Mike Sielski: The Eagles have lost a lot of good players. Look on the bright side. They're not the Giants or Cowboys.

Mike Sielski, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Mar 18, 2025

Published in Football

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PHILADELPHIA — No more banana pudding and blanket coverage on the outside. No more handmade computers and edge pressure on opposing quarterbacks. No more tears of gratitude after 60 snaps of pass-protection and pancake blocks. Since the NFL’s free-agency period began last week, the Eagles have lost several players from their Super Bowl team. They lost the three who were referenced in those opening sentence fragments — Darius Slay, Josh Sweat, Mekhi Becton, in order — and a few more: Milton Williams, Kenneth Gainwell, Isaiah Rodgers and Oren Burks.

It would be understandable if Eagles fans felt a pang of sadness from seeing so many guys walk away from such a special team. That sentimental attachment toward the players responsible for delivering a championship is natural, especially in a city whose fans care as much as Philadelphia’s do, especially for a franchise like the Eagles, who have won just two Super Bowls in their history. It’s also just as understandable for those fans to be concerned that, because of this talent drain, the Eagles won’t have much of a chance at repeating as champs next season.

A little wistfulness and a lot of worry. That’s heavy stuff for a town that takes its pro football seriously. In this case, though, some context should lighten that emotional load. So, if you’re fretting about the Eagles, keep the following points in mind.

Get in the Zone

Under Jeffrey Lurie’s ownership and particularly during Howie Roseman’s tenure as player-personnel chief, the Eagles have really had one overriding aim. They want to reach a certain tier of competitiveness relative to the NFL’s other 31 teams, and they want to remain there for as long as they can. Call it the Super Bowl Zone. Of course, there’s never a guarantee that a team in the Super Bowl Zone will win a championship, and any team’s odds will fluctuate from year to year. The point is, however, to have a realistic shot at winning one, regardless of the particular circumstances of a particular season or offseason.

The Eagles were in that zone at the peak of the Andy Reid-Donovan McNabb partnership and for the three years when Carson Wentz and Nick Foles combined to give them competent-to-outstanding quarterback play. They’ve been in it since the start of the 2022 season. Those fluctuations within the zone, though, are unavoidable. The salary cap and the roster upheaval it causes make it challenging to maintain dominance for very long.

Sometimes, there will be seasons like 2022 and 2024 when the Eagles are so good that they should win a Super Bowl. Sometimes, there will be seasons like 2023 and the one that 2025 is shaping up to be when the Eagles could win a Super Bowl but have more obstacles in their path: a more difficult schedule, less depth and continuity, and a target on their backs as the defending champs. Their core is still intact. They can do it. It just won’t be as easy as last season, if it happens at all.

The division within the division

The gap between the Eagles and the rest of the NFC East has closed some. At least the gap between them and the Washington Commanders has. That said, it’s still a gorge. Jayden Daniels is already a star, but the side-by-side comparison of Eagles-Commanders 2024 speaks for itself. One team went 18-3. The other went 14-6 (with a last-place schedule). And when the two of them met in the NFC championship game, the Eagles won by 32 points. That’s a lot of ground for Washington to make up.

Meanwhile, the Cowboys continue to generate more attention and interest for what their owner and current and former players say (and post on Twitter/X) than they do for their on-field performance. And as of Monday at 3 p.m., the Giants did not have a starting quarterback.

Back in the old days ...

Anyone old enough to remember the state of Philadelphia sports throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s might be snickering over any complaints about all these departures. Back in that earlier era, the Eagles, Phillies, Flyers and 76ers didn’t have to worry about having competitors raid their rosters during free agency or on the trade market. If anything, the four franchises here were often paying too much (in salary or resources) for good or mediocre players who didn’t live up to such sizable investments: Tim Harris, Scott Williams, Chris Gratton, Kevin Millwood, Brian Skinner, to name just a few.

Wait, the Eagles’ big problem is that they were so amazing that other teams signed a bunch of their players to expensive contracts? Please. I’ve known actual pain, young’uns. I watched Gregg Jefferies pout every night for four straight summers. I’ll take this “problem” any day of the week.

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