DeSean Jackson gets boatload of money from Redskins, Richard Sherman insinuates Eagles are racist

That's right.

DeSean Jackson is no longer a free-agent, though you likely knew that already.

The receiver signed a deal last night with the Washington Redskins that makes him the highest paid free-agent receiver of this off-season.

DeSean Jackson signed a three year, $24 million deal and got a nice $16 million guaranteed. That $16 million figure is more than both Golden Tate got with the Lions and Eric Decker got with the Jets (speaking in terms of guarantees), and his contract is for less years meaning he gets another crack at free agency earlier in his career. So, yeah, he did pretty nicely for a guy who was recently accused of being an immature player with bad influence in the locker room. Oh yeah, and there were also the reports loosely linking him to gang activity.

This contract also puts Jackson in elite monetary company, as if you go look at how much he will make from 2012-2015 it's about $34 million in just guaranteed salary.

OverTheCap:

Looking at other wide receivers around the league, there aren’t many who have averaged $8.5 million over a four-year period. The list of guys who have recently accomplished this (or undoubtedly will in the next year or two based on the structure of their contact) includes just six names: Calvin Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, Andre Johnson, Percy Harvin, Brandon Marshall and Roddy White. There are other young guys–such as AJ Green and Julio Jones–who will likely get there (or beyond), but of course you never know.

Good for DeSean Jackson, who some players have come out in defense of, saying that the player has gotten a bad reputation with his links to gangs.

Most notable among said players is, of course, Richard Sherman. The intelligent and outspoken cornerback for the Seattle Seahawks actually grew up with Jackson in LA (see the picture he tweeted) and wrote an article on MMQB.com this morning with his thoughts on the Eagles releasing the receiver.


Sherman, as per usual, does make a lot of great points. He does not necessarily defend Jackson, taking the "I can't say for sure, because I don't know" approach, but more outlines the situation many athletes find themselves in when caught in a conflict between their troubled past and rich and famous present. Needless to say, that's a tough one.

Sherman does vouch for the character of Jackson and critiques the Eagles for releasing him. To be specific, Sherman calls out the Eagles for the semi-double standard they had with Jackson as opposed to Riley Cooper.

MMQB:

This offseason they re-signed a player who was caught on video screaming, “I will fight every n—– here.” He was representing the Philadelphia Eagles when he said it, because, of course, everything we do is reflective of the organization. But what did they do to Riley Cooper, who, if he’s not a racist, at least has “ties” to racist activity? They fined him and sent him to counseling. No suspension necessary for Cooper and no punishment from the NFL, despite its new interest in policing our use of the N-word on the field. Riley instead got a few days off from training camp and a nice contract in the offseason, too.

Ultimately, Sherman is right here, though I don't believe it is completely black and white.

Though Sherman knows Jackson personally, he admits in the article that he doesn't know exactly what DeSean Jackson does with his time. I'm not saying that means Jackson is off killing people all the time, but it does mean some of the other rumors of why the Eagles released him could be true.

Taking the gang ties away, the Eagles had other reasons for releasing Jackson. He was apparently becoming a distraction in the locker room. Reportedly he had a sour relationship with coach Chip Kelly and he would regularly miss team meetings to hang out with friends.

If true (and I'm under no illusion that these reports are a certainty) than it would seem the Eagles thought of trading and finally releasing Jackson because they felt he was being a detriment to the team. They were also paying him a whole lot of money (though they still have $6,250,000 in dead money now after releasing him) and, yeah, a pending report from NJ.com that had LA police linking him to gang activity was probably too much of a PR disaster to handle for a player they were already kind of done with.

Was the release racially motivated? Not completely, though it would be naive to think that race didn't at least play some subconscious factor in both the Eagles' action and the public's reaction.

Ironic that the only team that seemed to put any possibly racist motivations aside and give Jackson a big deal, was the most racist named franchise in sports. Your Washington Redskins.

Sherman is right to point out the huge difference in how Philadelphia handled DeSean Jackson and how they handled Riley Cooper. It certainly is unfair. However, the context is of course important to consider. The Jackson gang news came less than a year after Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez was arrested for first degree murder in a gang related case.

There are certainly connections you can draw between the Jackson and Hernandez scenarios, but Jackson didn't kill anyone. However, the NJ.com report did relay that the Eagles had been contacted several times by LA police about Jackson and his connections to the Crips gang in LA. No one is saying that Jackson has killed or ever would kill someone, and ultimately that is still irrelevant to the Eagles' reasons for releasing Jackson.

If he ever was connected to a crime in a more direct manner (hard to rule out as a possibility if he's hanging out with people regularly responsible for crimes) and it was revealed that the Eagles knew about his possible ties to gangs, black or white, it would be a media shit storm worse than the Cooper situation could've ever been.

At that point, when the gang news was about to come out, and with Jackson already being someone viewed as a locker room distraction, it was probably enough is enough for Philly.

Fair or not, that is the reality, and the Eagles were not necessarily wrong to take the action they did.