The Philadelphia Eagles did the work it took to get to the top of the NFL mountain in February where the air is rarefied and the spoils are fortified.  Apparently they’ve ascended to the moral high ground as well and have taken a very righteous stand against a very disturbing and tragic domestic problem.
I’m shocked it took this long but a video clip from a podcast went viral yesterday that reveals one of the hard lines the Birds take when it comes to building a winning culture as Eagles’ General Manager Howie Roseman laid out on the (Todd) McShay Show from March 4. In the clip Roseman says, “So for us we have some objective thing that I can’t, I can’t even overrule, you know like and they’re ours but you know for one like violence against women, like there it’s just it’s just not for us you know? …like I won’t even watch them, I don’t want to, I don’t even want to talk about it. It just is deal a breaker for us so I can’t go ‘but he’s really good and he did it 10 years ago and he learned from it.’ It just doesn’t work for us.”
In Philadelphia, apparently, itâs a nonnegotiable stance for the organization. To be accurate Roseman alludes to the fact that he can’t even argue a case for a really good player. The only person he answers to is owner Jeffrey Lurie so it sounds like the edict comes from the very top. Howie said that he wonât even watch or evaluate players regardless of their talent or how much time has passed since said incident and framed it as an Eagles’ core value. He went on to say that he wants to feel comfortable with his own children entering the locker room without having to avoid certain players.
Okay, well it’s tremendous PR if you’re into that kind of thing and I’m sure the Eagles will get a lot of pats on the back and handshakes from righteous fans along with perhaps many of their detractors as well. And that’s okay, he wants the world to know that the Birds have a commitment to building a team that they feel is the right way with high character individuals. It’s hard to argue the results.
While I’m against violence period, especially violence against women, I think the Birds are on a righteous high ground here complete with moral absolutes. I, personally, don’t believe there are moral absolutes, and sure, come over for a couple of pops some night and we can debate it until we pass out because there are some moral absolutes that come very, very close to reaching that burden of proof I’ll concede. Still, depending the situation, I generally believe in second chances and forgiveness.
Real world morality problems are rarely black and white. Most of them often have varying shades of gray that require nuanced solutions done on a case by case review. While certain moral values are important to establish as a foundation, I thin many need to be analyzed and sometimes adjusted or compromised in the face of complex circumstances with a heavy dose of pragmatism to arrive at the proper judgement, even if they don’t align perfectly with one’s personal set of beliefs. Â
The reason that I believe a blanket stance isn’t the best course of action here is for the simple fact that statistics in this country show that there is some where between a 10-13% rate of proven false accusations by women against men that primarily exist in the vacuum that is divorce court, specifically in heated custody battles. Keep in mind those numbers are just the percentages of the allegations that have been proven false, the actual number being higher if you add the ones that comprise false convictions which are basically very hard to quantify.
Things can get very nasty between intimate partners with women quite frequently being given the benefit of the doubt by law enforcement at least as far as the initial arrest goes with the hopes that things will get sorted out properly at the next level.Â
But as far as the Eagles standing on their moral high ground, and taking a moral absolute stance on violence against women, they do tend to take other situations that involve civil disobedience or low level distastefulness on a case by case basis.  The most notable one, defensive tackle Jalen Carter. Carter was charged with reckless driving and illegal racing in connection with a fatal drag race that killed one of his college teammates and a Georgia team staff member back in 2023 . The evidence showed that the vehicles were switching lanes and driving recklessly in the boondocks of Georgia, at speeds of over 100 miles an hour trying to outdistance each other just hours after all involved were celebrating the Dawgs back-back national championships.
“The evidence demonstrated that both vehicles switched between lanes, drove in the center turn lane, drove in opposite lanes of travel, overtook other motorists, and drove at high rates of speed, in an apparent attempt to outdistance each other,” the police statement said. Police investigators have determined that “alcohol impairment, racing, reckless driving, and speed were significant contributing factors to the crash.”Â
Carter, one of the stars of the Eagles’ super bowl run was sentenced to 12 months of probation, a $1,000 fine and 50 hours of community service just a month before the NFL draft, where he was the consensus number one overall pick prior to the incident. On draft night his stock fell until the Eagles, who were sitting in the number 10 slot, traded up one spot with the Chicago Bears, and selected Carter with the ninth overall pick.
