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The Philadelphia Eagles have “made re-signing Zack Baun a priority ahead of free agency,” according to a report from the Inquirer’s Jeff McLane.
Although the Eagles typically do not pay off-ball linebackers, Baun is no typical off-ball linebacker. As BGN’s Jonny Page recently wrote about, Baun is arguably the team’s most important defender.
The feeling here has been that you simply do not let a first-team All-Pro selection who finished fifth in Defensive Player of the Year voting walk out the door. Especially when you’re left incredibly thin at the position if you do not retain him.
The Eagles should and likely will re-sign Baun. The question is: how much will he make on his new contract?
Baun is entering his age 29 season with just one year as a full-time starter under his belt. And while that one year was obviously incredible, it’s a relatively small sample size of production.
The top two linebackers in terms of annual salary are Roquan Smith at $20 million and Fred Warner at slightly over $19 million. Baun probably won’t be topping them. The next two are Tremaine Edmunds at $18 million and Matt Milano around $14.2 million. Perhaps Baun splits that relatively large gap at around $16 million per year.
We’ll see but we won’t have to wait long. The NFL free agency negotiating window (aka “legal tampering”) begins at noon Eastern on March 10, which is less than two weeks away. If the Eagles want to have Baun re-signed before other teams can reach out to him, that’s their deadline.
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