The Philadelphia Eagles NEED to sign ex-Cleveland Brown Josh Gordon

As the unfortunate current owners of one of the worst performing wide receiving corps in football, the Philadelphia Eagles need to sign Josh Gordon.

Like manna from heaven, the football gods have somehow found a way to answer the Philadelphia Eagles prayers.

After struggling with arguably the worst wide receiver corps in the NFL after losing their clear number one option Alshon Jeffery to offseason surgery, Philly had gotten pretty desperate in trying to find potential pass-catchers.

I mean we’re talking about a team who signed Markus Wheaton twice in one calendar year. No offense to Markus, but that’s pretty alarming.

So, when ESPN’s Adam Schefter broke the news that the Cleveland Browns intend to release Josh Gordon on Monday after six years with the organization, 31 general managers around the league immediately put their team on red alert, surely including our own Howie Roseman.

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That’s right, a 27-year-old franchise-caliber wide receiver has just been made available, and he’s free to sign with any team in the league.

Now don’t get me wrong, Gordon is far from a magic pill that could fix any team, as he’s only appeared in 11 games since the start of the 2014 NFL season, but there’s no doubting that when healthy, he has the potential to be one of the best wide receivers in football.

Think about that for a second, not just the best receivers on the lowly Cleveland Browns, no, one of the best receivers in the entire NFL.

After one of the more tumultuous college football seasons in recent memory, including an amazing 2010 season at Baylor, Gordon was suspended indefinitely by then-head coach Art Brille, before transferring to Utah in 2011. However, Gordon didn’t log a single snap for the Utes, as in the spring of 2012 he submitted himself for consideration in the Supplemental Draft, where he was taken by the Browns in the second round.

And from there Gordon began an even more complicated professional career.

In his first two seasons in the league, arguably no one was better than Gordon, as he hauled in 137 passes for 2451 yards, including a transcendent sophomore campaign where he lad the league in receiving (1646 yards) in only 14 games.

But then Gordon’s off the field issues started to seriously effective his availability on the field.

After receiving numerous suspensions for violating the league’s substance abuse policy, Gordon missed all but five games of the 2014 season, and the entirety of the 2015 and 2016 seasons,  before finally being reinstated for the final five games of the 2017 season.

However, even after missing almost three years of football, Gordon barely missed a step when he returned to the field in the Browns’ Week 13 bout against the Los Angeles Chargers. Though he only caught 24 passes on the season, he almost matches his 2013 yards per catch average of 18.9 with a very solid 18.6 as a complete weapon for Hue Jackson‘s shale we say anemic offense.

Which is what makes the team’s decision to move on from Gordon all the more confusing: After waiting it out for almost four seasons, why move on now?

Though he apparently was complaining about a hamstring injury that would have likely heald him out of the team’s Week 2 bout against the Saints and had to take a leave of absence during training camp to get his head right, Josh is without a doubt one of the highest upside players in the league, and on a team like the Browns who are already pretty devoid of proven NFL talent, that seems like an incredibly shortsighted lapse of judgment.

But hey, one man’s trash is another man’s thousand yard receiver.

So should the Philadelphia Eagles run, not walk to Gordon’s agent and offer him an opportunity to fly out to Philly and meet with the team about a contract moving forward?

Yes.

“But what if he’s going to miss a few weeks due to his hamstring?”

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if he misses the entire season, if you can add a player like Gordon at 27-years-old on a cost controled deal, that can not just make a team good in the short term, but help to establish a sense of the leagues’ best-receiving corps for the foreseeable future.

Can you even imagine Gordon lining up across from Jeffery with Nelson Agholor and Zach Ertz in the slot? How do you defend that?

No, by some freak miracle the Philadelphia Eagles have been afforded an opportunity that very few teams throughout history have before: an opportunity to add a top-tier talent for free. They don’t have to make a trade, or use up a draft pick, no, all the team has to do is offer Gordon a contract and if he excepts release a player to free up his spot.

There’s nothing to overthink about this situation.

With one of the most sound locker rooms in the entire league already in place, Philly has the kind of supportive winning culture that Gordon has yet to find thus far in his professional career, an environment that could final help him to run the corner, and finally ascend to his rightful place as one of the league’s truly elite receivers. And thanks to the Eagles’ current place as one of the leagues’ best teams, any interest would almost surely be mutual.

So while there will certainly be other teams vying for his services, if the Philadelphia Eagles can lock up Josh Gordon to a contract after he is formally released on Monday we could be looking at the NFL’s answer to Boogie Cousins‘ joining the Golden State Warriors, and another step towards a second Super Bowl banner hanging in the rafters at Lincoln Financial Field.