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| Philly wanted to chase Manning, but had to bail because of their division. (Getty Images) |
It's been a quiet offseason for the Philadelphia Eagles, hasn't it? One might say almost too quiet. So it's nice to see Philly back in the headlines with a report that they were interested in chasing Peyton Manning. And even nicer to have them immediately respond to it.
Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday night that the Eagles "wanted to jump into the Peyton Manning sweepstakes," but "talks never got too serious" because the quarterback didn't want to play against his brother, Eli Manning, twice a year.
On Friday, the Eagles responded to Farmer's report, acknowledging that "we look into everything." Their statement also included a response to Farmer's report that Reid was "ready to walk away" from the team if he wasn't given more personnel control.
“We look into everything, as all teams do," Reid said in a statement released by the team. "And I have the highest regard for Peyton Manning. But as I said publicly last month, that wasn’t the direction we were heading in. Michael is our guy. As far as the personnel control, I have had final say on personnel matters for quite some time here and that’s never been an issue or a point of contention.
"Our front office works very well together and that’s one of our strengths."
Note to many NFL teams: this is a smart way of doing business. Though it's an aggressive method responding to a report from a very reputable NFL reporter, it does serve the purpose of cutting a lot of drama off at the pass.
As I've said many times, there are maybe six or seven quarterbacks that have the right to be offended if their team chases after a lock-job Hall-of-Fame quarterback like Peyton. All due respect to Michael Vick, but he's not one of those guys.
