{"id":129,"date":"2008-02-29T18:54:08","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T23:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=129"},"modified":"2008-02-29T18:57:13","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T23:57:13","slug":"asante-eagles-birds-sign-samuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=129","title":{"rendered":"‘Asante’ Eagles: Birds sign Samuel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Eagles moved aggresively today, getting former Patriot cornerback Asante Samuel to come to Philadelphia on the first \"samuel2\"day of the free agency period and not letting him get out of town without signing a contract<\/a>.\u00a0 All the details of the deal aren’t out yet, but it is a 6-year deal.\u00a0 My guess (and this is really just a guess) is that the deal is for over $60 million, with at most half of it guarunteed.<\/p>\n

You can say what you want about the Eagles having other more pressing needs on the roster than cornerback (wide receiver, defensive end, linebacker), but the bottom line is the Eagles just signed the best available free agent on the market (if you assume Randy Moss will re-sign with New England).\u00a0 Samuel is a legit Pro Bowler and probably one of the top 5 cornerbacks in the league, a position that is always at a premium.<\/p>\n

There may also be reasons for bringing in Samuel that aren’t immediately obvious.\u00a0 There are rumblings that Lito Sheppard isn’t happy with his contract, and when you combine that with the injuries he’s had over the last couple of seasons, the Eagles may not have been as set at corner as they appeared.\u00a0 The popular rumor is that the Eagles will now look to trade Sheppard, maybe for a wide out.\u00a0 It seems logical.\u00a0 You have to imagine that if Sheppard was already unhappy, the Samuel signing didn’t exactly thrill him. There’s no point in having that sort of locker room issue hanging over your team, especially for a player that you’ve made expendable.<\/p>\n

You have to be happy any time your team shows that they’re doing whatever they can to get better.\u00a0 As I learned from some new kind of Girl Scout cookies the other day, “Asante” means “Thank you” in some other language.\u00a0 I don’t know what language, but it doesn’t matter: Asantes go out to Joe Banner and Andy Reid for this one.<\/p>\n

The Eagles also look like the front-runners to sign former Raiders defensive end Chris Clemons<\/a>.\u00a0 I don’t know anything about him, but he did have 8 sacks last year, so that sounds good to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Eagles moved aggresively today, getting former Patriot cornerback Asante Samuel to come to Philadelphia on the first day of the free agency period and not letting him get out of town without signing a contract.\u00a0 All the details of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[223,224,4,225],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl","tag-asante-samuel","tag-chris-clemons","tag-eagles","tag-lito-sheppard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}