Eagles GM Howie Roseman addressed the Eagles’ most controversial move of the offseason at the NFL’s annual meeting on Monday.
While the idea of losing high-priced veteran stars Milton Williams and Josh Sweat as free agents was understandable to most, dealing playmaking safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson to Houston while under contract at a reasonable rate came out of left field for many.
The Eagles dealt Gardner-Johnson and a 2026 sixth-round pick for reclamation project Kenyon Green and a 2025 fifth-round selection.
"I think if you're just taking the C.J. move in a vacuum, it's kind of not giving the whole perspective of where we're at,” Roseman explained to reporters at The Breakers in West Palm Beach, Florida. “And I think Chauncey did a great job for us, and both the years that he was with us — obviously, making the Super Bowl twice in two years with him as our starting safety.”
In many ways, the Eagles had to make difficult decisions because of the number of good players they had during the Super Bowl LIX-winning season, along with how many of the younger ones in that group are in for big pay days over the next few years.
"When you look at our team and you look at kind of the amount of highly paid players who earned their contracts — we got eight guys who are making $15 million or more — we have from the 2022 to 2024 drafts, we have eight starters who are on the Super Bowl team, none of those guys have long-term contracts,” said Roseman.
"... So you have a lot of players coming through that aren't under long-term contracts, plus a lot of guys who are on long-term contracts, and we never want to be in a situation where we have one year where we're getting rid of 20 guys.”
A demarcation line was drawn, and the organization is being disciplined in an attempt to keep everyone on the right side of it.
"We're in such a situation right now where we have to make tough decisions, and because of where we are, we have to make some priorities,” Roseman said. “And from our perspective, [safety] was one of the few positions that we had drafted a young player fairly high [2023 third-round pick Sydney Brown] and that player really hasn't had an opportunity to play.
“He's got to earn it. We don't have many of those spots on our football team. And when we're looking at kind of ways for us to have more resources in the future to sign our young players, we have to decide on what position that's coming from, and when you continue to invest.”
The investments came in the form of first-team All-Pros Zack Baun and Saquon Barkley, as well as second-team All-Pro and future Hall of Famer Lane Johnson.
“[Re-signing] Zack and Saquon and Lane, and going back a year ago, at some point, you have to make hard decisions. And so [Gardner-Johnson] would be in the group of hard decisions,” the GM said.
