As you know by now, Chauncey Gardner-Johnson is going to the Lions on a one-year deal worth $8 million.

When the news broke last night, a handful of reporters all posted something along the lines of this:

Pushing back on the Eagles’ side of the story going public, CJGJ’s agency, Universal Sports Management, tweeted this

https://twitter.com/UniSportsMgmt/status/1637658249506742273?s=20

The stupid “mic drop” at the end there makes me automatically take Howie Roseman’s side, without knowing anything more than what’s been tweeted so far.

From the department of “more than one thing can be true,” it seems pretty obvious that CJGJ overplayed his hand and also happens to be represented by idiots. What you see above is juvenile, and damages team relationships with the agency and clients across the board. It’s not even about what deal is better, it’s the fact that they tweeted that at all. It’s a lose/lose type of situation you put yourself in. If you want to battle the Birds in the court of public opinion, leak to reporters and fight a proxy war instead. Everyone knows Howie Roseman has a phalanx of scribes he can mobilize, so it could be seen as commendable to fight that publicly, but you can’t do it with a tweet like that. It has to be buttoned up and worded differently.

At the same time, the Eagles are losing a fantastic player just entering his prime and regardless of whether or not the guy is a head case with a poor agent, they now have to replace one of their most productive dudes on the entire roster. Perhaps Brian Branch is now in play come April.

Howie Roseman has done a fantastic job over the last couple of seasons, but two of Javon Hargrave, James Bradberry, and CJGJ are gone, both starting linebackers are gone, the QB needs to be paid, and there are plenty of holes to fill. It’s only March 20th, but the Eagles have plenty of work to do ahead of the draft and the coming weeks will be very interesting.