Eagles Free Agent Interests Continue To Grow

[Eagle091]

Eagles Free Agent Interests Continue To Grow

By Scout.com

Date: Mar 4, 2006

The Eagles may be one of the first teams to strike once free agency finally rolls around. They figure to be very busy very early and make impact moves, spending some of the reported $20 million that they have to manuever with.

As Scout.com first reported earlier this week, the Eagles have interest in New York Jets center Kevin Mawae who has been told he’ll be released. Interestingly enough, the Eagles were very interested in signing Mawae during free agency of 1998. Instead, they signed C Steve Everett who was the number one rated offensive lineman in free agency that year.

The team has been compiling a list of available free agent centers and also has their eye on ones that will be released so it’s a virtual lock that one of them will be signed.

Recent speculation has turned to New Orleans Saints center LeCharles Bentley who Scout.com reported back at the Super Bowl wouldn’t be re-signing with the Saints. There has been some speculation that Bentley could be moved to either tackle or guard.

According to a team source, the Eagles may also make a run at New England Patriots wide receiver David Givens. It may come down to how much money he wants. Most teams view him as a complimentary receiver not a true number one, but more and more, the Eagles are viewing second-year pro Reggie Brown as their number one receiver, so if Givens wants to be paid like a number one, he’ll likely be signing elsewhere.

The Eagles are also expected to talk with Antwaan Randle El and would be more likely to give him a bigger paycheck than they would be to Givens.

The newest interest is at a position that the Eagles previously didn't seem to want to pursue. All of the talk was that they would stick with Mike McMahon as their backup to Donovan McNabb, but that may be changing. The Eagles are now looking for a veteran backup quarterback and have their eyes on Jay Fiedler who was recently released by the Jets and Jeff Garcia of the Detroit Lions.

The free agency period was supposed to start on March 3rd, but was pushed back until Monday to give teams time to manuever themselves under the cap and to give negotiators every possible minute to work out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

http://eagles.scout.com/2/505131.html