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Murphy: Eagles' Peters holds hammer in pay-cut discussion

THE JASON PETERS situation is ongoing, and the Sam Hinkie situation has long since concluded, but there is a theme uniting the two, and it warrants a brief inspection. It involves the public comments that organizational leaders distribute via the mass media, and the real-world implications that those comments often have on their ability to do their jobs.

THE JASON PETERS situation is ongoing, and the Sam Hinkie situation has long since concluded, but there is a theme uniting the two, and it warrants a brief inspection. It involves the public comments that organizational leaders distribute via the mass media, and the real-world implications that those comments often have on their ability to do their jobs.

In my experience, the members of the mass media care much more about these public comments than the actual public does, so don't misconstrue this as a lecture from the ivory tower. But it is also my experience that Philadelphians of all stripes spend far more of their time watching, listening, analyzing and brooding over press conferences than members of most other fan bases – "Front-runners," "For who, for what," "The time is yours," etc. – so the point I am about to make is not entirely irrelevant.

Hinkie, you'll recall, generated plenty of criticism for his habit of operating largely from the shadows. The criticism was mostly media-generated, but the former Sixers president wasn't the first area sports figure who people felt needed to do a better job of putting himself in a position to speak the truth.

If Doug Pederson's first year in front of the mic was any indication, history will not regard him as one of those figures. And therein lies the connection to the situation that the Eagles currently have brewing at left tackle.

At several points during the latter stages of the recently completed season, Pederson fielded questions about the 35-year-old Peters' future with the team. Really, he'd been fielding such questions since his first day at the helm, as fans and reporters wondered how the organization would proceed with a player who'd looked like he was on his last legs during Chip Kelly's final season as coach. In one of his first press conferences after his hiring, Pederson memorably said he thought the team's longtime left tackle had "several good years left in him." At the time, the assertion was greeted with a healthy amount of skepticism from those who'd spent the previous months watching Peters struggle with his body and with opposing defensive ends.

As it turned out, Peters lived up to his coach's billing, re-establishing himself as the offensive line's most reliable performer while starting all 16 games. So when Pederson again found himself confronted with questions about the left tackle's future, he essentially repeated his initial prognosis.

"I want him on the team," the coach said in late December. "I don't want him to go anywhere. I want him to be an Eagle for the rest of his career."

Given Peters' performance throughout the season and the Eagles' lack of depth elsewhere on the offensive line, nobody doubted Pederson's sincerity this time around. But somebody who had recently taken a look at the team's salary-cap situation and the $11.2 million due Peters in 2017 might have envisioned Howie Roseman watching on a closed-circuit television and burying his head in his hands.

A couple of weeks later, when Roseman met with the media to share his thoughts on the season ahead and the season behind, the football ops chief's noncommittal comments on Peters' potential return underscored the reality of life as a hiring manager in a competitive labor market: telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth isn't always conducive to the achievement of organizational goals. In fact, oftentimes it only complicates matters.

In the interest of intellectual honesty, I should note that Pederson is hardly the logical equivalent of Hinkie, who was much more comparable to Roseman due to their personnel and salary-cap responsibilities. At the same time, Pederson's comments do carry more weight than, say, Brett Brown's, given the Eagles' repeated insistence that theirs is not a top-down power structure in which the front office makes decisions and the head coach lives with them, but rather a collaborative venture in which the coach has an ample say in which players end up on his roster, and, by logical extension, an ample say in which players get which share of available dollars.

In a sense, life would be easier for Pederson if the ramifications of his comments to the media and to his players were limited by his ability to throw up his hands and say, "Hey, I just work here." Then again, life would also be easier if he had wings.

As it is, Pederson's emphatic endorsement of Peters will no doubt be interpreted by the left tackle's representatives as a reflection of the organization's desire to keep him under contract for 2017, and because Pederson stopped just short of saying that he wanted Peters back at any price, the organization does not appear to have much leverage as it pursues its reported desire to get Peters to agree to a pay cut.

In reality, the Eagles' lack of leverage probably would have been evident regardless of Pederson's public thoughts on the matter. The coach simply confirmed what anybody who watched his team would have concluded: that its most realistic shot at competing for a playoff berth next season includes a healthy and effective Peters at left tackle. This is the argument many people made against Hinkie's reluctance to divulge information: This stuff isn't rocket science, so just be open and honest with your paying customers.

There are multiple valid ways to look at it. In the end, though, the only conclusion that matters is that the Eagles do not appear to be in a dominant position in any Peters talks. They need him, or they need an equivalent replacement, or they'll need another flak jacket for their second-year QB.

dmurphy@phillynews.com

@ByDavidMurphy

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