Philadelphia Eagles: COVID-19 could sink the salary cap in 2021

If reports are true that the salary cap may be down between $30-80 million in 2021, the Philadelphia Eagles could be on the verge of disaster.

As crazy as it sounds, the Philadelphia Eagles have the seventh-highest salary cap in the NFL right now.

I know, right? Despite being medium-spenders in free agency with the additions of Darius Slay, Javon Hargrave, Nickell Robey-Coleman, etc, and the addition of a 10 person draft class that technically hasn’t been signed yet, the Eagles still have a little over $23 million to play with.

But what should the Eagles do with it? Should they splurge on a player like Jadeveon Clowney, who the team has reportedly shown a bit of interest in post-draft? What about giving extensions to players like Dallas Goedert, Nathan Gerry, or Avonte Maddox, who are eligible for new deals? Could the Eagles even pull off a trade for a player like Haason Reddick, who just had his fifth-year option declined by the Arizona Cardinals?

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Well, whatever the Eagles do, it better be a one-year deal, because the team’s 2021 salary cap outlook is far less rosy.

As things presently stand, the Eagles are projected to be $50 million over the salary cap in 2021.

That is… yikes!

Now, in theory, the Eagles could make moves to free up cap room and/or kick the can down the line with a few more contract restructurings, but freeing up $50 million is rather hard to do without knocking the team’s overall talent down a peg or two.

And, get this, things may actually be far more dire depending on how things shape up this fall.

According to Yardbarker, the NFL could see its 2021 salary cap drop between $30-80 million due to the lost revenue of playing games without fans. While the exact number won’t be known until, ya know, games are actually played and total league revenue is tallied up at the end of the season, even a $30 million dip would drop the Eagles into a near-unheard of territory of total financial collapse.

And if things fall on the upper end of the spectrum? Having to free up north of $130 million would effectively force Roseman to tear the entire team down and rebuild a cheaper product from scratch?

That would be a borderline disaster and wait, it gets worse.

Because Roseman has restructured so many deals and kicked the tire down the road for so many players over the past few years, the Eagles really don’t have all that many obvious cuts who could free up $10-plus million in one shot. Again, per Over the Cap, the Eagles only have eight players who would free up over $1 million in salary cap if released with a pre-June-1 designation, with the biggest potential savings coming from the release of Derek Barnett and his $10 million fifth-year option.

Even if the Eagles released all eight of those players – Barnett, Goedert, Fletcher Cox, Alshon Jeffery, Brandon Brooks, DeSean Jackson, Zach Ertz, and Marquise Goodwin – they would still only free up $44 million.

Gosh, could this be why the Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts? I like Carson Wentz as much as the next guy – okay, maybe not as much as some people – but if the team can pull off a deal to take his deal – and it’s near-$59 million in dead money – off the books, it may be advantageous to do so for the sake of avoiding another 2019 receiving corps situation.

Like I said, this could get dire in a hurry.

Now granted, the NFL could in-theory put in place some sort of one-year reprieve to avoid teams having to release a quarter of their roster to get under the cap, as only six of the league’s teams could weather an $80 million cap hit as things presently stand, but is that really what the team wants to bank their contention window on, a potential league bailout?

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For his part, Howie Roseman has figured out a way to build a contender and sneak players under the cap through some truly masterful numerical manipulation. However, eventually, those players will need to get paid, and if the salary cap does in fact take a serious hit in 2021 due to a lack of 2020 revenue, the Philadelphia Eagles could be in serious danger of watching their team implode Veteran’s Stadium style before our very eyes.

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