Philadelphia Eagles need to fix their salary cap issues going forward

The Eagles could run into some trouble in regards to their salary cap concerns.

It is no secret that Philadelphia Eagles general manager Howie Roseman loves to spend money. He has a knack for making a big splash in free agency. This could, however, be very problematic.

According to Spotrac, the Eagles are currently ranked 29th in cap space with a total of $-14,215,739. After this season, Alshon Jeffery, Jordan Matthews, LeGarrette Blount, Nigel Bradham, and Timmy Jernigan are all set to be free agents. With this team already being over the cap, it will be very hard to keep some of those guys.

Also, the Eagles have seven players set to make over $10 million in 2018. These players include: Fletcher Cox, Lane Johnson, Jason Peters, Vinny Curry, Brandon Brooks, Zach Ertz, and Malcolm Jenkins. In most cases, a player’s average salary increases every year of their contract. The cap situation makes it difficult for Roseman to sign and re-sign players.

Solutions

So how does Roseman fix this? Getting rid of overpaid players would be a nice start, preferably by the end of camp this year. This would include cutting Jason Kelce, Ryan Matthews, and Torrey Smith as well as trading Mychal Kendricks. By doing this, the Eagles will have created $3,694,261 in cap space.

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Nobody on the Eagles is more overpaid than Vinny Curry. Since signing a five-year, $47.25 million contract extension, Curry’s been a complete dud. Don’t even mention the fact that he didn’t get much playing time prior to the new deal. Unfortunately for the Eagles, releasing Curry now would only cost them even more money. They’ll be able to release him and free up money next season. Let’s just imagine they release Curry and an aging veteran in Brent Celek. Those two moves, alone, would free up $9 million in cap space.

With Jeffery and Matthews being very important to the maturation process of Carson Wentz, Roseman must do everything in his power to keep them. The two will not come cheap though.

According to Spotrac, Jeffery has a calculated market value of a 5 year, $61,048,826 contract averaging $12.2 million. Matthews has a calculated market value of a 5 year, $50,138,099 contract averaging $10 million. Both players are vital to the team’s future. If the Eagles choose not to rectify their financial situation, they could see both of them go elsewhere.

To say that Howie Roseman and the Eagles must find a way to fix their current cap problem would be an understatement. It is very difficult to build a championship roster when you are consistently over the cap.

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