Confusion Still Reigns
Posted: March 25th, 2014 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 62 Comments »Jeff Lurie met with the media today at the NFL owners meetings. He had a chance to offer his thoughts on the DeSean Jackson melodrama and possibly offer some insight to the state of things (building off DJax’s tweet from last night). Instead, Lurie had nothing to say on the matter.
I don’t take that as a good sign.
It was interesting to see DeSean’s tweet and even a little fun to look for some optimism, but we have to be honest here. Nothing he says is all that important. DeSean is a pawn in this situation. That’s not a criticism of him, but rather the reality of the NFL. Owners, GMs and coaches are the ones who rule the league. Players are a commodity. That was true of Chuck Bednarik, Reggie White and DeSean.
Some of you wonder why I’m so down on this situation getting resolved and DeSean remaining an Eagle. The first thing you need to understand is that is exactly what I’d like to happen. I don’t want the Eagles to get rid of their best WR. I’d love for this to turn out to be some weird situation that just got out of hand.
I just don’t get the feeling that will happen. The Eagles have had multiple chances to say anything they wanted in regard to this situation. They won’t even give generic answers that offer any hope. Their denials have a cold, stand-offish quality that makes me think DeSean is outta here.
Here is an interesting blurb from Les Bowen.
If the Eagles somehow tried to put the whole thing back together and move forward with their most explosive offensive weapon, you’d have to wonder how they blundered into this mess in the first place, whether the people in charge really know what they want. Kelly does not give the appearance of someone who does not know what he wants.
Former Eagles quarterback Michael Vick clearly doesn’t see a reconciliation happening. Vick, asked about Jackson during an ESPN Radio appearance Tuesday, said: “Chip is a leader … and certain organizations want things done in a certain way.”
Vick also said that Jackson is “not a bad person,” but he called the situation “something he may have to learn from.”
It really does feel like Chip would have killed this story a while ago if it had no merit. You may wonder why Chip would call DeSean and tell him “positive” things. That could be Chip wanting to talk to his player and smooth some things out. Or it could be the Eagles way of trying to keep DeSean calm.
Whatever he was told, DeSean bought in hook, line and sinker. He told teammates today that he would be back this year. As much as I’d love that to be true, call me Doubting Thomas on this one.
I would love to be wrong.
Chip meets the media on Wednesday morning. As Les Bowen said the other day, “Get yo popcorn ready.”
* * * * *
No update on the Mark Sanchez story.
Not everyone is so keen on signing him. One thing some critics seemed to be missing is that Sanchez would come here cheap and to be a backup. Oh, Kelly would give him a chance to win a job, but Nick Foles would really have to fall apart to let Sanchez beat him out.
A few of you were worried about overpaying for Sanchez. That won’t happen. Some were worried that he’d come in to start Most likely Foles will start. Sanchez won’t even be guaranteed the backup job. He’d have to earn that. Kelly and Howie Roseman remain high on Matt Barkley.
Just because Sanchez failed to become an elite starter with the Jets doesn’t mean he’s got no value. He could become a good backup. I think with more coaching he could eventually get back to being a starter. Vinny Testaverde was awful his first few years, but then changed teams and went on to have a long, successful career. AJ Feeley wasn’t able to start and play well in the NFL, but he was a terrific backup and #3 QB for years.
One of the lures for Sanchez in Philly is to come here and get tutored by Kelly, Pat Shurmur and Bill Musgrave. I think Sanchez knows that he needs help if he wants to get his career back on track.
We’ll see what happens.
_
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTFv65IidTw
Yea..no thanks.
On a side note, Adrian Wilson clone please.
I don’t mind Sanchez coming to compete for a job, but he has been one of the most mocked players in the NFL and you can’t expect us to not make jokes about it.
It doesn’t matter to me. It’s not like he’s coming here to start. If they feel they can coach him up and get him looking more like he did early on in his career, I’m good with it.
Question just becomes do we end up with the old Sanchez, or a dirty Sanchez?
Maybe this is a move to try and get future picks. Rehabilitate him, show him off in preseason and maybe someone will pay picks for him in next years’ draft.
Can’t rehabilitate jackson how are you going to fix that prima donna?
We running a clinic now?… lol.
Blurb from Kissing Suzy Kolber: “Meanwhile, the Eagles are reportedly close to bringing on Nacho, which would give them quite the staple of terrible USC quarterbacks behind Nick Foles, but we’ll hold off until the signing is official to laugh heartily at them for months on end.”
“you’d have to wonder how they blundered into this mess in the first place” maybe because they didnt blunder into it all… clearly its a made uop story that gained traction due to other sports writers trying to break a story that wasnt there. Why would chip want to ALWAYS have to speak out on a topic if its ALWAYS media created?? You do it once and you have to do it all the time. Doesnt that sound like chips thinking? Yeah me too.
