Bleeding Green Nation
A look at how Philadelphia spends their resources.
The Philadelphia Eagles are fresh off a Super Bowl victory and looking to run it back in 2025. There’s no arguing with the on-field results: the Eagles have managed to be one of the most consistent contenders in the NFL under head coach Nick Sirianni and general manager Howie Roseman. Since 2021, the Eagles have four-straight playoff appearances, two NFC East titles, six playoff wins, two Super Bowl appearances, and that massive Super Bowl win in February.
That level of sustained success has made Philadelphia a model franchise in the NFL, with plenty of teams looking to the Eagles as a blueprint for success. We all know that the Eagles have an eye for talent, both in the draft and free agency, and seem to have a knack for finding value in their acquisitions. Other teams would obviously like to be able to copy that, but that’s easier said than done.
How do the Eagles build out their roster and choose to spend their money, though? That’s something we can take a closer look at, and something that the rest of the NFL might be able to learn a thing or two from. In this piece, we’ll break down the Eagles spending by position to see if we can glean any roster-building insights from the data. All numbers referenced in this article are provided by Spotrac.
First things first, it’s important to note the difference between “salary cap spending” and “cash spending”. Salary cap spending is money spent that specifically counts towards the NFL’s salary cap, which is set by the league every season. Teams cannot go above the salary cap under any circumstances–the NFL takes this very seriously. Cash spending, on the other hand, is the actual money paid out by teams in a given season.
The Eagles are notorious for backloading salary cap and spreading cap hits far into future years through a variety of mechanisms, including prorated bonuses and adding void years. That does make it a little difficult to parse things off of salary cap numbers alone, so we’ll be incorporating cash spending into the mix as well. A great example of this would be comparing the combined salary cap cost of the offense, which ranks 23rd in the NFL, versus the cash spending on offense, which ranks second in the NFL. That’s a huge difference!
Speaking of the offense, the Eagles have a very good and very expensive offense heading into the 2025 season and beyond. As mentioned above, the Eagles play a lot of games with the salary cap, but the cash tells the true story. While a great deal of their offensive spending has been deferred to future years, Philadelphia is loading up on the offensive side of the ball. Here’s a breakdown of how that spending is broken up by position.
Salary cap spending: 23rd of...
