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Eagles Cut Kenyon Green, Acquired in the CJGJ Trade
By Kyle Pagan
Published:
So Howie really hated CJ Gardner-Johnson’s guts, huh? Or maybe it was Vic Fangio. Anyway, now that the Eagles are cutting former first round pick Kenyon Green, who they got in the trade, you can get the sense the Eagles were looking to get rid of CJGJ the first chance they had. Green must really be broken if not even Stoutland U could help:
CJGJ has been all over the place when he’s spoken about the trade. Originally he said it was just business, there was no bad blood, and it very well could’ve been a financial decision:
Then he reversed course later and responded on his Instagram story after Fangio was asked about the trade and said, “That was a salary cap type thing…I was fine with it.”
Doesn’t really sound like a guy who thinks it was actually all business. I’m sure he was just happy in the moment to be sent to a contender.
Later in the summer, Howie mentioned it was business as well, via Dave Zangaro at NBCSports Philly:
“Well, I think if you’re just taking the C.J. move in a vacuum, obviously, it’s kind of not giving the whole perspective of where we’re at,” Roseman said. “Chauncey did a great job for us in both the years that he was with us, obviously making the Super Bowl twice in two years with him as our starting safety. When you look at our team and you look at the amount of highly paid players who have earned their contracts — we’ve got eight guys who are making $15 million or more. We have, from 2022 to 2024 drafts, we have eight starters who are on the Super Bowl team. None of those guys have long-term contracts. In those drafts, we probably have five or six players that will be competing for starting jobs. 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.
“And we’ve been very fortunate to be aggressive in keeping our guys and signing guys in free agency. And it’s also gotta align with (the) draft and having young players. Certainly, that’s the important thing to do is draft well and then keep your players. We’ve got to make sure that going forward we have an opportunity to do that as well. A lot of those players that we’re talking about are good young players that we’re excited about.
And maybe it was all business at the end of the day, but it’s tough to say that when CJGJ has been sent packing for the second time after they made the Super Bowl. For a guy like Roseman who isn’t shy about manipulating the salary cap, you’d think if he really wanted to keep CJGJ he could’ve found a way to keep CJGJ. There’s a depth issue at CB2, question marks in the secondary and they lose a guy who had six interceptions last year. Lots of people won’t be afraid to get on Howie if the secondary looks awful early in the season. The funny thing is the Eagles got back their original sixth round pick in the deal with the Texans and sent the fifth rounder they got in that deal back to Houston when they traded for John Metchie last week. So at this point the trade was just straight up Kenyon Green for CJGJ. A clear loss for Howie at this point.
Howie did spend Sunday building the Eagles depth at QB and offensive line. He traded for Sam Howell since Tanner McKee sounds doubtful to play Week 1 and traded for Fred Johnson after he walked during free agency. He then sent OT Darian Kinnard to the Packers for a sixth round pick in a corresponding move.
Kyle writes blog posts and does Man on the Street-style videos all around Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University (a basketball school) in 2015. contact: k.pagan@sportradar.com