Amid questions about whether the Eagles acted improperly in their dealings with DeSean Jackson, a high-ranking league executive says there are no issues.
Adolpho Birch, the NFL’s senior vice president of law and labor policy, said today that the Eagles simply made a football decision regarding Jackson, as teams do every day.
“I think we are comfortable that the decisions that were made on both ends were football decisions,” Birch said, via Philly.com. “Both sides, the objective that they sought from a football perspective, they got, whether that be the Eagles or the Redskins. I think the player’s going to be in a good position. I think at the end of the day, everyone was comfortable with that.”
Although that might sound hard to swallow at first, considering Jackson was the Eagles’ top receiver last season and was coming off the best year of his career, it’s not unreasonable: Jackson was due $10.5 million this season, and it’s easy to believe that the Eagles decided they could better use that cap space elsewhere.
However, the NFL Players Association has been concerned less with whether the Eagles cut Jackson for football reasons than with whether the Eagles bad-mouthed Jackson on his way out the door. The NFL is apparently satisfied that the Eagle did nothing in their dealings with Jackson, but the NFLPA may have a different view.