Philadelphia Eagles release wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham

PHILADELPHIA, PA - NOVEMBER 28: Dorial Green-Beckham
PHILADELPHIA, PA - NOVEMBER 28: Dorial Green-Beckham /
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The Philadelphia Eagles made a low-risk, high-reward trade for a wideout before last season. The reward certainly was not high, to say the least.

Dorial Green-Beckham was a folk hero for Philadelphia Eagles fans, as they sat through 16-games of pitiful wide receiver play. When he was acquired from Tennessee for backup lineman Dennis Kelly, Philadelphia cheered as the belief was the Eagles acquired an underused talent.

Ironic enough, Green-Beckham was used minimally, and hardly had any breakout plays. He snagged 36 catches and two touchdowns on 74 targets, with a receiving average of 10.2 yards per  catch. He wasn’t the surprise bright spot. He wasn’t the hidden gem. He was just another receiver on an awful receiving team. Add in the fact that the Philadelphia Eagles faced some shifting along the offensive line, you could argue this trade was an outright loss.

When the team took to free agency, signing Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith, it seemed Dorial Green-Beckham’s hopes of making the team dimmed dramatically. Even if he outperformed Nelson Agholor, his potential is nowhere near that of the former first-rounder. For these reasons, Green-Beckham was released by the team, according to NFL.com

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Along with that, the team signed backup quarterback Dane Evans to a three-year deal.

The move the Philadelphia Eagles made was purely for talent reasons, it seems. Green-Beckham has the body to give any NFL team hope of him becoming at least marginally impactful, but that has yet to be the case in his young career.

Whether or not we will see Green-Beckham in the NFL again is now the question that stands at large. For the Eagles, they have seen enough to give him the boot in favor of a backup quarterback. That should be telling in itself.

The Philadelphia Eagles move forward with more deserving candidates for preseason reps, and the roster shakeup near the bottom of the wideout depth chart will be something to watch.