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Template: (NFL Team) Released Player X: Should the Eagles Now Sign Player X?
Published:
One of my favorite things in sports journalism is when an NFL team releases a player and then everyone and their mother writes some version of a “should the Eagles sign him?” story. Talk radio builds their entire show around it and social media hammers it into the ground.
This can also happen when a player requests a trade, wins a legal battle, skips OTAs, or decides to hold out – “Myles Garrett Requested a Trade – Should the Eagles Package 17 First-Round Draft Picks to Bring Him in?” Then we talk about it for 72 hours when there’s maybe a 0.01% chance of it happening. We have done this in the past for everybody from Yannick Ngakoue to the Punt God, Matt Araiza.
So today’s player that we plug into the template is Jaire Alexander, who was released by the Green Bay Packers on Monday:
For starters, Darius Slay and CJGJ are gone, so the starting DB holdovers from the Super Bowl team are Quinyon Mitchell, Cooper DeJean, and Reed Blankenship. Isaiah Rodgers is also gone. They have Kelee Ringo, Adoree Jackson, Eli Ricks, and rookie Mac McWilliams in the mix. That’s what the depth is looking like with training camp still more than a month away.
Alexander is just 28 years old, but has only played 14 regular season games since 2023 because he’s suffered multiple injuries to different body parts. There’s been a shoulder, knee, back, and quadriceps injury. The year prior, 2022, he was a Pro Bowler who played 16 games and finished with five interceptions and 14 PBUs. He was a Pro Bowl player in 2020 as well and the Eagles’ DBs coach, Christian Parker, was the defensive quality control coach for the Packers in 2019 and 2020, so there’s some familiarity there. Alexander was also born in Philadelphia, but not raised here.
A healthy Alexander would be CB2 on this Eagles team, playing on the outside opposite Mitchell. The catch is that the contract would have to be some sort of incentive-laden, prove-it type of deal, which the Birds are happy to hand out, though it doesn’t seem like something Alexander would sign at this point in his career. But hey, you never know what the market is going to look like. That being said, Ringo is 22 and has shown some flashes since becoming a Bird. As well as the young guys worked out for Vic Fangio in year #1, you feel pretty comfortable going into camp with him penciled in as a starter on the outside, depending on what the Eagles do with DeJean in his sophomore season. It’s not a position where the Eagles are desperate, but there are some unknowns in the secondary right now.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com