I see you are still on stage one: Denial. I’ve gone through that and stage 2: Anger and am currently in stage three: Bargaining.
http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-5-stages-of-loss-and-grief/000617
dude u are in stage 5 of the philly media spin cycle.. lol
You’re in denial man. All Chip and Howie would have to say is, “that’s ridiculous.” and the story would be done. The fact they haven’t denied it says quite a bit. Now they have to face these questions over and over, until they do something with DeSean or the season starts.
the story wouldnt be done.. lol..the media would just say well they had to say what they had to say to save trade leverage. and the convo will continue, have u just become an eagles fan? lol…
The Eagles’ pattern when a story is untrue is to emphatically deny it once and THEN disregard it. That’s not what they’ve done here. Face it, there may or may not end being fire here, but there is certainly a lot of smoke.
chip kelly is in town now, things are different.
So all these reporters all just pulled this out of their ass?
YES!!! one of them write a speculative article, another writes one inspired by the logical thought process provoked by the 1st… and so on and so on.. Its called the snow ball effect.. and here we are
so all these sources they talk to is just imaginary?
No. they are just WRONG. lol.. Clearly, when they have 2 sources saying 2 completely different things… am i right? lol.. like lets be real
Popcorn would be a waste. Chip is gonna shut down DeSean questions just like Howie and Lurie.
My theory is DeSean either smartened up or realized his value on the open market isn’t as great as he thought. I think Chip calling DeSean rules out a flat out release. But I think all bets are still on when it comes to a trade.
It’s silly to release since no guaranteed money. They’re obviously trying to move him — I don’t think anything’s changed but it was impossible to get a deal done in the current climate.
Feel a little bad for Djax but he’s gotta grow up.
I mean, I think the problem is Sanchez didn’t just fail to become an elite starter, he failed to even become an adequate starter. What’s worse, he actually seemed to be regressing as he went, as his 2012 campaign was probably his worst since his rookie year.
If we do sign him I sure hope you’re right and he can be a guy who can start for a stretch of games and play well, but I just see Vince Young all over again with this guy.
You omitted the fact in 2012, Sanchez had Kerley, Schilens, Hill, and Gates as his WR crew if you could even call it that after Holmes went down and TEs Cumberland and Keller (who missed half the season and had pulled groin and high ankle sprain injuries).
My thoughts:
1. Everyone blaming Jimmy is a bit off base. He posted an article that was pure speculation, and he labeled it as such. It was Mosher posting guarantees the next morning that got the crazy train rolling.
2. Part of this is most likely based in some truth. What is most likely true? The Eagles (including teammates) didn’t enjoy the request for more money. DeSean isn’t necessarily the best teammate. And the Eagles, like last season, were putting out feelers on a trade. I think it’s pretty safe to say each one of those is true, but of course there are no guarantees. But I think those would be points that would be hard to argue, I think.
3. Something somewhere leaked and kicked off a media frenzy. Things got out of control when everyone claimed to have some inside knowledge of the situation, and was making guarantees or near guarantees about DJ being gone, or what his trade value was, or (the most egregious misstatement) that he would be outright released. Some of that stuff was just ludicrous, particularly the idea that they would release him. “Maybe there’s something we don’t know,” people said. But what we didn’t know was so bad, so bad as to warrant outright release, there’s no way the Eagles would have traded him to someone, only for it to be revealed later that Jackson was behind a triple homicide. They’d never find another trade partner again.
4. It would be interesting to know who some of these sources were. I would guess there’s a high likelihood that Jackson’s agent was behind some of it. He’s the only one who stands to gain. No one else would be that stupid or careless. Unless the Eagles were pulling some vast trick to shakedown who was leaking information out of Novacare. But that’s conspiracy bullshit, and I’ll leave that to Conspiracy Expert Mike Florio.
So, in summation, it’s likely that the Eagles were interested in a trade, the media got out of hand and blew the whole thing way out of proportion (perhaps because of someone’s agent), and the Eagles didn’t get an offer they liked. So, they do the smart thing, try to mend fences, and move on.
I don’t know why this all has to be so complicated. I sense that in the end we’ll all find out that it’s simply not.
Kempski wrote an article March 24th where he said he has a source close to the team that told him they decided to move on from Jackson a month ago.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/sports/eagles/Eagles-notes-Birds-decided-to-move-on-from-DeSean-Jackson-over-a-month-ago.html
I was talking about the original article. By the 24th, my mother had “sources”.
and Jackson never asked anybody for money. Kelly just said he never made a request for more money.
The only comment from Jackson regarding more money, was on a direct question in an interview where the reporter was fishing and asked if he thought he deserved more money. Of course any player coming of a career best season would say yes to such question.
