Report: Eagles expected to cut backup QB Chase Daniel

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After the news that the Eagles were bringing back Nick Foles, the obvious question was: What will happen to Chase Daniel?

It looks like we might have our answer. 

According to ESPN, Daniel has asked to be released and the Eagles are expected to honor that request. Here's what the report says about the situation: 

"The Eagles have been working to trade Daniel in recent days to a team that would benefit the veteran signal caller, but both sides felt the decision to release him now was mutually beneficial. The Eagles and Daniel's representatives will work on potentially adjusting his contract to benefit both parties."

So what does this mean for the Eagles' salary cap? 

You'll remember that the Eagles signed Daniel to a three-year, $21 million deal ($12M guaranteed) last offseason. If they were able to find a trade partner for the backup QB, they would save $6 million in cap space with just $2 million in dead money. 

Cutting Daniel is trickier. As his salary sits now, a straight release would save the Eagles just $1 million, with $7 million in dead money. But the last part of the ESPN report, about potentially adjusting the contract, would seem to make sense. 

Aside from that, it appears that Daniel's contract has offsets, which basically means his contract with his next team would be subtracted from the Eagles' dead money.

On Friday, de facto GM Howie Roseman was asked about Daniel's importance going into Carson Wentz's second season: 

"Well, I think it goes back to the point that Joe (Douglas) has talked about since he's been here," Roseman said. "Having someone in the room to rely on and to talk to about things is important. It's important for a starting quarterback to have. Does it change from year one to year two? When you talk about Carson, he's the guy now, and having the ability to do that through the mini-camps, through the whole offseason, through training camp, his leadership is going to show, and he's been through it. He's gone to Seattle, he's gone to Dallas, Washington, New York, so he's seen all those things, so he has that. But you still want someone who's been through it, and Chase certainly provides that."

At least he did. 

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