"It removed any concerns about health or performance that all other players in his draft class had to worry about. He has four years remaining on that contract and, after taking the signing bonus and his first two years of salary into account, we feel that Sheldon is being paid fairly.
"Focusing only on a player's salary for a given year is not a valid analysis."
The Eagles obviously remember what Brown's agent, Jason Chayut, said when the cornerback signed a six-year contract extension potentially worth $30 million in the middle of the Eagles' 2004 run to the Super Bowl.
"We didn't need to do this now, but this deal was too attractive and too important not to get it done," Chayut said at the time. "They made him a multimillionaire, taking all the risk out of injury. He's set for life."
It's obvious that Brown and Chayut feel as if the salary landscape has changed since they signed that deal.
Brown, who turned 30 last month, is in the third year of his extension, which included a $7.5 million signing bonus. The Eagles said there are too many years remaining on Brown's current deal to consider an extension.
"There have been league MVPs, Super Bowl champion quarterbacks, and perennial Pro Bowlers who have been in a similar situation," the Eagles said in the statement. "All of their teams have required them to wait until their contract expired or there was only one year remaining before any adjustment took place. It is only in the most extraordinary, in fact, less than a handful of circumstances in the last 10 years that any players two new years into a contract with four years left have been adjusted. We don't think this qualifies as an extraordinary circumstance."