I bet everybody on this board would say yes to the same question no matter what you are already paid.
Also team first guy Mathis has actually asked for a new contract where supposely Mesean (as some likes to call him) havnt.
And team first guy Mathis finds himself in the exact same position.
That’s along the lines of my thinking. They put out feelers to see if anyone will bit and give them a deal they couldn’t pass on. That didn’t happen, the mess became too overwhelming and potential trade partners heard “release” & pretty much offered squat, in part due to his contract. So they’re looking to pull in the reigns and move fwd with their ears to the ground.
Now that Mathis is reportedly on the trade block, I’d assume the same strategy. Not looking to necessarily part with Mathis. But he’s a valuable player, great character, that could pull in a good value for return. So they’ll dangle him as bait to see who bites. It’s not like they’re afraid teams will think they’ll just release Mathis. So teams won’t outright low ball. It’s also possible that Mathis’ name has been tossed out there like a slow underhand pitch to get the media to draw some attention away from the DJax debacle.
My only problem with this strategy is that it seems like they feel they’re either much farther away from making a run, they’re really hard pressed to get more picks this year, or they’re really trying to clear off some cap $$ going fwd. What concerns me is that our strategy is supposed to patching holes going into the draft, where here these only create holes.
If there’s one thing we’ve learnt about this organisation over the last year and a bit is that nobody except those on the inside know exactly what’s happening. Better to just ride it out and see what’s at the end.
Here’s the part that doesn’t still doesn’t add up to me. While there are obviously some DeSean Jackson haters out there, most of us acknowledge that DeSean Jackson is one of the best wide receivers to ever play for the Eagles and he is in the prime of his career. So for the Eagles to be willing to give him up for a third round pick or release him outright, there had to be something else going on, some gross infraction of team rules or some other major conflict that made Jackson’s presence on the team untenable.
But after Kempski’s original speculation, when he and all these other reporters were citing unnamed sources to back up the trade rumors, none of the sources revealed what the actual problem is? These sources were able to confirm the Eagles’ willingness to part with Jackson for little or nothing in return, but none of them were able to give an actual reason behind the Eagles’ logic? Everyone knows that the Eagles are trying desperately to unload him, but nobody knows why? It seems to me that if all these sources were willing to leak the Eagles’ intentions, they would also be willing to leak the Eagles’ motives.
But we haven’t seen that. We’ve had hints that there is something sinister about the robbery at Jackson’s home, speculation about a sideline argument, but nothing tangible to sufficiently explain why the Eagles would be willing to part with one of their best players when they have more money to spend under the salary cap than players to spend it on.
So either these sources are not as connected as they purport to be or they are exhibiting some bizarre selectivity in the information they are willing to leak. Or maybe they don’t exist at all.
The Eagles might be willing to leak that they’re shopping a player because they need to gauge interest somehow. However, nobody on either the Eagles side or DJax/Agent side would want to leak any concrete reasons that could lead to his devaluation.
I think the thing is that they probably weren’t as eager to move him as everyone was making out. I think they were interested in trading him if there was value, as I suspect they were tired of him, and because of all the other reasons people have been talking about.
But I sincerely doubt they were EVER willing to give him up for a third round pick. And I certainly don’t think they would have ever just released him outright. There is nothing to be gained, and there was nothing last year to indicate that he was anything remotely close to a cancer bad enough that it needed to be excised at all costs.
Not that I have any idea at all about what’s going on here, but there could be very good reasons why there’s such a lack of information. It’s one thing to report a trade rumor, or a FA rumor, based upon an unverified single unnamed source. On the other hand, allegations of impropriety or criminal activity are a whole different topic. For such allegations to be published, I would imagine these reporters would need to, at the very least, get an opinion from legal counsel, and my guess is that before that even happens, there are some standards that are known to the reporters that they have to meet before even bothering the lawyers.
So the sources may very well have told them why this is happening; the reporters just may not be able to publish that information until they can verify the story.
Of course, this is all assuming that the sources have any credibility to begin with, which is far from established at this point.
I’ve actually read somewhere, I wish I could remember where, that Desean, for either long stretches or maybe the whole season, was difficult for Bicknell to communicate with. Possibly up to not even being on speaking terms, Avant having to be intermediary. At first I read those reports and interpreted them like I think everyone else has, as Desean and Bicknell had pretty frequent fights. But if Desean was refusing to speak to his coach for longer than a day at a time, I think it’s surprising he wasn’t cut in the middle of the season, and I can absolutely see cutting him now. The coaches have no reason to tolerate that.
I fear that the Eagles let this situation slip out of their hands. They decided to move on from Jackson for various reason (work ethic, attitude, sport science saw fast declining, etc…) but they hope to get an high pick in return and they didn’t come anywhere close to this. Now they got nothing in return and ruined the relationship with him.
