his size.

Other options: WR Jacob Cowing, CB Cam Hart, LB Junior Colson

Day 3 picks:

R5 (4 picks):

WR Malik Washington, Virginia
OT Roger Rosengarten, Washington
TE Ben Sinnott, Kansas St
QB Taulia Tagovailoa, Maryland

R6 (2 picks):

SAF Josh Proctor, Ohio St
LB Edefuan Ulofoshio, Washington

Thanks for reading. This turned out way longer than I wanted, but the dive into the cap is complicated and important to look at over a multi-year period as it impacts what they can do today.