Eagles to restructure Darius Slays Contract
In an offseason where the Eagles seem to be losing all their defensive players. Stud CB Darius Slay is added to the list as the Eagles announced today that they will be releasing him. It will be designated as a post-June first cut and will save the Eagles $17 million in cap space. Dave Zangaro was among the first to report on the news.
Now, this doesn’t come as a complete surprise seeing as the two sides were unable to come to an agreement on reconstructing his contract.
The 32-year-old was set to have a $26.1 million cap hit, and at his age, the Eagles weren’t willing to take that hit. Also playing a factor is all the players the Eagles have lost this season. Which include, Javon Hargrave, T.J Edwards, Kyzir White, and Marcus Epps.
The Eagles are also desperately trying to bring back Chauncey Gardner Johnson, and this $17 million should go a long way in doing that. While as an Eagles fan, it hurts to see Slay leave like this, I very much understand the move. He is going into his age 33 season and was expecting a rather hefty contract.
The Eagles just simply have too many holes to fill right now to be shelling out that kind of money to Darius Slay. It has nothing to do with his play, which was still very elite last season. But rather stems from an annoying salary cap the Eagles must stay under.
Whoever does decide to bring on Slay will still be getting an Elite DB. Age hasn’t seemed to slow him down yet and he still possesses the ability to lock down some elite receivers.
This is a draft class that is loaded with talented DBs. Which I think made it easier for Howie to cut his losses. With the 10th pick, the Eagles should be able to draft someone who can come in right away and start. Now maybe they won’t be at the level of Darius Slay, but hey you can’t have it all now, can you?
You can’t bring everyone back and if someone like Darius Slay wants to go out and get his money then you can’t really stop him. But hopefully, the Eagles can resign Gardner Johnson and lessen the blow of this loss.
Overall up to this point, it hasn’t been an ideal offseason for the Eagles. But this always happens when a team makes it to or wins a Super Bowl. Guys play above their actual talent. And you can longer afford to keep them. I wish the best for Darius Slay and hope he finds success wherever he goes. I just wish it could have still been with the Eagles.
Breaking News Update
Well in a rather crazy and sudden turn of events it seems like Darius Slay will remain on the Eagles. Or more so they aren’t deciding to release him right now and will likely work out a new contract.
This certainly comes as a surprise to me and many of you as well. Seeing as Slay himself all but confirmed he was leaving in a Tweet he made earlier today.
So yeah it’s safe to say that this development comes as a surprise to many of us. I don’t know what happened in those few hours but it must have been something drastic. My guess is the Eagles tried to negotiate with Gardner Johnson and realized they wouldn’t be able to bring him back.
And the Eagles not wanting to lose both of them decided to hold onto Slay for a little while longer. Now we just have to wait and see what this new contract is going to look like. I’m hoping it’s a team-friendly one because at 32 I’m not trying to give Slay some big contract that destroys our cap space.
This is a development I certainly didn’t see coming but can’t say that I hate. As I said earlier, Slay has still shown he’s an elite CB and hasn’t shown any signs of regression yet. But we know how quick and hard that regression can be. I just hope it doesn’t happen while he’s on the Eagles.
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