By Paul Bowman, Sports Talk Philly Editor
On Sunday afternoon, the Eagles made a pretty suprising move by releasing wide receiver Shelton Gibson.
Yes, that is the same receiver who averaged 48 yards a catch in 2018.
Unfortunately, that average is because he made only one catch on a team that lacked a deep threat all season following the loss of Mike Wallace.
While Gibson was an excellent special teams player, the Eagles would certainly prefer to have someone that can both play special teams at a high level and contribute to the offense or defense in the event of injuries. Players like Chris Maragos, DJ Alexander or someone that could develop as Kamu Grugier-Hill has.
Gibson was a fifth-round pick of the Eagles in the 2017 draft, which is what makes it a bit of a surprise. For fans, this is good news. Good teams know when to move on from bad decisions and that is what picking Gibson in the fifth-round was. Not every pick can be a winner, but his release once again shows the front office truly cares about having the most talented team on the field more than they do about being correct on all their draft picks.
While Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network reports that the team worked out receiver Bruce Ellington today, the team ultimately decided to bring in another corner, which makes sense considering the team’s current depth of targets for Carson Wentz.
Sojourn Shelton was brought in to keep the roster at 90.
He signed with the Cardinals as an undrafted free agent in 2017 after a decent college career at Wisconsin. He ended up spending most of the 2017 season on the Bengals practice squad and was waived with an injury settlement in August 2018.
He has never made it to the 53-man roster and spend the 2018 season out of the league with a thumb injury.