Nick Sirianni spoke to Fletcher Cox Tuesday as trade talks heated up

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On Monday, Nick Sirianni said he doesn't get involved in trade rumors.

"We can't really live in rumor world," he said.

The Fletcher Cox situation went way beyond rumors.

The Eagles have been shopping the six-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle, and as talks heated up in advance of Tuesday's 4 p.m. trade deadline, Sirianni made sure he was in touch with Cox to keep him apprised of the situation.

He just felt that Cox, an all-time Eagles great, deserved to know the truth.

"Any time stuff like that happens, you always want to (communicate)," Sirianni said Wednesday morning. "My biggest thing is just try to communicate with everybody about everything, and that's Howie (Roseman's) approach at it, as well, to be able to communicate through all those things. 

"Whether it's a trade, whether it's something personal that somebody's going through, anything, we just want to be there for our players to make sure they know that we're there for them and be honest with everything that's going on."

As it turned out, 4 o'clock came and went and nobody matched the Eagles' trade demands for the 30-year-old Cox, so the Eagles' 2012 1st-round draft pick remains here for his 10th season.

Cox, who had 54½ sacks, 408 tackles, 71 tackles for loss, 130 quarterback hits and 12 forced fumbles in his first nine seasons with the Eagles, has just one sack, 12 tackles, one tackle for loss, four QB hits and no forced fumbles this year.

Cox openly complained about the way defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon used him leading up to the Lions game, but although Gannon set his linemen loose more than he had in the past -- the defensive line recorded a season-high five sacks -- Cox had none of them. It was his sixth game in eight weeks with one or fewer tackle.

The Eagles have a couple of rookie interior defensive linemen -- 3rd-round pick Milton Williams and 6th-round pick Marlon Tuipulotu -- and the sense was that shipping Cox for a couple of premium draft picks would help the Eagles as they continue the rebuilding process but that he still had enough left in the tank to help a contending team.

Their asking price turned out to be too high, and a deal never got done. 

"I know there was a lot of rumors there with that, I'm just really happy Fletch is still on this football team and we're going to be able to build upon the big-time performance that the defensive line had the other day and they've had some really good games here and we know that's a strength of our team and Fletch is a huge, huge part of that.

"He's been a huge part of that for a long time. I can't comment on rumors, I'm just happy that he's here and I'm happy that he's continuing to be a part of this organization."

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