Top Eagles storylines heading into 2023 NFL free agency

The NFL offseason is about to kick into high gear as free agency begins this week.

At noon on Monday, clubs are permitted to negotiate with the agents of players who are pending unrestricted free agents. This is what’s commonly referred to as the “legal tampering” window.

Several years ago, we never heard about completed deals during this window but that’s not the case anymore. Deals will be agreed upon but can’t become official with these pending free agents — same with trades — until Wednesday at 4 p.m. That’s when the new league year and free agency technically begins.

Here’s a look at the top Eagles storylines heading into a busy week:

A bunch of free agents

The Eagles have an incredibly long list of pending free agents and there’s just no doubt that the 2023 team is going to look much, much different. The Eagles simply cannot keep all of their free agents and they’re not hiding that fact.

“Are we going to get all the free agents back? We're just not,” general manager Howie Roseman said at the NFL Combine.

“We're not capable of getting all those guys back, but we also understand we're in a good situation in terms of picks that we have going forward. We have a lot of guys under contract, not only for this year, but going forward. We're not going to make excuses for the position we're in.”

As a reminder, here’s a list of the Eagles’ pending free agents:

Offense: OL Andre Dillard, C Jason Kelce, QB Gardner Minshew, WR Zach Pascal, RB Miles Sanders, RB Boston Scott, OL Isaac Seumalo

Defense: CB James Bradberry, DT Fletcher Cox, LB T.J. Edwards, S Marcus Epps, S C.J. Gardner-Johnson, DT Javon Hargrave, DT Linval Joseph, DE Robert Quinn, DT Ndamukong Suh, LB Kyzir White

Yeah, that’s a long list. Some of those players are simply going to be out of the Eagles’ price range.

At least BG is back

The Eagles did get at least one move done last week, when they reached terms with 35-year-old defensive end Brandon Graham on a one-year deal to keep the longest tenured athlete in the city in Philadelphia for the 2023 season. The deal is reportedly worth up to $6 million, which is a pretty big bargain for a guy who had a career-high 11 sacks in 2022.

But it’s fitting that Graham will return and he’s awfully happy about it. This will be Graham’s 14th season with the Eagles, tying him with Chuck Bednarik for the most of all time. He also has the chance with 11 more games to become the Eagles’ all-time leader in games played.

Cap space at a premium

The Eagles are in a tricky spot in terms of cap space. They just don’t have a lot right now. OverTheCap estimates their cap space at $6.6 million and that’s before they try to sign any of their big-name free agents.

There are a couple moves left to create more cap space. The obvious one is to restructure Lane Johnson’s contract, bringing down his cap hit of over $24 million in 2023. The other obvious one is figuring out something with Darius Slay.

Sticky situation with Slay

On Friday, a report surfaced that the Eagles have granted Slay’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, permission to seek a trade. Since then, Slay has made it clear that he didn’t ask for a trade and this request is about establishing his value.

Here’s the situation: Slay, 32, is entering the final year of his contract and wants an extension. The Eagles might be a little wary of that because of Slay’s age. But they also need to get his cap hit down for this coming season and a trade doesn’t even really do it. A pre-June 1 trade would save them less than $4 million in cap space and would leave $22 million in dead space. It would also leave them without one of their best players.

So the best-case scenario is that Roseman and Rosenhaus figure out a way to give Slay an extra year, which would allow the Eagles to bring down his cap hit this season. We’ll see if it happens.

The Hurts contract

The major thing hovering over the Eagles right now is the upcoming contract for Jalen Hurts. And it’s going to be a big one. Hurts is set to enter the final year of his rookie contract from the 2020 draft and has a base salary of just $4.2 million in 2022. The Eagles clearly want to get this contract done and are working toward it. But it’s going to be a big one that will likely get close to $50 million per season.

The Eagles will be able to structure it in a way to backload the deal and prevent huge cap hits early in the extension but eventually Hurts is going to have a cap hit like the top quarterback he is. Once that happens, the Eagles’ roster construction will need to be different. They’ll have to draft well and supplement the roster with young and cheap starters.

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