Weird, weird goings-on in the NFL free agent market, as football teams have followed baseball in giving insanely large contracts to unproven, over the hill, and/or generally sucky players ($20 million guaranteed for the finished Joey Porter? Really?). Can you blame the Eagles for wanting to sit it out, and picking this year as the one where they have no cap room?
Speaking of the Eagles, perhaps the most intriguing subplot of the offseason involves receiver Donte' Stallworth. After a decent but slightly injury-plagued first season with the team, Stallworth was allowed to enter free agency- and word leaked late last week that the receiver was in fact in the league's substance-abuse program, presumably due to a single failed drug test for a non-steroid substance.
The notoriously conspiracy-minded Philly sports talk callers, of course, immediately jumped to the conclusion that the Eagles had planted the story themselves in order to depress Stallworth's market value, even though coach Andy Reid is currently dealing with his two sons facing drug charges. This theory was presumably put to rest Wednesday morning when Bob Brookover, the author of the original story, wrote that the Eagles organization was not the source of his story.
Brookover's story also went through the bizarre roller coaster ride Tuesday night, when it was first reported that Stallworth had signed with New England, a story that was later retracted by both Comcast Sports Net and the NFL Network. The two networks had gone with the story on the say-so of Stallworth's agent; seeing as how that agent's name is Drew Rosenhaus, I'm just shocked that something he did was duplicitous.
My guess? Stallworth doesn't stay. If the Eagles were really interested, they'd have locked him up to an extension months ago. They'll go into training camp with Reggie Brown, Hank Baskett, and Jason Avant as the top three receivers, until swinging a trade before the season- just as they did for Stallworth last year.
Posted by Stephen Silver at March 7, 2007 11:24 PMAll NFL teams have access to the information about which players are in The Program, thereby eliminating the need for the Eagles to leak information that every other team has access to.
Posted by: Mike at March 8, 2007 03:03 PM