L.J. Smith Gets Franchise Tag

The Eagles placed the franchise tag on L.J. Smith, taking one step towards securing the tight end position for the 2008 season.

Just to clarify for those that might not be very familiar with the "non-exclusive" franchise tag, this means that Smith was offered a 1 year tender with the Eagles, for $4.522 million, the averaged salary of the top 5 paid tight ends in 2007.

So now the ball is in L.J.'s court, if he decides to sign the 1 year tender he will be under contract for at least 1 more season (technically that's not the case because NFL contracts aren't guaranteed but for a player of his caliber, if he signs the deal he'll be here for a year). Obviously this is not his ideal situation, he wants to sign a big contract and get a nice signing bonus, but this is a step in the right direction towards getting that long term deal.

From the Eagles perspective, if they could get Smith to sign the deal and than see how he plays for a season before giving him a long term contract, that would be ideal for them. But the tough part is that Smith wants to feel secure, he went through all of last season weary knowing that it was quite possibly his last with the team and he wants to be able to cash in on that big contract that he's worked towards since he entered the NFL. So in a strictly business mindset, the Eagles would love to be able to see how L.J. does this upcoming season before investing so much money in him, but that isn't going to work. I just think Smith isn't going to be content enough or a positive force on this team if he has to go through another season with only 1 year left on his contract.

By offering him this 1 year tender they need to have a long term deal in the plans and that is going to be the only way that I think his agent will let him sign this 1 year tender. If it looks like an agreement won't be reached, Smith is going to decide to test the free agent waters and see how much interest he's going to get from other teams looking for his services.

Regardless, even if Smith receives an offer from another team in the league, because the Eagles are using their franchise tag on him, Philadelphia will be given the opportunity to match that offer or let L.J. leave, but that will cost the team that wants him two 1st round picks...so yea that's not happening.

This was something I wasn't expecting at all, though this isn't to say that L.J. is going to be on the roster next season, I didn't think the Eagles were even going to give him an offer to begin with. After struggling all season with varying injuries that limited him to only 10 games, we saw little to no impact from L.J. with the lowest numbers of his career, 236 yards and only 1 touchdown.

The timing of the injuries could not have been worse for Smith as he was hoping to play up his stock as much as possible during the 2007 season, so he would enter free-agency this offseason with a lot of interest from other teams. As much as I do feel bad that this should be the point in Smith's career where he gets to capitalize on the work that he did throughout his first 5 seasons in the league, hopefully the Eagles will benefit from Smith lacking production last year, by him not drawing a lot of attention from other teams in free agency.

The hard part of this tight end situation is that I believe it was our number 1 problem on offense last season, and it is something that needs to be fixed. Now along with that I was positive that the Eagles weren't going to bring back Smith, so though he is not signed yet, even taking the move to franchise him was more than I had previously expected.

If Smith signs the tender I'll be happy with the way things are looking as far as tight end goes because though I didn't expect L.J. to be around, I want him here. Even extending beyond the fact that he is our best option at hand, I think he is a very good player and though he has disappointed me in the past (whenever I think of him I picture the unnecessary fumbles), he works so well with Donovan and was desperately missed as a producer on this offense last season.

Crossing my fingers things work out and we're able to keep L.J. around because as much as I love what I've seen in Brent Celek so far, he's not ready to be a starter and if we let L.J. leave, I know we would regret it.