Howie Roseman, Eagles completely botched the Alshon Jeffery situation

Many knew this day was coming. Back in August, the Eagles opted to activate Alshon Jeffery from the PUP (Physically Unable to Perform) list, meaning he would be on the active roster and take up a spot on the official 53-man roster.

Leaving Jeffery on PUP would have saved the Eagles a roster spot, but it also would have meant that the veteran wideout would be unable to play or practice with the team for the first six weeks of the season. Jeffery returned to practice a few weeks ago but has been limited and has even missed a few practices for various reasons.

Well, Week 6 is here, and Jeffery is not playing for the sixth straight week.

Jeffery missing the first six weeks of the season confirms that Howie Roseman and the Eagles, once again, have embarrassingly mismanaged an injury situation. Their mistakes in this area are no secret, from the DeSean Jackson core muscle disaster last season to Jordan Howard being listed as day-to-day with a stinger for multiple months to the Darren Sproles hamstring saga a couple of years ago. The list goes on.

The Eagles have made a number of changes to their medical staff over the last couple of years, but the results have been the same. They are among the league leaders in injured players again this year, and they regularly mismanage the rehab and recovery from these injuries and the roster management that goes with them.

In a recent piece for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeff McLane details the Eagles’ injury woes over the last three seasons.

This Alshon Jeffery mistake is one that could have easily been avoided. Media members and fans were skeptical when Alshon Jeffery was activated from PUP. Many rolled their eyes when Noah Togiai was claimed off waivers at the end of training camp.

In 2020, more than any other season, this is an embarrassing blunder. As we have seen over the last several weeks, the new league rules for this season allow for some roster flexibility that was not possible in previous years. Not only are there expanded practice squads, but teams can regularly promote and demote players to/from the practice squad without having the place them on waivers.

Alshon Jeffery was never going to be ready to return early in this season. Everyone knew that. Everyone except Howie Roseman and the Eagles, apparently. The decision to activate him from PUP was puzzling at the time, but many gave the team the benefit of the doubt and assumed they knew more than the general public and the media and were pleased with his progress.

Apparently, that was not the case.

Not only is Jeffery not playing this week, but it doesn’t sound like a slam dunk that he will play in Week 7, either. The Eagles have a short turnaround and play against the Giants on Thursday Night Football in Week 7, so it would be a surprise to see him play in that game after not being able to play just four days earlier.

UPDATE: Alshon Jeffery is not going to play in Week 7 against the Giants, either. In addition to the foot injury, Jeffery is reportedly now dealing with a calf strain.

Howie Roseman rarely speaks to the media, and Doug Pederson plays things pretty close to the vest, so it’s hard to know exactly what went into this decision. Did the medical staff once again bungle a rehab and recovery timeline? Did Roseman ignore the advice to keep Jeffery on PUP, either to keep him active while trying to trade him or to try to save face after the poor decision to restructure Jeffery’s contract last September?

We’ll probably never know.

To give everyone a quick recap, here is an excerpt from Jimmy Kempski’s piece, Updating Alshon Jeffery’s standing with the Eagles, from back in July:

For the purpose of bringing those up to speed who haven’t been following along closely, the short recap version is that Eagles made the error of guaranteeing Jeffery’s 2020 salary ($9.9 million) in exchange for a small pay cut just before the start of the 2019 season. Jeffery then had the “bad year trifecta,” which made that decision a disastrous one.

1. He had a down year as a player on the field, both in the stat sheet and on the “eye test.”
2. In November of last year, the Eagles’ radio network partner’s sideline reporter, Howard Eskin, outed Jeffery as the anonymous source who criticized Carson Wentz in each of the last two seasons to national (now-former) ESPN reporter Josina Anderson, which created significant distractions for the team.
3. And then in December, Jeffery suffered a Lisfranc injury, had surgery, and the typical nine-month recovery period put him on track to maybe be healthy for Week 1, though that’s only if all goes well.

If the Eagles could cut Jeffery without significant salary cap ramifications or find anyone willing to trade for him, he would probably already be gone. Even next season, while the decision to cut him will be an easy one, they are still going to put a dent into what is precious salary cap space for 2021.

The Eagles can’t cut Jeffery this season because, well, here’s why:

If they cut him this season, the dead cap would be $26.1 million compared to his current cap hit of $15.4 million. In 2021, those numbers are $10.66 million in dead cap and an $18.48 million if he is on the roster.

There is a 0% chance that Jeffery is on the roster in 2021 at $18.48 million, and the odds of him being on the roster at all are probably something like 0.01%. But this Eagles team that is already going to be in salary cap hell in 2021 is probably going to be stuck with a $10.66 million dead cap hit because of the contract restructure that Howie Roseman gave Jeffery last September.

There are already rumblings of a possible disconnect between the coaching staff and the front office in Philadelphia. And it wouldn’t be the first time that Roseman had issues working with a coach. A week after a video made the rounds that appeared to show Doug Pederson and Howie Roseman arguing at practice, Jim Schwartz implied in a press conference that he has little say over the players selected for his defense.

Oh, and NFL insider Adam Caplan shared this little nugget about the Schwartz-Roseman relationship on Friday morning (click to see multiple tweets in the thread):

While we will probably never know what exactly went into the decision to keep Jeffery active or who has drafted or selected which players over the last few years, we do know this: Howie Roseman and the Eagles have completely botched this Alshon Jeffery situation for over a year now.

Update: Alshon Jeffery (calf) ruled out for Week 8

Alshon Jeffery has been officially ruled out for the team’s Week 8 matchup against the Dallas Cowboys at home. While Jeffery has been cleared from his foot injury, he is apparently now nursing a calf injury. He’ll now rest the calf in Weeks 8 and 9 (bye week) before potentially returning in Week 10 against the New York Giants.

This means that the team will have wasted a roster spot for more than half of the season after making the strange decision to activate Jeffery from PUP before the year.