Chip Kelly wasn’t kidding.
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Following offseason rumors that he could be traded, Mychal Kendricks and the Eagles have instead agreed to terms on a contract extension.
For a player, who said during the spring he wasn’t sure he would even be here to start the season, a $30 million deal, with $16 million guaranteed isn’t bad at all.
The Philadelphia Eagles announced an extension for inside linebacker Mychal Kendricks that will keep him with the team through 2019. Vinny Curry and Brad Jones have been taking snaps at outside linebacker as backups to starters Brandon Graham and Connor Barwin. Vague explanations were offered by Kendricks and Kelly. If he’s willing to get a deal done now, the Eagles might be smart to entertain it. Because if he also shows he can play 3-4 linebacker, then he’s really going to get paid. Ryans is on the wrong side of 30, and Alonso is coming off an entire season without football thanks to the ACL injury he suffered last preseason. Many believed that the Eagles would trade Kendricks on draft weekend, and after that didn’t happen, they wondered if he would be allowed to walk after his contract expired at the end of the 2015 season.
Kendricks has 333 tackles, including 15 for loss and 9 sacks.
A four-year veteran, Kendricks, 24, has been nursing a sprained hamstring. Last year, despite missing four games with a calf injury, Kendricks led the team with 83 tackles.
Against Seattle, Kendricks racked up a season-best 16 tackles, the most by any Eagle in a single game all year.
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Kendricks, an athletic, play-making inside linebacker, is due to earn $896,000 this year on the final year of his four-year, $4.444 million rookie deal he signed as a second-round pick in 2012. There was no indication that a deal was close, however. But Kelly has consistently said that he thinks Kendricks is an important part of the team’s future, and now the Eagles have demonstrated that. I’m not going to talk about it right now. You can write that down in ink, not pencil. Kendricks’ new deal begins after this season, so he is under contract through the 2019 season.
