Eagles must entertain trade offers for Fletcher Cox this offseason

As strange as this sounds, we want you to try to forget about everything you know about Fletcher Cox for a second. Forget about the fact that he’s one of the greatest Philadelphia Eagles players to ever don the midnight green jersey. Forget about the fact that he’s a legend. Try not to think about his six Pro Bowl nods, his First-team All-Pro nod in 2018, and the Second-Team All-Pro designations he earned in 2014, 2015, and 2017.

For about three minutes, we want you to pretend the guy wearing the number 91 jersey over the past two seasons of Eagles football was just another guy. Got it? Good.

Now ask yourself if you’d be pleased with the fact that, in 2021, the new guy you’re thinking about racked up 35 tackles and three sacks while counting as $12.9 million against the Eagles’ salary cap (and representing $53.8 million in dead cap money).

Would you be pleased with the return based on the investment? Of course, you wouldn’t. That brings us to a question.

Should the Eagles move on? We imagine fans may be split on the answer, but if you’re of the belief that the question shouldn’t be asked, you haven’t been paying enough attention to what’s been happening lately from a physical standpoint (or what the Birds are getting in terms of production.

Word has it that the Eagles are getting calls about Fletcher Cox again.

Heading into the new league year, a Philadelphia Eagles team that made the playoffs to close the 2021-2022 NFL regular season has an opportunity to get really good in a hurry. They need to nail those first-round draft choices, but they also need to make some tough decisions.

Throw Cox in that category. According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, Philly is getting calls about the man that, for most of his career, has been one of the best players in pro football at his position. Take a look.

As Rapoport mentioned, the Birds were dangerously close to moving Cox at the trade deadline in 2021. Nothing happened. Some cite the fact that Philly may not have gotten the compensation they wanted as the reason, but we mentioned Fletch’s six Pro Bowl designations a little earlier. He was left off of pro football’s all-star team in 2021, and some question whether he should have made the squad in 2020.

He registered 6.5 sacks and stuck his head in on 41 tackles, which is okay for a decent player, but that isn’t what you’re looking for from the man that many said was the best defensive tackle in the NFL not named Aaron Donald for most of his career. Numbers don’t always tell the story, and the signs of regression were beginning to show up more frequently during a season in which, for the first time, Cox didn’t look like, well, Fletcher Cox.

In 2021, things got worse, not better. Fletcher Cox looks old. The motor isn’t there sometimes, and when it is, he still seems overmatched, uninterested at times, and for lack of a better phrase, willing to quit if pushed to any area of frustration.

The Eagles brass has a decision on its hands. Is Fletcher Cox one of the greatest Eagles of all time? Oh yeah! He absolutely is, but Philly’s dangerously close to seeing his career play out as Jason Peters’ did at the end of his Eagles run. This feels like the way DeSean Jackson’s second stint played out at its end.

Birds fans are truly loyal. So is the Eagles’ front office, sometimes to a fault, but if they are fielding calls from interested teams, they would do themselves a service to listen. They’re never going to get more for Cox than they will right now.