Philadelphia Eagles: Darius Slay has words of wisdom for Eli Apple

One way or another, the Philadelphia Eagles are going to sign a cornerback this offseason.

That’s right, whether it’s re-signing 2021 starter Steven Nelson, who will surely command a contract bigger than a one-year, $3.01 million deal, signing a new cornerback in free agency, or turning to the draft for a top-flight talent, the Eagles will at least have one new face in their secondary in 2022, maybe more, depending on how things shake out at the safety spot.

With the Super Bowl two weeks away and free agency coming a few short weeks after that, the Eagles’ front office will surely be scouring the greater football world to identify a few guys they like and potentially procure a few more bodies over the first few months of a consequential offseason.

Could current Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Eli Apple be that guy? Well, if he is, he might want to talk to Darius Slay first, as the Philadelphia Eagles’ cornerback has some words of wisdom for the well-traveled native of the City of Brotherly Love.

The Philadelphia Eagles’ biggest play CB has some choice words for Eli Apple.

Coming out of college, Eli Apple was supposed to be – to paraphrase that famous Philadelphia Eagles pre-meme – it, baby.

While the NFL.com only listed him as the eighth-best cornerback in the 2016 NFL Draft, behind a player like Harlan Miller, who isn’t even in the league anymore, the New York Giants still saw enough positives in the Ohio State Buckeye’s tape to select him 10th overall, ahead of players like William Jackson III, Artie Burns, and future thee-time Pro Bowler Xavien Howard.

A bad decision? Yeah, especially since three-time Pro Bowl center Ryan Kelly came off the board eight picks later, but do you know what? Just because a team “over drafts” a player doesn’t mean they can’t be a solid player long-term, especially since re-drafting players a half-decade later with the benefit of hindsight.

What was really a bad decision, however, was how Apple opted to handle himself as a member of the G-Men. Over the course of two and a half seasons, Apple was called a “cancer” by then-teammate Landon Collins, suspended by the team for conduct detrimental to the team, and eventually traded to the New Orleans Saints for a 2019 fourth-round draft pick and a 2020 seventh-round draft pick.

Now, one would think this would make Apple re-evaluate his off-field antics and recommit himself to the NFL grind, but alas, it just wasn’t meant to be. Apple bounced from the Saints to the Carolina Panthers, and now to the Cincinnati Bengals, where he has started all but one of the team’s games and just had the game of his life against the Kansas City Cheifs on the way to his first-ever Super Bowl appearance.

A great day, right? One to sit back and celebrate with family and friends, right? Well, instead, Apple opted to immediately start chattering about Cheifs receiver Tyreek Hill, who had seven catches for 78 yards and a touchdown in what ultimately proved to be a losing effort, tweeting out that Apple is a “Baby” before @-ing him on Twitter.

Now, for Apple, this is nothing new. He’d been on a bit of a Twitter warpath all playoffs long, but this particular interaction caught the attention of Darius Slay, who retweeted a graphic of interaction with the following response.

“Bra just looking for some attention now lol!!,” yeah, I’d say that conveys the message pretty clearly.

Did Apple play well for the Bengals in the championship game? Yeah, he played a fine game, but on the season, Apple’s game was below-average. He allowed 47 catches on 78 targets for 602 yards and three allowed touchdowns. While he did pick off two passes, he finished out the regular season with a missed tackle percentage of 19.7, which is the worst mark of his career. Had Apple kept things on the up and up and continued to man an outside cornerback spot for the AFC’s representative in the Super Bowl, he might have been able to parlay a successful contract year into a nice little bidding war across the NFL’s cornerback-needy teams – which is most teams – but now, it’s worth wondering if the Bengals would even want him back, or if they could land a less controversial player, say, Steven Nelson, on a similar contract sans the headaches.

To paraphrase Slay from a few paragraphs back, if you seek out attention, you just might get it.

The NFL is not a league devoid of talent. A team can wait until July and still sign a starting-caliber cornerback on a one-year, $3.01 million deal, as the Philadelphia Eagles proved first hand and even midway through any given season, solid players can be snatched up from a practice squad, be that Travis Fulgham, Boston Scott, or even Jordan Howard. If Eli Apple can get his off-field game together, he might still have a long and promising career in the NFL, but if he doesn’t, the league will surely pass him by.