Philadelphia Eagles: Is L.J. Fort throwing shade at his former team?

Former Philadelphia Eagles linebacker L.J. Fort recently reached an extension with the Baltimore Ravens.

Over the offseason, Philadelphia Eagles general manager Howie Roseman made a handful of moves that now has us all scratching our heads. At this point, a majority of Roseman’s signings and acquisitions are either injured or playing elsewhere. Unfortunately, that’s not an exaggeration.

You can’t prevent injuries in the NFL. So it’s hard to blame Roseman for those mishaps. However, when it came to Roseman’s moves regarding the linebacker position, we weren’t really sure if he was making the team better after allowing Jordan Hicks to walk off into free agency.

To fill that void, Roseman went out and inked former Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker, L.J. Fort. For some reason, though, Fort fell out of favor with the Eagles before being gifted a solid chance. The Eagles ran with Zach Brown, as opposed to Fort, which led the front to eventually cutting Fort in order to retain another conditional draft pick for next season.

It wouldn’t be long before Fort landed with the Baltimore Ravens. It also didn’t take very long for the former Eagles linebacker to fit right in and perform well either.

After not obtaining a single snap on defense in Philly, Fort immediately found himself getting a good chunk of snaps on the Baltimore defense in addition to continuing with his special teams’ role as well. Since Fort proved to be a solid player in Baltimore already, the Ravens decided to extend him beyond this season with a generous contract.

The Ravens honor Fort with a solid contract

The Eagles chose to roll with Zach Brown over Fort and ended up cutting both of them before the halfway point of the season even approached. While we knew Brown wasn’t performing at the highest level for the Eagles, the team never even gave Fort a chance to prove his worth.

The Ravens did, and now they are fortunate to have him back for the next two seasons. While Fort left Philly with class last month after he was cut — he still seemed to have gotten his shots in on the Philly coaching staff after his extension was announced to the public.

“A coach’s confidence in you does wonders,” Fort says in response to a friend who was proud of him for his recent accomplishments. Considering that Fort got released from the Eagles with zero defensive snaps under his belt, it’s quite obvious that they are responsible for Fort’s motivation behind that tweet.

Fort’s point is understandable. It seems as though the Eagles have played their favorites at the linebacker position this year, and really had no intentions of giving Fort a fair shot.

Even after a decent training camp and a solid preseason, the Eagles elected to roll with Nathan Gerry, T.J. Edwards, and Zach Brown. At the end of the day, Fort didn’t even get as many special teams snaps with the Eagles as he is with the Ravens. It’s unclear why he fell out of favor so fast, but Fort is hardly worried about it now. He gets the last laugh.