It seems a tad incongruent to have a moral absolute hard line policy for one thing but not for others. How the Eagles arrive at policy and core values I don’t know. I was personally thrilled the Birds took Carter when they did because I think NFL general managers and some owners are way too paranoid about PR or too judgmental about young men who have either acted like young men in college or have made mistakes in their past.  Of course there are obviously varying degrees of mistakes.
Mistakes Trumping Mistakes
I just loved when the day before the draft in 2015, Laâel Collins, first-round offensive lineman prospect out of LSU packed his things and boarded a flight back to Louisiana because his one-time pregnant romantic partner had been shot and killed a few days before and police wanted to question him in the double homicide. Even though the cops had indicated that he wasnât a suspect Collins wasn’t drafted in any round the next day and ended up singing a three-year undrafted free agent contract for less than $1.6 million dollars with the Dallas Cowboys. Fortunately Collins wound up with career earnings approaching $75 million and played in 86 of 89 career games with the Cowboys, Bengals, and the Bills.
The very next year Ole Miss’ Laremy Tunsil was widely regarded as the best left tackle in the draft. Ten minutes before the draft was set to begin, Tunsil’s Twitter account showed a video of him wearing a gas mask and smoking from a bong. Some teams took Tunsil off their draft boards entirely. The Baltimore Ravens at No. 6 and Tennessee Titans at No. 8, both in need of a left tackle passed over Tunsil and chose Ronnie Stanley and Jack Conklin, respectively. The Miami Dolphins eventually selected him with the 13th overall pick. Tunsil has been to five Pro Bowls and played for the Fish, the Texans and was just traded to the Commanders last month.
CJGJ Became Just Too Exhausting
Back to the Birds and their architect of righteous culture and moral absolutes, Howie Roseman, who spoke at the owner meetings last Monday again, trying to convince the head scratching trade of safety C.J.G.J. to the Texans a few weeks ago, in exchange for consensus bust-so-far guard Kenyon Green and a swap pick, was strictly a money thing:
“Well, I think if you’re just taking the C.J. move in a vacuum, obviously, it’s kind of not giving the whole perspective of where we’re at,” Roseman said. “Chauncey did a great job for us in both the years that he was with us, obviously making the Super Bowl twice in two years with him as our starting safety. When you look at our team and you look at the amount of highly paid players who have earned their contracts — we’ve got eight guys who are making $15 million or more. We have, from 2022 to 2024 drafts, we have eight starters who are on the Super Bowl team. None of those guys have long-term contracts. In those drafts, we probably have five or six players that will be competing for starting jobs. So you have a lot of players coming through that aren’t under long-term contracts, plus a lot of guys who are on long-term contracts, and we never want to be in a situation where we have one year where we’re getting rid of 20 guys.
Did anyone really believe that? Me neither. In reality he was probably going to have to get moved after next year for legitimate money reasons but Gardner-Johnson, who’s about to play for his fifth team in the last five years, may have expedited the process with his wearing of that pretty vile sweatshirt that said “Swifties Can LIX My Balls” to the parade.
Getty Images
The word on the street and rumblings over at Nova Care have implied that Gardner-Johnson was just too exhausting for the Birds to want to deal with any more.
The Michael Vick Experience
I’m not sure what changed but the Eagles weren’t always so staunch with their cultural biases. It wasn’t that long ago that Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid went to Mr. Lurie and simply asked if it would be okay to give quarterback Michael Vick a second chance, soon after Vick completed serving 23 months at Fort Leavenworth for his involvement in a dog fighting ring when he was with the Atlanta Falcons. If you want to laugh at what I looked like a million years ago, have at it below.
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Eagles Selectively Standing Tall on Their Moral High Ground appeared first on Heavy Sports.