Unsentimental Eagles play no favorites when cutting players

Seventh of an eight-part series

Some are role players passing through. Others become all-pros. The chosen few become folk heroes.

But all Eagles players have one thing in common - eventually, they become ex-Eagles, even if most never see it coming.

The end game for a professional football player is harsh. For years they give their bodies, and often their minds, to a franchise. Yes, they do it for a paycheck, but they also presumably do it for the common goal - to have success, to win a championship, to hoist the silver Lombardi Trophy.

When it's over, it's over quickly. The Eagles' management team is many things, but emotional is not one. They leave that to the fans.

"I'm actually proud of the fact that we've always put, at least in our judgment, what gave us the best chance to win ahead of maybe what looked the best or what was safest," said Eagles president Joe Banner.

Inside the NovaCare Complex, endless film study and analytical debate are devoted to the Eagles' own roster. Every assistant coach writes up detailed postseason reports on each player under his supervision. Coordinators add their own detailed reports. General manager Howie Roseman writes up his evaluations after each game and looks back at them after the season. In the NFL, injuries typically aren't used as mitigating factors in a player's favor. They are more likely to be a reason for dismissal.

In the NFL, personnel decisions obviously are about value. Eagles head coach Andy Reid has to make hard calls on which players have lost a step. Banner is asking hard questions about the proper length of the next contract.

"You don't want to get into a situation where a lot of teams have, to go back to ground zero and start from scratch and come back up," Roseman said. "We've always thought we could retool this on the fly. Find guys that we thought maybe didn't have a lot of time left, and replace them with guys that kind of fill similar roles - good players. Do that instead of taking a year on the chin."

Think about recent Eagles rosters. How many former starters have hung on as backups? It's not the way the franchise does business. Backup roles are for the up-and-comers, with a rare spot saved for a special-teams ace such as former Eagles linebacker Ike Reese. If Eagles players often take their time getting to the top of the mountain, there is no gentle descent.

"When they call me with a trade, I always pause," said New York Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum. "They're so good at evaluating their 'out' door, their exit door."

The Eagles obviously didn't just wake up this off-season with a younger roster. There was some methodology to it.

"We got to a point where we felt we were getting older on our roster, and we needed this new generation of young players to come in, on both sides of the ball," Roseman said. "You can't do everything in one year. That's frustrating, but you can't do everything in one year."

That organizational thought process "really kind of started three years ago, when we looked at the natural progression of the contact expirations on some of our players. Our offensive tackles' contracts were expiring at the same time," Roseman said, referring to Jon Runyan and Tra Thomas. "They were 34 and 35 - they did a great job for us. We had to get that going. Our defensive line, our offensive line, there were a lot of players that we knew we probably had to replace."

In the decade before this off-season, the Eagles saw 12 of their Pro Bowl players leave by various means, most by the choice of the Eagles. Only two, Brian Dawkins and Terrell Owens, went to another Pro Bowl. (In that decade, four other former Eagles also made subsequent Pro Bowls after leaving Philadelphia: Charlie Garner, Derrick Burgess, Al Harris, and Jeff Garcia.)

Brian Westbrook, let go this off-season after a series of injuries cut him down, told at least one friend that he would have been amenable to coming back this season as LeSean McCoy's backup. But it's hard to see how that would have worked. The Eagles obviously weren't going to pay him starter's money - star's money - to be a backup. And as good a presence as Westbrook always was in the locker room, would they have really wanted a former star in that room making less money than he'd signed for?

Of course, the Eagles' fans still haven't forgiven the Eagles for letting Dawkins go last year, for allowing the decade-long heart and soul of the defense to sign a free-agent contract with the Denver Broncos.

"Dawkins is unusual," Banner said. "I hate to even say this. We wanted to keep Dawkins and we tried to. We just didn't successfully do it."

The Eagles had been talking to Dawkins, who turned 36 last October, about a two-year deal and were caught off guard when Denver went far beyond it, signing him to a five-year deal reportedly worth $17 million.

The Dawkins case does point to a central chasm between the thinking of the Eagles and many of their fans.

