Philadelphia Eagles: 3 veteran defensive tackles to fill out the depth chart
Could the second time be the charm for Malik Jackson in Philadelphia?
If Howie Roseman had a windfall of cash heading into the 2021 NFL season, we’d probably be looking at the prospects of Mailk Jackson returning for the 2022 season in a very different light.
Initially signed to a three-year, $30 million contract back in 2019, Jackson suffered a foot injury 32 snaps into his Eagles career that landed him on season-ending IR, and then followed it up with a good but not great 2022 campaign paired up with Fletcher Cox and Javon Hargrave. With a ridiculously deep cap deficit and more dead money straddled on the books by the trade of Carson Wentz, Jackson found himself one of the team’s cap casualties heading into the 2021 NFL league year.
Free to sign wherever he’d like with $3.6 million still owed to him by the Eagles, Jackson signed a one-year, $3.75 million deal with the Cleveland Browns, where he played a solid though not flashy season providing support for Jadeveon Clowney and Myles Garrett. While some will quibble with his sack total of .5, Jackson clogged up the interior, played against both the run and the pass, and even helped to rally his teammates with a rousing locker room speech early in the season.
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Considering the Philadelphia Eagles are already set to pay Jackson $9.033 million in 2022 thanks to some cap manipulation from Howie Roseman, why not get a little production out of that money plus a little bit more and bring Jackson back to the City of Brotherly Love? If the market shakes out a certain way, I could certainly see it.