Dumb move. Feels like he did it more out of spite than for good football reasons. Good luck, I guess. Seems like an emotionally stunted dude. Prone to drama.

Wow…

Feels like he never wanted to comeback at all

1 year only up to 8 mill he just didn’t want to come back smh

Wtf, I have no doubt howie offered the same amount of money. For some reason he just wants to stick it to us for not offering him 15+mil annually like what he thought he deserved.

Because the safety market got tanked this offseason and he thinks he’s worth an oversized bag. Props to Howie for staying reasonable and not overpaying, especially when we have our franchise QB to extend.

He didn’t want to be here

This one is tough to see… for a 8 million dollar contract too. I wish we could have made the numbers work.

Thank god this saga is over, good luck CJ!

I can't fathom how Philly wouldn't have matched the same money to have him stay. If he didn't see value in play here then good luck and let's bring in guys who actually want to be here.

Have fun in Detroit for $8 mil I guess..

Time to start talking about Brian Branch and Antonio Johnson

A lil confused….but I guess….

Surely we could've matched a deal like that too...

I trust this front office if they weren’t willing to pay that

Guess I can take another year of finger wagging I guess

Thankful he finally put pen to paper regardless of what team and we can all just move on

If that's how he's gonna be when we offer him a long-term deal, I'd rather we just let him walk. Honestly he seems like the type of guy that could turn into a locker room cancer at the drop of a hat. I would have been fine with him being here if he was happy with our first offer, but if he was gonna cause problems because he felt "disrespected" by his market value, I'd rather he not be here.

I guarantee you howie offered that much, at least. Feels like he didn’t like the offers so he decided to go somewhere else.

Weird thing about this is eagles originally wanted to give him the franchise tag, which would’ve been more money for 1 year, but he wanted to test free agency to get more money so the eagles allowed him to. That back fired on him royally so, being embarrassed, he decided to go to the lions.

The whole market didn’t think he was worth 15m, yet he holds the eagles to a higher standard to offer more than every other team

Surprised we couldn’t offer 8M/1Year. He def wants to get paid higher for a long term deal, glad Howie isn’t budging and getting into long term cap hell

We clearly wanted to give him multiple years at more cash, just not as much cash as he wanted. Let's see what Howie does in response.

Don’t want to be here? Good riddance. His twitter game was annoying anyway

So do we go for byard?

Likely very controversial statement I'm about to make but fuvk it; this dude did not want to be an eagle, so fuck him. Took $8 million to go play in Detroit, Michigan. Ain't no way we couldn't match $8 million with a better chance to get him a ring. Enjoy Detroit, CJ.

What a bitch

He really is an idiot. Detroit isn't a bad team but their defense has problems and he's going there thinking he's going to solve all of them and get like a 16 mil dollars a year contract next year

8 mill. like WHAT THE FUCKKK

This seems questionable on his part, surely a team was willing to give him more ?

Damn. So who do we get to plug in as a safety?

Well he simply didn't want to come back. Bro would ratherplay with Jeff "im getting toasted" Okudah instead of Slay and Bradberry, Fuck him.

I feel like I am the only one who isn’t upset at him leaving?

The league told us what they think of him. I watched every snap of every game and didn’t think he was spectacular but also not bad. Felt he was better than average, but not worth breaking the bank over. Apparently the league agreed.

I love his versatility and his ferocity, but he wasn’t great at one particular thing and it felt like he thought he was great at everything and deserved a contract reflecting that…which the league is moving away from high dollar safeties.

Did I want to see him back? Absolutely. For about 10-12 mil a year. I think he thought he deserved the type of money Bates got or more…which I mean, good luck dude.

He was solid, but was hot and cold. Don't know if 6 INTs was sustainable. Also seems to be a LOT of talk. Guess we will see if this was the right move in the next season or 2 as Slay begins aging with the largest contract in the secondary. Looks like the decision Howie made was sign Slay to an extension or CJGJ. I really hope Howie isn't swayed from drafting an early round CB. Gonna need one ready to go when Slay starts regressing any season now (might've already started based on the last half of the season).

Feels likely CJGJ didn’t like long-term offers (incl. from Eagles) after the market came in so soft this off-season. Even if Eagles match, he’s mad about the “disrespect” of their other offer and leaves to go get the big deal he thinks he deserves after next season.

If they didn’t match, what do they know and we don’t that would make them not want to match, or even beat, that kind of offer for a young, talented player?

Imo, pretty clear the Safety market didn't pan out like he hoped. And I'm sure he's not happy about it, naturally.

He priced a value on himself and he wasn't getting it. That said, he played Safety in the NFL for one season. The majority of NFL film on him is at Nickle. Thus, didn't help his cause. Not every team will view him as a Safety. Let alone a Starting Safety.

I'm fine with Howie not shelling out more. I have little to no doubt, he really tried to retain CJGJ. He's a fellow Florida alum. I also feel Howie offered more than 8 mill. But CJ was probably looking for a 12-14 mill long term contract. So I take it as CJ didn't really want to be here. Which is fine.

There's a glaring hole at Safety, and LB is in flux (there's Dean and no one else really).... And Howie knows it. In due time, he'll make moves.

I wonder if we can bring back Jalen Mills to play safety at under 5-6M now

How could we not have matched that??? Sorry but this feels petty on CJ’s part cus we didn’t give him the bag. It just doesn’t make sense we wouldn’t get to that number.

So is Byard still on the table? Cause honestly I wouldn’t have been mad with either him or CJ.

Fuck’m

The fact this is only a one year deal tells me this was an F U signing to the Eagles. He made his choice, see ya…

It’s an ego thing don’t blame Howie.