"Sometimes they mistake the value of emotion in a football team," said Gov. Rendell, who appears on Comcast SportsNet's Eagles postgame show as a voice of the fans. "Losing Dawkins was more than just losing his football ability."

Banner said this issue was analyzed.

"Dawkins was a loss of leadership, no question," Banner said last month. "But the question we asked isn't just do we lose leadership if we lose Dawkins. That answer was an obvious 'Yes.' But do we have enough strong leaders left? Is that enough? The answer was 'Yes.' "

Decisions are never made in a win-loss vacuum, either. Even though the Eagles surprisingly made it to the NFC championship game just before losing Dawkins, that action, seeing him go, suggests they decided they weren't a Dawkins away from winning a Super Bowl. And their actions this off-season obviously suggested they knew they didn't have a Dawkins replacement ready since they drafted a safety with the 37th pick of the draft.

At the time of the trade, Banner acknowledged that he'd told Dawkins' agent Jim Steiner that they were getting the Eagles' best offer. But Banner also had acknowledged publicly at that time that he had failed to understand right away how unsatisfactory Dawkins found that meeting, in tone or in substance.

Asked at the time to clarify whether he gave the Eagles a chance to respond to the Broncos' offer, Dawkins said via text message the night of the trade that he didn't think getting into a back-and-forth with Banner would accomplish anything.

"I'm done with it," Dawkins wrote. "It will change nothing. I'm a Philly-raised Bronco."

Players often have a more business-like approach to all this than the fans. Not only was former Eagles tackle Jon Runyan not surprised by how things ended for him - "your contract runs out, and you're injured," he said - but Runyan understood how Dawkins was allowed to depart.

"I know people were upset by what happened to Brian," Runyan said. "By the same light, do you want to try to get two or three more players for down the road for the same amount of money?

"Not a knock on Brian, but he'd been hurt the previous three seasons - things like Achilles tendons," Runyan added. "Do you really want to take a chance on him being there week in and week out?"

Runyan came by his NFL business education early. He pointed out that he never would have ended up with the Eagles in the first place if the Tennessee Titans hadn't locked up so many favorite sons - Steve McNair and Eddie George and numerous others. That left no long-term money for him in the prime of his career.

Runyan made it clear he was happy for Dawkins that he got the deal he got from the Broncos.

"There's a certain aspect of a poker game being played there," Runyan said of free agency. "You only have to get one team [interested in you] to get that money."

While discussing the Eagles' decision to trade Donovan McNabb, Banner talked of leadership in general.

"The primary leader in the team and the organization is Andy," Banner said. "And the leadership really comes out of the common goal. And that can be added to by the individual leaders. But if you believe like we believe - you've got to get really highly driven professional athletes on your team - then there's a high level of self-motivation by definition.

"You do need leaders. But they aren't the end-all. But you've got so many who want to be the best they can be, they care passionately about winning, they're going to work hard in the off-season just out of personal pride, not because someone said, 'C'mon, get in here.' I don't mean to imply that leadership doesn't matter, but you can exaggerate how important leadership is."

Loyalty to veteran players leads to another issue where there often is a chasm between fans and professional sports teams.

"I believe franchises should reward long-term players," Rendell said. "They should in some degree take in account fan feelings. We're the ones who make the franchises go."

Even as he says it, Rendell seems to know that idea is a fantasy.

"If the fans had their way, we'd spend all the money we have, we'd get this player, that player - there's no financial reality," Rendell said. "In the context of reality, you can say those decisions have kept the team in the playoffs for a long time."

Rendell added that he thought a lot of the Eagles' decisions to part ways with players "are football decisions" as opposed to pure financial decisions.

Roseman, who came to work for the Eagles in 2000, had grown up a New York Jets fan in Monmouth County, N.J. He said he was "very affected in terms of building a team" by the 1998 Jets, who had lost to Denver in the AFC Championship game.

"They had kind of gone for it in the next off-season," Roseman said. "They had signed Steve Atwater, had re-signed Vinny Testaverde. The first game [the next season], Vinny tore his Achilles, they ended up 8-8. They had huge cap problems. That's why, in my opinion, it's better to always give yourself a chance to win a championship, as opposed to just throwing all your chips on to the table for one hand."

