Trying to fit together pieces of Eagles’ free agency puzzle

My main thought, as I read through, listen and watch all the various media reactions to the Eagles’ moves in the early days of free agency, is that we are flying blind.

All of our assumptions going into the annual swap meet, such as “the Eagles won’t pay top dollar to a veteran running back,” were based on what we’ve seen from Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman over the last decade or so — more precisely, since 2016, when Roseman returned from his one-year hiatus.

Things are different this offseason. In retrospect, there was good reason to suspect that recent trends would not hold. Lurie and Roseman have just endured the worst collapse in the history of the league for a team that stood at 10-1 before nosediving. They kept head coach Nick Sirianni, but brought in new offensive and defensive coordinators from outside the organization.

We have yet to hear a word from new offensive boss Kellen Moore or from Vic Fangio, brought in to rebuild the defense. Lurie and Roseman still pull the levers, but I have to think Moore and Fangio have a lot of say, given the situation that led to their hiring. And we don’t know their priorities.

Maybe Saquon Barkley is here because Moore thinks a three-down back is a necessity, even though the Eagles have done well with situational backs in recent years. Maybe he wants to throw a lot to the running backs, something that used to be an Eagles staple, but one that has faded under Sirianni. Until we hear from him, we have no idea.

Yeah, I’m surprised to see the Eagles pay more than $12 million a year for a back, especially one with six years of NFL mileage that includes an ACL repair. There were plenty of less expensive alternatives on the market. The most compelling rationale I’ve seen posits that the Eagles think Barkley, who caught 91 passes as a rookie, can have the effect on their offense that Christian McCaffrey had on the 49ers after coming over from Carolina.

I dunno, I’ll have to see that to believe it. I understand that Barkley was laboring on a Giants team with no other true weapons and a bad offensive line last season, when he averaged just 3.9 yards per carry. Still, I don’t look at the current version of Barkley and see McCaffrey. I also don’t study film or have the football background that Moore, Roseman and Sirianni have, so I can’t say that definitely WON’T happen. I’m really going to be fascinated to see how this works out.

The rest of the moves are more or less what I expected. The big upset is that a whole bunch of really good linebackers came and went in the first wave of signings, and the Eagles netted only a Saints special-teamer named Zack Baum. Here again, we have not heard from Fangio. Maybe he thinks he can turn Baum into a star. Or maybe the Eagles are waiting for the price to drop on another veteran. Or perhaps Roseman has sold Fangio on his vision of Nakobe Dean dominating the league.

I have to think corner and linebacker will be focuses of the draft, in which the Eagles now have eight selections, thanks to compensatory picks. The Eagles might or might not prioritize safety in the draft, maybe depending on how Sydney Brown’s recovery from January ACL surgery is going.

Speaking of safety, bringing back Chauncey Gardner-Johnson was fine, especially since he can also play nickel corner, and the Avonte Maddox era apparently is over. There were some alternatives that might have been more exciting. It’s popular to say that Roseman should have just signed Gardner-Johnson to the deal he wanted a year ago. I don’t know about that.

As the always-entertaining veteran NFL scribe Mike Tanier wrote this week, Gardner-Johnson is a “versatile defensive back, has a knack for big plays, slightly out of his gourd. If Gardner-Johnson was the Eagles’ nickel defender instead of [insert revolving cast of ineffective randos here], the team would either have pulled out of its late-season slide or set the locker room on fire with everyone locked inside.”

Yeah, that’s about right. BTW, you should subscribe to Mike’s latest venture, Too Deep Zone. Worth the money.

I might be the only person who thinks adding DeVante Parker as a third or fourth wideout was a good idea. But then I have vivid memories of that 2019 game in which Parker, playing for the Dolphins, caught seven passes for 159 yards and two touchdowns in Miami’s 37-31 victory over the Eagles. He’s a 6-3, 215-pound wideout who caught 33 passes last year playing in the New England offense that was so terrible it got Bill Belichick fired. I say come in and join the mix, DeVante, you have to have more left than Julio Jones did.

I like edge rusher Bryce Huff’s metrics. Apparently this means Josh Sweat is leaving. I have mixed emotions there. I was all Team Sweaty from the time the Eagles drafted him in 2018 until last season’s late-year slide. Sweat undertook a long journey after a gruesome high school knee injury nearly cost him his leg; it took several years, and a season or so of NFL training methods, for him to really have confidence in the rebuilt knee.

Sweat got better every year, until this past season. Nobody disappointed more during that two-month cave-in that destroyed a Super Bowl-contending team. Yes, he played a lot of snaps, but, he has always seemed to be in excellent shape, and you know, playing snaps is what they pay these guys to do. It’s nice to have an effective rotation that keeps everybody fresh, but for much of the league, that’s a luxury. Suck it up and play. What I saw was a lot of standing around.

I can’t say I want Sweat gone, I certainly wouldn’t just release him, but a mid-round draft pick and a trade to a non-NFC East team would be OK with me.

From here on out, I’m mostly focusing on the linebacker thing. Patrick Queen or even Blake Cashman would have been nice. They are gone, to the Steelers and Vikings, respectively. Devin White, who is visiting Seattle as I type this, is the kind of name that gets fans excited, but he didn’t start down the stretch last year for Tampa and played fewer than half the snaps in the Bucs’ 32-9 Wild Card Round demolition of the Eagles.

EDIT: After this was written, the Eagles signed White to a one-year deal, various reports said.

I think there’s a good chance that if the Eagles have a significant veteran move to make at linebacker, (more significant than White) it comes after the draft, when teams reassess their depth charts vs. payroll.

Of course, by writing this review, I increase the odds that the Eagles make another big signing, out of nowhere, rendering everything I’ve written irrelevant.