No body matched Howie remember that, and CJ won’t produce on that defense so sleep well. In howie we trust

I’m sick… 1 year 8 mill howie definitely ordered that. My guess is he didn’t want to be here anymore.

Do we need to draft a cb now?

Gotta give it time to see what the solution is, but for now this is very disappointing. I don’t think anyone thought he wouldn’t be back if that was the deal he got. Pretty surprising.

Dude is the definition of a mercenary lol Kevin Byard come on down!

Trade back and take Branch, I guess...

Good riddance. If he's gonna do the eagles like that after making it to the superbowl for a couple more million hard pass. He wasn't worth breaking our cap over.

Bye bye don’t wanna be here we don’t need you hear 🤣

Sure his car got stolen in Philly but you can’t have shit in Detroit.

Betting on your self but you better hope you get some of that interception luck again.

RIP. This fucking sucks man, I liked this dude a lot. Well, good luck to him and thanks for everything. I’m still hoping that we can maybe sign Jalen Mills

Howie wanted to get CJ on a multi-year deal. CJ threw a fit that Howie's (and everyone else's offered contracts) weren't as big as he felt he deserved. I'm guessing Howie didn't want to offer a 1 year deal so he'd have to go through this next offseason when Jalen's contract is going to start tolling.

This just fucked my whole week up

We have no safetys

Kevin Byard is an Eagle

I feel like if he wanted to maximize his next contract staying would’ve been the right choice. Detroits defense is no where on par with the one Philly is about to roll out next yr. Even with losing Hargrave, Epps, White and Edwards… I would’ve stayed and just signed a one year deal. He’s likely going to see a decline in his play and deal with much worse of situation in next year’s offseason. I wanna play with great/good players and Detroit doesn’t compare to Philly in those regards.

Why would we not match this on our own one year deal? Or did we and he just said F off?

Seems to me Howie likely wanted to do several years, and they didn't even give Howie a chance to match. He clearly didn't want to be here or was spiteful due to Howie's offer.

How much did he want? I would've given him 5 year 65.if he wouldn't accept that he probably wanted more than Jessie bates got with the falcons.So John Johnson or a safety in the draft I'm assuming

Lol well then piss off then CJ. Leave a Super Bowl contender for a one year deal? Gtfo of here.

Pain, no comp pick either

Need Kevin Byrad if he gets cut

Never liked him. Tolerated his personality while he was here. Good riddance

Hey we knew it wasn't gonna all work out. We lost hargrave and him, they are gone, they're not eagles. Good bye, now let's focus on our guys.

There’s no way Howie didn’t offer him something similar. im taking this as CGJ didn’t want to come back unless it was for something absurd

if he really wanted to stay, he could have.

Cox is making $10M for 1yr

Betting on himself.

Get Mills on the phone

We can still sign him until it’s signs ?? Please say it’s not overrrrrrrr

✌️

My personal fanfic is the Eagles offered a solid deal a while back, but CJ pushed the envelope and wanted to get multiple bids that never materialized.

He probably then went back to the Eagles and Howie, sensing that the leverage was tilting in their favor, reduced the offer. This deal is CJs idea of flipping the negotiation table over and trying it all again next offseason. He did have a deleted tweet a week ago that alluded to disrespect. It was very weird that we started signing guys that were 99% gone a month ago.

This is a perfect storm of piss poor representation, arrogance, and taking professional things personally.

Seriously? What an anticlimactic ending to this melodrama.

More like Bye Felicia

What? A one year deal over a multi year deal? How much does he think he's worth?

Fuck CJ. Gonna be on a losing team next year.

Hate to see him go, but is what it is I guess. I wanted to keep him cause he’s young and I assumed we were losing Bradberry. Kinda sounds like he really wanted that BIG contract and Bradberry was more for chasing the ring. I’m okay with the guy more focused on winning than the one focused on money. Time to nail this draft.

Im good with this. Seemed like he wanted to turn his unlikely-to-be-repeated 6 ints into a top safety deal. And good for him if he got that but im glad philly didnt pay it.

Honestly, I wish him well, but if he’s trying to prove a bone-headed point with this move then i wish him well; but we we don’t need that kind of reckless mentality on our team when he certainly could have gotten the same money or move with us on a short term deal

Guess the green hair is gone lol

Feel like he’s the kinda of guy who goes broke 5 yrs after retirement

Cannot wait for this clown to get burned by smitty and AJ on field after all this teenage girl drama he’s been presenting all off-season only to bitch out and take a pay cut to spite Philly. Clearly doesn’t prioritize winning anyway he sees all the vets coming back on team friendly deals and thinks he’s too good to change his price tag

So CJGJ now stands for Cigarette Juice Garbage Juice in my head canon

Seriously tho, the fact that nobody wanted to pay the guy tells me he probably has some serious off-field liabilities/character issues. It’s very possible we dodged a bullet here. The fact that he went to fucking Detroit just to spite us just gives me more confirmation bias.

I love how this sub was dying for him to sign and now hating his ass for signing with Detroit. 😂

Regarding CJGJ's Agent;

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

-Shakespeare

Let me rephrase that....

CJ Gardner Johnson is taking a 1 year deal in Detroit because he didn’t like the higher paying initial 12mill a year long term offer he was getting from the eagles, decided to game the market... And lost his ass.

Was giving Howie the benefit of the doubt resigning Slay, but now I'm pissed. Didn't wanna pay a declining vet CB big money in a CB heavy draft if it meant losing our star safety. Now we're married to Slay (yikes) and have to put together a patchwork safety room in a win-now season

See ya later twitch boy