Eagles pull another head-scratcher

Sheldon Brown and Chris Gocong for...a fourth, a fifth, and Alex Hall?

Sheldon is 31, coming off an up-and-down year, and has made some complaints about his contract...so it's not like he has tremendous value. But he was a solid starting CB who would have made the Pro Bowl if not for a couple lousy games (where he played through a significant hamstring injury.) And he was under contract for two more years, so frankly, I don't care if he was complaining.

Still...you look at how Lito Sheppard performed last season (he was just released by the Jets) and it makes you wonder, maybe the Eagles know a lot more about their own corners than the rest of us. I certainly thought Lito would be a solid player for the Jets if he could stay healthy, but that wasn't the case. Could it be that the Eagles blitz package, combined with a coached tendency to sit on routes, creates INTs for the DBs, making them look better than they really are?

Even if Sheldon is not as good as he thinks, I don't see the point of dumping him for a fourth-round pick. He was a solid tackler, a team leader, and a decent player making an affordable salary. Still, I'll withhold judgment for now, since the Eagles have a solid track record in picking the end of a player's productivity.

But it does leave a rather large hole in the secondary...after Asante Samuel, who generally hurts himself at least once a game attempting a "tackle", they've got Ellis Hobbs returning from a neck injury (and who didn't play as well as Sheldon last season anyway), Joselio Hanson (who was awful after his suspension), and then a couple practice-squad types. Not exactly a lot of depth. If the Eagles made this move because they're about to complete a trade to the Raiders for Nnamdi Asomugha, well then I'd say it makes a lot of sense.

But if there's no trade on the horizon, then it sure looks like another brick in the rebuilding project the Eagles have suddenly become. If you're already giving up on 2010 because you're planning to give Kolb the reins, then maybe it makes sense to cut your losses with aging vets like Sheldon and get what draft picks you can for them. You certainly wouldn't bring back McNabb to shepherd a bunch of fresh-faced kids through an 8-8 season, right?

As for Gocong, I think he makes a lot more sense as an OLB in a 3-4 scheme, so he should find some success in Cleveland. He seems like a hard-working guy that just never fit in to what the Eagles were trying to do: pretty much what I said the day the Eagles drafted him.