Eagles free agent priorities: James Bradberry, Javon Hargrave, C.J. Gardner-Johnson, T.J. Edwards

PHOENIX — James Bradberry spent the first few minutes of the most important offseason of his life wearing a black suit and a stoic impression and fielding questions about a Super Bowl that slipped away. The mood inside the Eagles locker room at State Farm Arena felt like a funeral and Bradberry looked and dressed the part. And, yet, these were also moments of rebirth.

A free agent now in every sense but the paper work, the 29-year-old Bradberry enters the offseason in line for a contract that includes a significant raise on the $7.25 million salary he received this year. This presents a dilemma for the Eagles, who landed the cornerback at a discount last season following his release from the Giants and further reduced his cap hit by deferring some of the charge to next year. Bradberry was as big of a factor as any in the Eagles’ remarkable turnaround on defense this season. But if the Eagles re-sign him, it could mean saying goodbye to one or more players whose presence was nearly as crucial.

“It’s kind of hard to look forward to free agency,” Bradberry said after the Eagles blew a 10-point halftime lead in a 38-35 loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII. “But I know at this point, I’m in a better situation than I was last year. I’d been released after free agency had already happened. So I guess that’s my positive mindset: I’m in a better situation than I was last year.”

The question that Howie Roseman faces this offseason is how do you prioritize a list of players who were all essential? In Javon Hargrave, Fletcher Cox and Brandon Graham, the Eagles have three free-agent defensive linemen who accounted for 29 of their 70 sacks. In C.J. Gardner-Johnson and T.J. Edwards, they have a safety and a linebacker who played key roles in shoring up their run defense and zone coverages. Along with Bradberry, that’s six of 11 starters who are no longer under contract.

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For at least two of those players, the writing appears to be on the wall. Cox and Graham have been fixtures on the Eagles defensive line for the last decade, but they have reached a juncture where market forces take over. With Jalen Hurts playing himself into a contract that could account for nearly a fifth of their cap space starting in 2024 or 2025, the Eagles are quickly arriving at a point where they must carefully judge the value of each additional dollar. In Josh Sweat, Jordan Davis and Milton Williams, the Eagles have a trio of former draft picks whom they have been grooming for this moment.

Same goes for a couple of familiar names on the offensive side of the ball. One of the easiest sacrifices for a team to make is at running back. You saw that in this year’s Super Bowl, where the Chiefs relied on two rushers making close to the minimum salary. In fact, you saw it with the Eagles all postseason, as Kenny Gainwell and Boston Scott looked equally as capable as Miles Sanders, who will need to look elsewhere for serious money. Any money the Eagles would pay Sanders would be better off going to Isaac Seumalo, who nevertheless seems destined to find a team with the ability to pay him more money.

“We all knew going into this game that this team’s going to look a lot different next year,” center Jason Kelce said. “I think a lot of the young guys in the nucleus will be here. The older guys like myself, we’ll see what happens. But I fully expect Howie and the front office and the scouts to make good decisions and figure all of that out. It’s a good problem to have. But, yeah, we knew this was probably an opportunity that for some of us is not going to be here [next year].”

Of course, Kelce himself plays a big part of the equation. If he decides to retire, the Eagles would almost need to spend some money on a replacement in one form or another. Maybe that means paying Seumalo to stay, or looking elsewhere for an upgrade.

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For now, the foursome to focus on is Hargrave, Bradberry, Gardner-Johnson and Edwards. However, I don’t think any of their departures should be considered a fait accompli. The next two years can still look a lot like this year, assuming Roseman structures Hurts’ extension in a way that keeps the cap hits reasonable in 2023 and 2024.

As for their current cap space, it is barely worth detailing, because it doesn’t tell us much of anything about the offseason spending they can accommodate. Between Lane Johnson and Darius Slay, the Eagles could free up something like $25 million in cap space with the stroke of a pen by converting their salaries to bonuses whose cap hits get spread out over multiple years. Likewise, Roseman can continue to pay with the virtual credit card known as voided years. The NFL’s accounting trick of the moment helped the Eagles pay Bradberry and re-sign Cox, among others.

Can they make it happen? It depends less on the player asks than what some other team might be willing to offer. That’s the devil of free agency, isn’t it? Right now, there are a lot of teams who have spent the last couple of seasons waiting for their moment to make an aggressive Eagles-like push. The Bengals, the Giants, the Bears — all three are flush with cap space and have the motivation to strike. There is always a price that no longer makes sense. There isn’t much that the Eagles can do if someone else decides to pay it.