I can’t remember when I’ve seen the Eagles “lock up” so many regular position and non-glamor position players into extended contracts at the same time in the same season. I guess you’d have to go back to the 2001-to-2007 period when Jeff Lurie, Tom Heckert, Andy Reid and Joe Banner attempted to establish “the Gold Standard” for Eagles personnel.
(Did you know?— Of the 22 Eagles starters at the end of the 2009 season, 13 were draft choices of the team during Tom Heckert’s tenure while two more were signed as undrafted free agents.)
(Did you know?—the Eagles have only had 12 different individual general managers of personnel in their entire history?— Bert Bell # (1933–1948), Vince McNally (1949–1964), Joe Kuharich # (1964−1968), Pete Retzlaff (1969–1972), Jim Murray (1973–1985), Harry Gamble (1985–1995), Ray Rhodes # (1996–1998), Tom Modrak (1998−2001), Andy Reid # (2001–2005), Tom Heckert, Jr. (2006–2009), Howie Roseman (2010–2014, 2016), Chip Kelly # (2015).
—Pound sign (#) denotes de facto general manager.)
Anyway, Howie Roseman is locking ’em up of late—extending the contracts of tight ends Zach Ertz and Brent Celek, offensive tackle Lane Johnson, defensive end Vinny Curry, linebacker Najee Goode and now safety Malcom Jenkins—all in the last few weeks.
If you’re convinced you have a player who adds a distinct quality of performance at his position combined with experience, then it makes sense to extend his contract…but only if you believe he still has some upside left in his game. You always run the risk with an extension that the player will underperform in the latter years of the contract. Heck, you run the risk that the player could get knocked out by injury in the first year of his extension, for that matter.
But you take the risk of extending certain players because they add something special to the mix. You also know that winning now or next year or the year after requires a certain degree of continuity in personnel.
You may be screwing your cap at the back end of these extended contracts as the deferred salary and prorated signing bonus money piles up against the cap number towards the end of the contract. But you can find ways to minimize or counterbalance cap hits when the time comes—you are in this thing to go all out to retain a consistent nucleus of team leaders and veterans who know how to win.
As you know by now, the Eagles and Malcolm Jenkins agreed to terms Monday on a new five-year contract. He’s 28 entering his 8th year in the NFL. Jenkins was entering the final year of the contract he signed when the joined the Eagles as an unrestricted free agent prior to the 2014 season. He was scheduled to earn $5.5 million with a $7.2 million cap number.
Jenkins’ new deal runs through 2020 and includes $35 million in new money. He will get $21 million guaranteed. His salary cap hit for 2016, which would have been $7.2 million under his old contract, will drop to $5.6 million due to Howie’s accounting magic.
“I reached out to my agent at the end of the 2015 season and expressed to him that Philly is the team I really want to be on for the long run,” Jenkins said Monday afternoon. “I told him if the feeling was mutual, I’d like to get something long-term done.”
He played every defensive snap except for seven plays during his first two seasons with the Eagles. He has intercepted five passes and knocked down 29 passes. Jenkins returned two interceptions for touchdowns, a 53-yarder in 2014 and a 99-yarder against the New England Patriots in 2015.
If only Malcolm’s hands had a lot less “clang” in them, he could have had at least ten more INT’s in those stat totals.
“Malcolm Jenkins is one of the best in the NFL,” safeties coach Tim Hauck said in early February. “I think he’s still going up.”
That’s what you need to hear to extend a contract like Jenkins’—he’s still going up instead of sideways or down.
“Malcolm has proven himself as a leader on and off the field,” said Howie Roseman. “We are excited to have him on the team moving forward.”
“It gives your players confidence that if you play well and you produce, that you’ll be rewarded,” said Jenkins. “So it builds that camaraderie and when you have consistency with leaders in the locker room, over time you build on that and you develop culture and develop camaraderie more than just the X’s and O’s. When you look at that model across the NFL, those who use it normally do well. A lot of the playoff teams that we saw this year have that same model where they build off of guys that they drafted and they build off of players that they want for their future, and then they add where needed.”
“I think that philosophy changed more than anything else this offseason, it’s probably the thing that’s spoken the most volumes and that guys in the locker room have been paying the most attention to. It gives you incentive or more ‘want to’ to be in this building and be an Eagle. You get proud of having that logo on your chest.”
I take Jenkins at his word on that camaraderie stuff. In a way his acceptance of a contract extension at this time is an unselfish move on his part. He could have played out his original contract with the Eagles and tested free agency in 2017. If he had another year in 2016 like he did in 2015, you can bet he could have found a bigger payout on the open market. But of course, there is risk for the player in betting on himself like that.
“Ever since I got here to Philly, I’ve had the two best seasons of my life, personally,” Jenkins said. “My career has really started to take off. I feel like I’m really just catching my stride. Timing is everything in this league, and I think it’s the perfect time for not only myself but for this organization to really start putting things in places to get to the next level, and I like I said, I’m really excited about being a part of that plan.”
“When you add a coach like Jim Schwartz and his defense and his track record of having really good defenses, especially upfront, and I think that’s where our strength is – up front. I think that will take us to the next level, to really be able to let those guys loose and have them be a lot more productive. I think it’s going to be great, so we’re all looking forward to get to the point where we can actually talk football around here, because right now we can’t talk about the playbook, we can’t talk about schematics, but when that window does open up, I think everyone’s excited and everyone will be all ears to hear about how we’re going to attack this new season.“
Okay. I believe Malcolm’s words and I’m on board with Howie’s goal to keep key pieces of this current team together. But they better have a backup plan, and I don’t mean quarterback. I still remember 2009-2010 when they had to break up that old extended contract gang of Tom Heckert’s as the grim reality of talent drought and cap rot set in.
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