Updated: 9:06 a.m.
If fans turned on their radios on Wednesday afternoon and expected to hear Howie Roseman firmly deny a report that the Eagles had offered up Malcolm Jenkins in a potential trade for Brandin Cooks, they were disappointed.
No such denial came.
Although, Roseman did offer a stronger denial the next day on 97.5 TheFanatic:
But in an offseason in which Roseman has already denied one report very strongly, Roseman danced around the topic on the WIP afternoon show on Wednesday afternoon.
The original report, from ProFootballTalk, said the Eagles offered up Jenkins, a third-rounder and a fourth-rounder for Cooks, but the Saints wanted a second-round pick, along with Jenkins. Of course, Cooks was later traded to New England.
Roseman, in his first public speaking appearance since the report surfaced, was asked about the report.
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Here's what he said:
"Any time good players are available in this league, we're going to be making phone calls if they fit us. That's our job. That's our responsibility to do. We have to be aggressive for the right guys and see what it takes to get them. And by the same token, people should be interested in Malcolm Jenkins. He is a heckuva player. And by the same token, we don't want to give him up. Just because teams want guys or ask for guys, that doesn't necessarily mean we're going to give them up. For us, we felt like the best combination for our football team was to go and address the receiver position the way we did in free agency and keep our defensive backfield. Which as we look at it, we're continuing to try to address that position. We're very happy about the way it worked out. And at the same time, we understand there are good players on our team that other teams would like to have."
From there, Roseman was asked if it was a deal-breaker once Jenkins' name entered the discussions.
Here was his answer there:
"Yeah, from our perspective, it didn't make a lot of sense to do something there that would hurt the team when we could address it in a different way. At the end of the day, we felt like the best way for us to move forward was to address the position in free agency. But certainly, we had a lot of conversations with a lot of teams and I think we owe it to our organization and our fans to try to see if there are opportunities to try to improve this team outside of the building, especially when good players are available. And we did spend a lot of time talking to teams down there and at the end of the day, it certainly wasn't anything where we felt like we were close to getting completed and that's why we went in the different direction we did in free agency."
Jenkins, 29, is entering his fourth season with the Eagles after joining them from the Saints in free agency before the 2014 season. In addition to being a community activist off the field, Jenkins has been incredibly important to the Eagles on the field.
But in 2017, Jenkins has a $7.5 million cap hit and he's nearing 30, while Cooks is just 23 and might have the best football of his career ahead of him.
Shortly after the report surfaced, Jenkins tweeted the following message to his followers:
Roseman said it's always important to communicate with players when their names are brought up in possible trade reports. Jenkins will be no different.
"And when you talk about Malcolm Jenkins," Roseman said, "the kind of player he is, the kind of leader he is on this football team, what he's done in this community, I mean, he certainly deserves the respect when something like that comes out there, to communicate with him."