Most players come to understand the cold realities of their profession.

"If everybody running around there cared about what the city cared about them, they wouldn't be as successful as they are. You know what I mean?" said former Eagles cornerback Sheldon Brown, who was traded after expressing his own unhappiness with his contract. He mostly was talking about Banner. "If they did, they'd be handing out paychecks to 38-year-old players. There's been a lot of great guys come through there, a.k.a. Dawk, Troy [Vincent]. Time moves on. Me and Lito [Sheppard] saw it. No one there is going to reinvent the wheel. It's a plan. It's a procedure. You just have to deal with it."

Reid apparently goes beyond simple self-study in looking at that endgame. He studies the whole landscape, especially as he had to make the key decision of moving past the Donovan McNabb era.

"I will tell you now, Andy studied all of the great quarterbacks and what transpired toward the end of their career, and all were different," said Eagles offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg. "But he will take it to the nth degree there on studying."

Within the locker room, it is often difficult to separate football decisions from financial decisions. Many veteran Eagles see it in shades of gray, some more in black and white.

"If they could save a dollar, they would do it," former Eagles offensive lineman John Welbourn said of the team's personnel decisions. "If they could do it one dollar cheaper, they would do it."

Welbourn added, however, that he gained perspective about life in the NFL after he left the Eagles.

"Some of the teams were a hell of a lot worse," Welbourn said of making personnel decisions based on finances, and just taking care of players in general. "The Chiefs were worse, and the Patriots were worse beyond that. At least in Philly they took care of the players. At least they were thinking about a return on investment. Like, the Eagles have a nice cafeteria. The Chiefs, there would be some cold cuts and some bread. They closed the weight room a week before the season ended. At least everything the Eagles did was first class. I got traded to a way worse place. I was in Russia, and they sent me to Siberia."

Eagles fans may recall that Welbourn basically booked his own ticket out after publicly expressing his unhappiness with his contract.

"It was Andy Reid who made the decision," Welbourn said. "We had a falling out. I probably handled things badly."

"Did [Welbourn] tell you that I told him for two years to keep his mouth shut?" Runyan asked.

After one season as a starter, Welbourn had agreed to an eight-year, $13 million contract extension with the Eagles before the 2001 season. Nobody forced him to sign it, and by 2004, he was acting out, trying to get traded. His agent had warned Welbourn when he signed the deal that four years down the road he would be underpaid, but he went for the instant security. Looking back now, Welbourn said, "Nobody tricked me to go play."

Welbourn also said something about the Eagles that he probably wouldn't have said then.

"I think it's a great organization. All these teams are a business; they are valued every year. Winning is equal to dollar signs. The more games you win, the more shirts you sell, the more Monday night games you get. . . . Life is fast and these guys are in a business. The coaches, they are under as much pressure as anybody."

Even business-side staffers echo that thought.

"It's a very well-run business but it's very cold," said one former Eagles middle manager on the business side. "It's 'What did you do for me right now?' You would do a million-dollar deal and you'd get to celebrate for about 30 seconds."

Free agents coming in, and their agents, generally say the Eagles are typically more up-front than most NFL teams in outlining their salary structures. Veterans arriving probably have a better understanding of the endgame than the young guys starting out in the organization.

"The Eagles have made it known they have a very systematic way of determining the market value of certain players," said former Eagles linebacker Shawn Barber. He added that the Eagles took time to explain in broad terms how their mathematical formula worked, starting with looking at the top five players by salary at given positions.

Barber, who played for the Eagles in 2002 and again in 2006, also understood that linebacker wasn't a position at the top of the Eagles' salary priorities.

"If you're playing one of those formula positions, eventually, unless you just want to be an Eagle, you're going to have to go somewhere else," Barber said of how the Eagles judge positions on different tiers.

"There are positions like cornerback or quarterback or rush ends, you can't find them. Those are some special guys. My position, that was just one of the positions, you don't step outside the box. You can get that guy as easily as they found me. The thing I credit the Eagles [with], they took time to explain to me their formula, their way of thinking. Most teams don't do that. Their offer is their offer."

Barber did understand the connection between Eagles fans and Dawkins - how that parting was painful for both sides.

