It has been less than 800 days since the Philadelphia Eagles shocked the world to defeat the New England Patriots to win their first-ever Super Bowl title. Most of the 2017 team's core players were still young or in their prime, which made every fan and analyst believe that the team could stay together for a long time and dominate the league. We are just a few days into the 2020 league year, and a majority of players from the Super Bowl team are no longer in Philadelphia.
The Eagles had 22 players "start" in the Super Bowl -- 11 on offense, 11 on defense. Let's take a look back at who was introduced as starters in the game:
As of now, there will be a minimum of seven that will definitely be on the 2020 roster:
*Red denotes player has officially left the team already
*Black denotes the player is expected to be on the 2020 roster
*Blue denotes current free agents that are not expected to be re-signed
*Green denotes player still contemplating retirement (Kelce) and player the team wants to ditch because of his contract (Jeffery).
Odds are that Kelce will be back for 2020, but it feels at this point like the Eagles will at some point ditch Alshon Jeffery. If that ends up up being the case, then that means in 2020 the Eagles will only have eight starters from the Super Bowl squad still on the team (four on offense, four on defense).
If you look at the entire 53-man roster for that game, you can see just how drastic the roster change has been since February 4th, 2018:
*Red denotes player has officially left the team already
*Black denotes the player is expected to be on the 2020 roster
*Blue denotes current free agents that are not expected to be re-signed
*Green denotes player still contemplating retirement (Kelce) and player the team wants to ditch because of his contract (Jeffery).
*Orange (Gibson) denotes that he was released previously but has since returned. Although he is not expected to make the 2020 squad. Vinny Curry also was a player that left and then returned but is on his way out.
So out of 53-players, there will be a minimum of 15 players from that 2017 team that will still be on the roster in August (and a maximum of 17 if both Kelce and Jeffery stay).
Many have said the NFL is short for "Not For Long", which seems appropriate looking back at that Super Bowl LII squad. The 2017 Eagles will always hold a special place in the hearts of every Eagles fan, but moving forward there will barely be any semblance of that 2017 squad walking through the tunnel at Lincoln Financial Field.
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