I hope to be wrong but it’s the only logical explanation to this mess
Another day, another dollarSean.
As Les Bowen said the other day, “Get yo popcorn ready.”
Can’t wait to see TO asking Chippah what’s so wrong with asking for more money…
A little perspective about the Jackson issue, let’s remember how quickly this went from off-season speculation to quoting unnamed sources to assumed true. Looking at the archives, Chip Kelly spoke at the Maxwell Club just 2 weeks ago, and there was zero speculation or questions about any possible trade there.
when considering why the FO hasn’t handled this btter, we have to consider maybe this all moved a lot faster than they realized and they hadn’t had a chance to discuss the media Tsunami and what they wanted to do.about it, figuring no comment would be ok. Not so much, but possibly less conspiracy and more flat footedness.
This all started with Kempski on March 1 when Cooper and Maclin were signed. Kempski insinuated that the Eagles may trade Jackson. That article was quoted my many other media outlets. Then Kempski followed it up on March 24th with an article where he has “sources” close to the team who told him the Eagles decided to move on from Jackson a month ago and he will be traded or released. This is very dangerous journalism.
He speculated, claimed it was speculation, and gave proof behind it. It was interesting at the time because no one had thought about it. But then rumors started.
By the time the 24th came around, “sources” were turning up everywhere, so it’s not surprising that he, like others, was hearing things.
I am getting more and more upset with the Eagles FO! Now Evan Mathis is available for trade. This is a frigging joke!
Where are you seeing that?
Twitterzzzz
Yikes. I’ll choose not to give this a lot of credence. But I’d hate to lose Mathis. More valuable to the team than Jackson in my view.
[…] Confusion Still Reigns – Tommy Lawlor, Iggles BlitzJeff Lurie met with the media today at the NFL owners meetings. He had a chance to offer his thoughts on the DeSean Jackson melodrama and possibly offer some insight to the state of things (building off DJax’s tweet from last night). Instead, Lurie had nothing to say on the matter. I don’t take that as a good sign. […]
How long will it take for people appear on hear to justify the recent boneheaded move by the Eagles to put another fan favourite after his career year on the trading block?! *tick * tock *tick *tock
#tradeeverybody
#allJimmy’sFAULT
Hate to get all technical, but the eagles have yet to make the boneheaded moves to which I think you’re referring. Maybe we should wait to see how all of this plays out before sounding the claxtons?
The writing’s on the wall. Chippah just basically said that Jackson is DeGone.
I think his comments can be read a few different ways, but admittedly none of those ways equate to Desean is definitely staying.
Finally, I didn’t understand why regarding the fact that Kelly wanted to move on from bad team guys Desean was the first to be on the list. Mathis is such a punk, the anti-team guy, thank you media for giving us such a good indsight of the situation.
Since when is Evan Mathis a punk and anti team guy??? I love him, and I am sure the majority of his teammates and fans do as well.
Read again, I thought it was pretty obvious.
I guess ze German did miss the French’s irony.
When you two start arguing over Al(sace) Harris, I’m outta here.
IMHO, I think the situation is like this (writting this after I saw the evan mathis trade). We have Howie who sees the last two draft as the future and fears the 2015 cap space, he explains the situation to Kelly and tell him moves need to be made to have leverage next season. Kelly says yes but he wants his players in the draft and asks for more draft pick to justify the loss of players. Right now Roseman is 24h/7 on the phone and 50% of the roster is “tradeable”.
The Eagles have over 50 million in cap space next year with a few cuts, cap roll over and the rumored cap raise next year.
+5 mil after the Evan Mathis trade.
Here’s a theory:
Lurie appears to be close with the Krafts (at least on a professional level). He saw how the Hernandez situation played out and has “vowed” to not let that happen to his team.
DJ, under VERY odd circumstances, has his house robbed by someone that had access to his home. It should be obvious that the people that DJ hangs out with may not be the best citizens.
In a bit of an overreaction to this, Lurie wants DJ out. He is concerned that this will continue to escalate.
But Roseman and Kelly believe that is an overreaction and do not want him gone.
While a bit of an internal “discussion” is going on behind the scenes, it is reported they are shopping DJ. So Roseman takes the calls just to see what they could get if they did trade him. And no one wants to say what is going on because a decision has not been made yet.
You gotta love the Eagles. Since #jaccpodrama is coming to an end the Eagles were so kind to provide us with the #Mathisammageddon.
#ugottabeshittinme
I think that first hash tag was already claimed by calculus students.
No, ze German owns this copy right.
If it’s true that the Eagles want Evan Mathis to take a pay cut – following his best season and beingnamed All Pro – then Howie R. shall better take the next flight MH 370.
That’s not the case. Mathis wants a new contract, unlikely to get one, seems like there has been some posturing.