Malcolm Jenkins Still Helping Eagles Players Proves Philly Screwed up Big Time by Not Re-Signing Him

When you look at the Philadelphia Eagles' offseason, you can see they spent a significant amount of their money on overhauling the defense. The team acquired cornerback Darius Slay in a trade with the Detroit Lions and signed nose tackle Javon Hargrave to pair alongside stud interior defensive lineman Fletcher Cox.

But those moves came at the expense of safety Malcolm Jenkins. The veteran wanted an increase in pay heading into the 2020 season, but the Eagles didn't oblige. Instead, they declined the option in his contract and allowed him to join the New Orleans Saints.

As if Jenkins joining the NFC contenders wasn't bad enough for Philadelphia, they're now seeing that he's still mentoring the younger defensive backs on their team. Jenkins recently did so this past Thursday with Philly's new safety Will Parks.

While it's nice of Jenkins to give Parks tips on how to play safety in Jim Schwartz's defensive scheme, it's not going to yield the same results, especially alongside the inexperienced Jalen Mills.

Parks is coming off a subpar season with the Denver Broncos in which he allowed 24 receptions on 36 targets. On the other hand, Mills allowed 31 catches on 53 targets. Both only tallied one interception each, which is far from ideal for your safety tandem.

Wouldn't it have been better for the Eagles to retain Jenkins to teach the two youngsters how to play safety at a high level, instead of letting him walk and hoping the two new starters can click together? That seems like a recipe for disaster.

The Eagles have over $20 million in cap space as of this writing, so they can't say they didn't have the funds to retain Jenkins. No excuses, Eagles. You screwed up.