Even if Jason Peters doesn’t return, the Eagles likely won’t invest in a top free-agent offensive tackle

Someone once joked that former Eagles president Joe Banner was the perfect contract negotiator because, like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, he didn’t have a heart.

He took feelings and past performance out of the equation when he sat down with an agent. He wasn’t as interested in what you did for the organization yesterday as in what you could do for it tomorrow.

And yes, while that approach might have made for a messy goodbye with Brian Dawkins, Banner’s astute cap management also helped the Eagles qualify for the playoffs nine times in 11 years from 2000 to 2010.

Which brings us to Jason Peters and the Eagles’ current troika of owner Jeffrey Lurie, executive vice president of football operations Howie Roseman, and head coach Doug Pederson.

At the scouting combine last week, Roseman acknowledged that the organization’s current leadership not only has a heart, but, for better or worse, often lets it influence personnel decisions.

“The hardest thing we have to do is separate the emotion from it,’’ Roseman said. “Quite frankly, we’re an organization, led by our owner and led by our head coach, where emotion plays a part in some of the decisions we make.

“We get attached to our players because they do so much for us. I don’t know that that ever is going to go away as long as this leadership is in place.’’

The Eagles are very attached to Peters. Like Dawkins, the 37-year-old nine-time Pro Bowler is going to have a bronze bust in Canton some day, and the Eagles really don’t want another messy goodbye with an iconic player.

Also like Dawkins, Peters has been a larger-than-life figure in the locker room. He has been a tremendous influence on the team’s younger offensive linemen, tutoring them after practice in the 90-degree heat of training camp and the frigid temperatures of the late season.

If Peters wants to return for a 16th NFL season, “you give ‘em an opportunity,’’ Pederson said last week, referring to not just Peters, but also another geezer, running back Darren Sproles, who will turn 36 in June.

But there’s a $13.17 million asterisk with that come-on-back-if-you-want invitation to Peters. That’s the salary-cap number on the option year of his contract in 2019.

The Eagles have until Wednesday to exercise that option or get Peters to agree to a restructured deal, or he will become an unrestricted free agent.

Bringing back Peters with a $13.17 million cap number would not only require a heart, but also a considerable amount of stupidity. Roseman is a lot of things, but I’m not sure stupid is one of them.

Even at 37, Peters still is a very good player. The problem is, you can’t count on him staying healthy at his age. He’s missed nearly a thousand snaps in the last two seasons. Next to talent, nothing impacts a player’s value more than availability.

Bringing back Peters for another season would mean plugging him in at left tackle for the start of the game, and having no idea whether he’ll still be out there with two minutes left in the fourth quarter.

The other options? Well, the in-house possibilities are finally moving Lane Johnson from right tackle to left tackle and plugging in Halapoulivaati Vaitai at right tackle, or letting Johnson stay put and plugging in Vaitai at left tackle.

The Eagles also love the raw talent and potential of former Australian rugby player Jordan Mailata. He made giant strides last year for a guy who had never played the game. But are they ready to let him protect Carson Wentz’s brittle bones?

The biggest appeal of bringing back Peters for one more season is that it would give the Eagles and their offensive line coach, Jeff Stoutland, another year to develop Mailata.

It’s unlikely the Eagles will pursue a top-tier offensive tackle in free agency. For starters, there aren’t many of them. There’s the Patriots’ Trent Brown and that’s about it. The Rams’ Rodger Saffold is a guard who spent the early portion of his career as a tackle. But he’s going to be 31.

Many of the other top free-agent tackle possibilities have missed even more time to injury lately than Peters. Carolina’s Daryl Williams is just 27 and has allowed only 5½ sacks in 29 career starts, but missed 15 games last season with a knee injury.

The Dolphins’ Ja’Wuan James has missed 18 games in his first four seasons. The Steelers are looking to move their 31-year-old right tackle, Marcus Gilbert. But he’s missed 20 games to injury the last two seasons.

The Eagles are more likely to address the offensive line in the draft than in free agency. They signed center Jason Kelce and left guard Isaac Seumalo to contract extensions last week. But right guard Brandon Brooks is coming off an Achilles tear, and it’s not clear what’s going to happen with veteran guard-center Stefen Wisniewski, who lost his job to Seumalo last year and has one year left on his contract ($3.7 million cap number).

The offensive-line crop in the draft is fairly deep.

“There’s not a premier guy like last year with [the Colts’ Quenton] Nelson, somebody that’s a top-five lock like we’ve seen in some previous years,’’ said NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah.

“But I think it’s a really, really good group, especially once you get to the middle of the first round, probably all the way to the middle of the third and around the fourth-round range.’’

The Eagles have five picks in the first four rounds, including the 25th overall, two in the second (Nos. 53 and 57) and two in the fourth (Nos. 127 and 138).