Of that group, only one player, Brian Westbrook, had a great career and was simply on the decline because of injury and age. A couple, Shawn Andrews and Reggie Brown, were once promising draft picks who got big contracts and then vanished in their own very different ways. One, Darren Howard, was an ill-advised big-money free agent signing who wasn't as productive as expected.
Kevin Curtis was a solid player derailed by injuries. Will Witherspoon was a desperation move whose contract exceeded his contributions. Sean Jones was a mistake. And then there were depth guys like Chris Clemons and Jason Babin - the kinds of guys who are on every NFL roster.
All of them were purged. A few were given their release, the rest were simply allowed to walk away because their contracts were up. Clemons and Brown, improbably enough, were traded.
It is a good sign that the Eagles were willing to acknowledge the presence of so much deadwood. And it is handy that the NFL's looming labor strife created an environment in which they could clear that brush without salary-cap consequences.
It is not such a good sign that the next year's potentially bad contracts are being handed out by pretty much the same men who thought this March's deadwood was last September's rain forest. And this round of clear-cutting didn't address another $20 million or so for returning players who just weren't worth what they got paid in '09: Jason Peters, Stacy Andrews, Michael Vick, Ellis Hobbs, and Omar Gaither.
When a third of the players on the roster are mistakes of one kind or another, it becomes a lot easier to understand what happened against the Cowboys.
