You didn’t have to be a football genius to see this one coming.
All you needed was a calculator.
Brian Westbrook is no longer an Eagle. The Villanova product who defied all the experts to become an NFL superstar – and the Eagles all-time leader in total yards from scrimmage – was released by the team yesterday.
Westbrook, who injured a knee while playing in college on the Main Line, battled the injury bug throughout his eight-year career.
But last year they finally caught up with him. Westbrook was dealing with lingering ankle and knee issues when he was thrown for a loop – literally – when his helmet collided with the knee of a Washington Redskins linebacker. Westbrook was out cold.
He suffered a concussion, was out several weeks, then returned against the San Diego Chargers and suffered a second concussion. At that point he shut things down for the rest of the season.
Westbrook was due to make $7.5 million next year.
There is no way the Eagles were going to put that kind of investment into a player who was having increasing difficulty staying on the field.
This time, you really can’t blame the team. You can’t blame Westbrook, either.
Football is a rough business. But it’s easy to forget that it is just that, a business. The Eagles made a business decision.
Cutting a player of the stature of Brian Westbrook is not easy. This was not like last year, when the team was vilified for bungling the negotiations with Brian Dawkins and watching him walk away.
This is something they had to do.
No one enjoys it, but everyone saw it coming.
Brian Westbrook was one of the all-time great Eagles. The key word there being “was.”
That’s just the way pro football is.
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