PHOENIX — The Eagles continued their offseason of discount shopping when they agreed to terms with veteran safety Terrell Edmunds last week.
While Edmunds appears to be a likely starter for the Eagles in 2023, the Eagles didn’t have to overpay to get the former first-round pick to Philly.
Edmunds’ one-year deal with the Eagles is worth $2 million and includes just $600,000 in guaranteed money, according to a league source.
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Here are the key details of the contract:
• Total value of $2 million
• Total guarantee of $600K
• Signing bonus: $250K
NFL
• Base salary: $1.08 million
• Just $350,000 of his base salary is guaranteed
• Per-game roster bonuses: Up to $670K
• Up to $850K in team/personal incentives
All this amounts to a salary cap hit of just over $1.9 million for the 26-year-old in 2023. That’s more than palatable if he ends up being a decent-level starter for the Eagles this season.
This deal is very similar to the ones the Eagles have given three other defensive players — Nicholas Morrow, Greedy Williams and Justin Evans — this offseason.
In terms of average salary per year, this deal ranks Edmunds 65th in the NFL among safeties, according to OverTheCap.
The biggest moves the Eagles made in free agency were ones to keep their own veterans like Jason Kelce, Fletcher Cox, Brandon Graham, James Bradberry and Darius Slay in place. After that, the Eagles got a backup quarterback in Marcus Mariota but have then sprinkled in a bunch of these low-risk, high-reward moves.
Even if one or two of these players work out in 2023, it’ll feel like a win for the Eagles. Because if they don’t work out, the Eagles have no financial obligation to hang on to these players. Same goes for Edmunds. They bring him to camp and he looks awful? Then he doesn’t need to make the team.
It also allows the Eagles to go into the draft without glaring needs. When teams enter a draft thinking that they need to plug holes, that’s when general managers reach on players at those positions. Think back to Marcus Smith in 2014.
But the hope is still obviously that Edmunds works out. The Eagles lost both of their starting safeties (Marcus Epps and C.J. Gardner-Johnson) in free agency, which left them with Reed Blankenship, K’Von Wallace and Andre Chachere. At the very least, the Eagles needed to add more depth at the position and they’ve done that with the signings of Evans and Edmunds.
The crazy thing is that Evans was a part-time player last season and got just as much guaranteed money as Edmunds, who started 15 games for the Steelers in 2022 and has started 75 over the past five seasons.
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