4 former Eagles we’ll wish stayed in 2023, and 3 we’ll be glad are gone
You aren’t going to miss some of these Eagles as much as you think you are.
Here are
C.J. Gardner-Johnson, safety
Guys like C.J. Gardner-Johnson are why ESPN has featured their ‘top ten plays’ on Sportscenter for as long as we have been alive; however, some of you are confusing splash plays with elite talent. We’d like to enter evidence for the jury.
While we appreciate his efforts and applaud him for sharing the league lead in interceptions last season, we’d be doing you a disservice if we didn’t ask you to revisit the recent offseason drama that stemmed from his not being paid what he thought he was worth.
You forgot about that, didn’t you?
The word ‘fan’ is the root word of both ‘fanatical’ and ‘fanaticism’. While we applaud him for sharing the league lead in interceptions last season, tip-drill interceptions and a huge hit in the Super Bowl aren’t solely the basis for determining a safety is ‘elite’.
Game-by-game and play-by-play, C.J. played his heart out, but he isn’t as good as the highlight reel might indicate. You’ll learn that during the coming season. That’s why New Orleans moved on. That’s why PFF left him off of their list of the NFL’s top 25 safeties (he was actually their 49th-ranked player at the position if you’re interested). That’s also why no one gave him the huge payday that he was expecting.
If you’re lost here, have patience. Watch him in Detroit next season. The truth catches up to everyone eventually.
Gardner Minshew, quarterback
We’ll keep this short and sweet. Gardner Minshew is a great guy and deserves to be in the NFL as someone’s backup, but the ‘MIshew Mania’ stuff was always a tad overblown.
He’s 8-16 as a starter, and even though Marcus Mariota owns a losing record as a starter as well (he’s 34-40), the latter is, without question, an upgrade at the backup quarterback position. There’s also another benefit to Mariota’s addition. The offense doesn’t have to change if Jalen Hurts is out of the lineup.
Andre Dillard, offensive tackle
Respectfully, we don’t want to bash Andre Dillard. He’s endured that enough, but we didn’t understand his selection when Howie Roseman made it. We never bought into ‘he’d replace Jason Peters’, and we never understood how a guy that played American football for so long lost his job to another who didn’t even know how to put his helmet on when he was drafted by the team in 2018.
We wish Andre well, but we can’t sit here any longer and pretend that we aren’t happy the Eagles moved on. We just wish they would have traded him and maybe had gotten something for him.