Of Eagles fans, Barber said, "The fans are the Coliseum. They need blood. If there is one fan base that can be directly related to the gladiators, the crowd, the arena, they call for more and more and more. Being on the field, you feel that more. They almost pull it out of you. You can't hold back."

Of Dawkins, Barber said, "He lived up to the moment more than any player I played with. The persona, 'Weapon X' - it's something the crowd draws out of him."

The toughest part of the endgame may be when game-day emotion meets up with the cold calculus of decision-making. Former Eagles strongside linebacker Carlos Emmons saw it firsthand. Emmons played here from 2000 to 2003 and said he always had a real respect for Reid.

"We could go to him as a man. . . . I never liked those my-way-or-the-highway kind of coaches."

In 2003, at the end of his contract, Emmons fractured his left fibula in the second-to-last regular season game and missed the playoffs.

"The game I got hurt in, I wasn't supposed to play," Emmons said. "Loyalty came in. I didn't practice" - he had an injured hand - "but we were trying to get a bye. I said, 'I'll go out there. I'm sacrificing it.'

"I can remember right after the game, I was laying on the [training] table, frustrated. Andy Reid said to me, 'Don't second-guess playing in the game. We're going to take care of you.' "

As it turned out, he got taken care of, but by the New York Giants. They offered Emmons a five-year, $16.5 million package and the Eagles declined to match it, instead signing Dhani Jones to a five-year, $12.5-million deal.

As it further turned out, Emmons' best years were probably when he was with the Eagles. Eagles fans know Jones wasn't a great replacement, though.

Banner said the Eagles would have looked to bring Emmons back, although obviously not at the salary he got on the open market - "in essence honoring the comment that I'm unaware of," said Banner, who sounded a bit surprised that Reid had made the locker-room comment to Emmons.

"One of the reasons I think Andy has been successful, he is a straight shooter," Banner said. "He doesn't say things loosely to people."

Eagles players have found that to be true.

"There's no cutting out the legs from each other - 'Let this person take the blame,' " Barber said of the Eagles' decision-makers. "They do it together, win lose or draw."

Obviously Reid is, by definition, closer to the locker room.

"I know that when you are an Andy Reid guy as a player, you really sense a tremendous loyalty from your coach," said agent Jerrold Colton, who represents Eagles kicker David Akers among his NFL clients. "At the same time, you have a sense it's going to end."

The veterans will tell you Reid stayed in communication, calling with his appreciation when it was over. Especially, said former Eagles linebacker and special-teams star Ike Reese, "the guys he leaned on in that locker room, guys that he would pull to the side and have private conversations with, that he turned to for information about the team: 'Where's the heart of the team at?' "

With Reese, Reid went one step further, eventually offering him a coaching job. That wasn't something Reese was looking to do. He'd wanted to get into broadcasting, and now is a host at WIP-AM.

After it's over, Banner knows he usually gets the blame for not offering a new contract, or a sufficient one. Within the Eagles, Banner is, in effect, the designated adult. You don't usually see him walking around shaking hands or trading jokes with players, or sales staffers for that matter. That's not his personality anyway, but he consciously doesn't cultivate friendships in the locker room, acknowledging a certain distance, knowing there is always an end. Reid typically deals with the players. Banner typically deals with their agents.

"They remember the guy who's responsible for somebody leaving much more frequently than how I am also the guy who gave the contract to the guy that stayed," Banner said. "There are a number of players who we eventually lost who had two or three or four contracts here. I'm actually the guy who gave them those contracts. That gets forgotten in the end."

Also, the Eagles may have their formulas, but Banner pointed out that nothing is cast in cement.

"Listen, we've had a group of players that we thought we signed to contracts that would make sure they'd stay here until they retired," Banner said, mentioning Thomas, Runyan, and even Dawkins. "People say you don't sign contracts with players in their 30s. They all signed contracts well into their 30s. In the case of the names just mentioned, we were all really excited about that. They were all great guys, great players - an important part of a big chunk of the history of the franchise.

So, Banner said, "we thought we had signed contracts that insured they would retire as Eagles. . . . But then they just decided to play even longer than that."

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