Howie Roseman Reveals Why it Took so Long to Sign Jalen Carter to Extension

The Philadelphia Eagles moving on from Jalen Carter would have simply never made sense to me. Carter, undoubtedly one of the best players in the NFL, is simply too good to let walk. 

For an Eagles team that's not only trying to win a Super Bowl this season, but in the future, keeping a player of his caliber around should have been, and clearly was a priority.

There are some other factors as to why the Eagles decided to keep Carter around. Reports had indicated that they weren't going to sign him to an extension and were looking to trade him, but it doesn't sound like anybody who reported that had any idea what they were talking about. 

General manager Howie Roseman recently came out and spoke about his decision to keep Carter around, adding that he actually wanted to get a deal done in March and April, but the market was up in the air.

“The defensive tackle position in the league, in college football, it's a deficient position,” Roseman said, per NBCS Philly. “It's hard to find guys like that and we feel like it was a priority. Where the market was when March opened was kind of in transition. You had guys like Dex [Cincinnati Bengals DT Dexter Lawrence] ready to sign, obviously Simmons.

“Some of the reasons that it got to this point were just because we were trying to figure out the market and from his perspective, he was trying to figure out the market. There hadn't been a big jump in the market. We like to do contracts in March and April, obviously, get that situated before we go into the draft, before we go into our summer. This was a unique situation. By the same token, getting this done before camp was important for all of us. Good things happen when you get things off your plate and you're able to focus on football.”

From Carter's perspective, there really isn't much of a reason for him to be the first one to take a contract. 

He obviously had a chance to reset the market, doing just that, and by waiting, got himself paid even more. The Eagles also understood that the market could have changed in their favor, so they wanted to wait a little bit, as Roseman touched on here.