Eagles Release Two Philly Natives, Promote DB

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By Paul Bowman, Sports Talk Philly Editor

On Tuesday afternoon, the Eagles announced they were letting two Philadelphia natives hit the streets as free agents.

Safety Will Parks, who appeared to be a major addition in free agency, and fourth round pick Shareef Miller were released from the 53-man roster and practice squad respectively.

To fill Parks’ spot on the roster, undrafted safety Grayland Arnold was promoted from the practice squad.

Roster Moves: #Eagles have promoted S Grayland Arnold from the practice squad to the active roster and waived S Will Parks.

Eagles have released DE Shareef Miller from the practice squad. pic.twitter.com/6Yd5pHtYTQ

— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) December 1, 2020

The decision to move on from Parks was not inherently a poor one for a team with no control over the player, little cap space and a team with no real playoff aspirations.

Letting young players play would make sense in that area. What makes this confusing in the reports that the Vikings had interest in acquiring Parks. If the team was not going to use him and planned to release him, there was no reason not to get anything for him as the team could be in the exact same position except with an additional late-round pick or something like that.

Not only that, but a post June 1st trade of Parks could have saved a million in cap space – space that could be carried over into the impending salary cap crisis the team is facing next year, This move being made now makes it astounding that Parks wasn’t traded at the deadline – the only reason not to have made a trade would be that no one was willing to offer any draft pick at all or part with a low-cost UDFA or something simply to clear cap space.

From an on-field standpoint, Parks registered just 13 tackles in 12 games, suffered the first major injury of his career with the team and played in more than a third of the defensive snaps with the Eagles just twice in his time with the Eagles. He was stuck behind Marcus Epps on the depth chart.

The reason this move does make sense, even now, is that the team is impressed with undrafted safety Grayland Arnold and want to get him into some games.

How that plays out is yet to be seen as fourth-round pick K’Von Wallace really has yet to see any defensive snaps behind McLeod, Mills and Epps, but the team looking to develop some young, controllable talent is a good sign.

The other move of releasing Shareef Miller, however, would seem to indicate the opposite as the 2019 preseason standout was given no opportunities to prove his value while the team hangs on to 2018 preseason standout Joe Ostman who embarassed himself on national TV multiple times in his only game played.

The moves leave two slots open on the practice squad, so unless the team has some players they think will be huge gets to bring onto the squad, there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason to release a player without a corresponding move.