Eagles G.M. Howie Roseman did outstanding work in developing a championship roster for the 2017 season. He’s going to have to do even better work to repeat as champions in the 2018 season.
That’s because the Eagles head into the 2018 season in desperate need of salary cap space.
In fact, as of right now the Eagles are projected to be over the 2018 salary cap just with the contracts they already have. So they’ll have to release or restructure some players just to comply with league rules before the start of the league year, even before they get to cap space they’ll have to free up for free agents and their draft class.
Not all of those moves will necessarily be difficult, and every team has veteran players it decides to cut and other players who agree to a team-friendly contract restructuring. But when you’re last in cap space, that’s a difficult place to be in.
And that raises an interesting question about the future of Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles: Although the Eagles have indicated that they want to keep Foles as Carson Wentz’s backup, Foles will cost $7.6 million against the cap in 2018, and they might decide that they simply don’t have the luxury of an expensive backup -- especially when some team might blow them away with a trade offer for the Super Bowl MVP-winning quarterback. If another team offers the Eagles some combination of draft picks and inexpensive players, Philadelphia might decide that’s the best way to manage the cap.
So while Foles and Wentz are both good quarterbacks, and are both on relatively inexpensive contracts, that doesn’t mean keeping them both is the right move. The better move might be to use Foles to build a sustainable roster around Wentz, one that can win more Super Bowls in the years to come.