The Legal Tampering Period has begun. Soon enough the Eagles will start making moves. They won’t be officially until Wednesday when free agency actually begins. But with a few exceptions, looking at you Frank Gore, once moves are reported in the legal tampering period, they usually end up happening.
This will be one of the most important off-seasons for Howie Roseman and the Eagles in a while. Last season was a disaster, and Howie deserves a lot of the blame for that. The defense that got them to the Super Bowl lost 5 starters. Both Linebackers, both Safeties, and their most productive DT. The only one he did an adequate job of replacing was Javon Hargrave. Drafting Jalen Carter may be an improvement there. But even there we saw what trusting a rookie too much will do. While Carter was amazing in the first half of the season, he eventually hit a rookie wall. And after that, we saw little to no production at DT outside of Fletcher Cox, who retired.
Howie ignored Linebacker and failed to replace the Safeties adequately. They trusted inexperienced players like Nakobe Dean, Reed Blankenship, and Sydney Brown, and surrounded them with mediocre or aging players. That is not a mistake the Eagles can make again. Howie needs to do better in the free agency period this year.
But what should his priorities be? Should his focus be on fixing the secondary? Is addressing linebacker more important? What about running back? They have a lot of needs, and the Haason Reddick situation could create more needs. But luckily they also have a ton of cap space, a projected $43 million. So let’s see what they should do with it.
Here are their 6 biggest priorities for free agency, in order of how important they are:
