Philadelphia Eagles: Do whatever it takes to land Jaylon Smith

Just a little over a week after turning in his best game of the season in a 41-21 win over the Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smith has been released.

Wow. Just wow.

This move is about as unprecedented as it is confusing. By releasing Smith now, the Cowboys will straddle their financial ledger with $9.2 million in dead money over the next two seasons and will allow another team to swoop in and secure Smith’s services early enough in the regular season to be a game-changing difference-maker moving forward.

But why? Well, according to Mike Garafolo, Smith had simply been outplayed by the team’s current linebacking corps, and they want to avoid $9.2 million in injury guarantees in 2022 if something terrible happens in limited action.

Whatever the reason, Howie Roseman, if you’re reading this, you need to do everything in your power to make sure Jaylon Smith is employed by the Philadelphia Eagles by the end of the week.

Jaylon Smith would be the Philadelphia Eagles’ best linebacker in years.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Philadelphia Eagles’ new-look linebacking corps is remarkably similar to their old-look one.

Now granted, that shouldn’t be too surprising. Outside of bargain bin free agent Eric Wilson and rookie seventh-round pick Patrick Johnson, the Eagles effectively returned the same collections of players as the season prior, with no sideline-to-sideline coverage specialist among them.

Enter Jaylon Smith, a former second-round pick out of Notre Dame who overcame a career-threatening knee injury to become a full-time starter for “America’s Team.”

While Smith has lost a step from his Fighting Irish prime, he’s still a guaranteed 100-plus tackler with a sub-10 percent miss rate and an ability to make plays both against the run and as a blitzer. Despite only rushing the quarterback 4.4 percent of the time over his last four seasons with the Cowboys, Smith has recorded 23 pressures, 10 hurries, and eight sacks over his 52 games of action.

And versus the pass? Well, Smith has held up fairly well there too, even if his statistics don’t always show it.

Over the past four seasons, Smith was targeted 197 times in coverage. He allowed 151 of those balls to be caught for 1,376 yards while surrendering nine touchdowns in coverage.

Are those numbers good? No. Is Smith what you would call an elite coverage specialist? Not at this point in his career, no. But could those numbers be influenced by having to play for one of the worst defenses in the NFL that would routinely be forced into pass-happy shootouts? Yes, certainly so.

Even if Smith is just an average coverage linebacker, he’s still more than capable of dropping back into coverage in Jonathan Gannon‘s zone-happy scheme and could provide some much-needed run support for a front seven that got bullied up on by the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 4.

And then we get into the most enticing reason of all for the Philadelphia Eagles to go after Jalyon Smith: The revenge factor.

Whether it’s TO, DeMarco Murray, or even Ryan Kerrigan in 2021 – not that he’s been particularly impactful – NFC East players love to jump from one team to another if for no other reason than to get revenge on the team that let them go. While I’m sure Smith appreciates the $9.2 million he’ll be getting paid from the Cowboys moving forward, the competitor in him would surely like nothing more than to finally fix the Eagles’ linebacking issues once and for all and beat his old team at their old game.

Will that happen in 2021? Probably not, but at 26-years-old, Smith has plenty of quality football yet to play.

Make no mistake about it; adding Jaylon Smith would be an absolute godsend for the Philadelphia Eagles at this point in the season. He’s a darn good linebacker, an even better person, and the sort middle-of-the-defense leader the Eagles haven’t employed since DeMeco Ryans in the mid-2010s. If there’s a bidding war, win it. If there’s wooing to do, woo, woo, woo. Heck, even let him wear the number 9 if need be; just get Jaylon Smith on the Philadelphia Eagles stat.