Jalen Carter got his money. The Eagles have to hope he has grown up enough to earn it.
Carter became the highest paid defensive tackle in the NFL on Tuesday. The Eagles are taking a risk with that kind of commitment, but they didn’t have much of a choice — he’s that talented.
Jalen Carter plodded off the dais late Wednesday morning with a look of relief on his face, as if he were a student who feared public speaking and had just delivered an oral presentation for class. The Eagles’ first practice of training camp, at the Jefferson Health Training Complex, had ended minutes before. It was humid, and Carter wiped his brow with a towel. To his left were Dom DiSandro, who is the Eagles’ chief security officer, and Toni Brown, who is Carter’s mother. Dom and mom. Maybe the two most important people in making sure that the Eagles get their money’s worth from Carter, who is, for the moment, the highest-paid defensive tackle in the National Football League.
“I messed up a little bit,” Carter said to Brown and DiSandro, “but it was good.”
The Eagles had announced Tuesday that they and Carter had agreed to a four-year contract extension that reportedly guaranteed him $106 million and could pay him as much as $160 million. When a modern professional sports franchise holds a press conference, it does so not just to acknowledge the news that has already broken. The point and purpose of the event, from the franchise’s perspective, are to send subtle signals about what the angle on the news is supposed to be.
» READ MORE: The Eagles extended Jalen Carter ‘based on future performance,’ Howie Roseman says
So there was Brown near the dais. And there was tackle Jordan Davis, Carter’s teammate at the University of Georgia and with the Eagles, hanging near the back of the media tent, ecstatic for his friend. And coach Nick Sirianni and vice president Howie Roseman had been there hours earlier, making no mention of the risk the Eagles had taken on with this commitment to Carter.
And there is risk here — plenty of it. Carter is just 25, and he has been a great player at times for the Eagles. He was the primary reason they beat the Los Angeles Rams in the 2024-25 NFC divisional round, and he has the power, strength, and raw talent to be the league’s best defensive tackle if he can stay healthy and keep his head on straight. But from the road-racing accident in January 2023 that led to two people’s deaths and caused him to drop far enough for the Eagles to trade in that year’s draft, to the decline in his play in the second half of his rookie season, to his dumb decision to spit in Dak Prescott’s face in last season’s opening game, to the two shoulder procedures that cost him a month of time, Carter has given the Eagles ample cause to cross their fingers here and hope.
Roseman likes to consummate such deals — extending the contracts of players whom the Eagles want to retain for years — as early in an offseason as possible. Carter’s, though, took much longer, and the reasons go beyond the ones Roseman cited Wednesday, the suggestion that he and Drew Rosenhaus, Carter’s agent, were simply waiting for the market to settle.
“We felt like [defensive tackle] was one of the strengths of our team,” Roseman said. “We want that to be one of the strengths of our team going forward. The defensive tackle position in the league, in college football — it’s a deficient position. It’s hard to find guys like that. So we feel like it was a priority.”
Understand: That’s why Carter got this extension, and that’s why the Eagles didn’t have much of a choice in giving it to him. He’s that talented, that vital to Vic Fangio’s defense. “The attention he draws is incredible,” linebacker Zack Baun said. “You’ve got to have four hands on him,” meaning the opposing offensive line has to double-team Carter at all times, opening up possibilities for his teammates to make plays. There’s no replacing a player like Carter, and if he commits another awful mistake off the field, if he does something dirty on the field and the NFL doesn’t go easy on him again — as it did last season after the Prescott incident — he will cost the Eagles dearly. As Roseman and more than one player said Wednesday, the Eagles don’t pay you for what you’ve done. They pay you for what you’re going to do.
To his credit, Carter said all the right things Wednesday, even pausing, after taking two questions, to thank the Eagles and chairman Jeffrey Lurie and even the media members in attendance. Any teacher or professor would have passed him on his assignment.
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“When you get picked in the first round, a top-10 pick, you get a little bit of decent money,” he said. “That didn’t change me. I still came here. I had a goal. I let the team know and the fans know that the goal was to get a championship. It happened, but it’s a new contract, and it’s time to get more championships for the city of Philly.
“My goal wasn’t to come out and ‘Let me be the highest-paid defensive tackle.’ My goal was to build team chemistry and win a championship. I think that all falls in line with getting to where I’m at now.”
The proof was never going to present itself Wednesday. The easy part is over for Jalen Carter. He got his extension, and now he has to earn it. Now he has to keep every day clean. “I don’t think money is ever going to change me,” he said. It was an assertion that could cut either way, for good or bad, and it’s on him, his support system, and the Eagles themselves to make sure they don’t regret that he said it.
