One of the oddities of the 2025 Philadelphia Eagles season was when the Birds traded for Jaire Alexander and he never ended up playing a single game for them.
Alexander was set to make his Eagles debut at Lambeau Field against the Green Bay Packers, the team that selected him with a first-round pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. Instead, he didn’t even travel with the Eagles to that game after he announced he was stepping away from football.
In a Wednesday article for The Players’ Tribune, Alexander detailed
the events of his short-lived Philly tenure:
Then one afternoon my agent calls me up and tells me that some teams are considering trading for me. A few days later I’m walking into the Eagles facility in Philly.
Since I hadn’t been suiting up for games at that point, and was practicing less, I was actually feeling pretty good when I came over to the Eagles. And I obviously felt like I needed to prove something. For those first couple days, I mean, let me tell you … I was one of the best DBs out on that practice field. And I was excited, too, because the Eagles were about to play at Green Bay their next game. It was all systems go.
But as game day got closer, my knee kept swelling up more and more. It’s getting worse and worse because of all the reps. And in my head, as much as I’m trying to not think this way, it’s like.… Here we go again.
I was freaking out. I couldn’t stop thinking about a potential repeat of what happened in that Bills game. But this time against my former team. In my former home stadium. I mean, I know all those people. So it was even more terrifying.
The team had planned for me to have my knee drained the day before the game, and then to give it a go against the Packers. And I remember hearing that plan and checking my phone and seeing that it was like seven degrees or something in Green Bay, and then just having all these thoughts swirl through my head about my knee in that weather.
I went home the night before we were supposed to be flying out to Green Bay in the morning, and I didn’t sleep a wink. I’m tossing and turning in bed nonstop. I’m worried and anxious and unable to stop all the negative thoughts from creeping in.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
At like 3 or 4 a.m., I sat up in bed and texted everyone with the Eagles. It was like…. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to do this. I can’t keep playing like this.”
Then, a few hours later, I went down to the facility and told them all in person.
I was done.
I remember I had this very emotional heart-to-heart talk that morning with Christian Parker, who was the Eagles DBs coach at the time. I was basically crying my eyes out to him about letting even more people down. That’d basically been the story of my life for the previous year, at least in my head — me messing up in some way and letting people down, and then feeling miserable.
I remember telling Coach Parker in that moment: “My head’s messed up right now. My head is truly messed up. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Deciding to step away from the game was one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to do. But I absolutely did have to do it.
It clearly wasn’t easy for him but Alexander made the right call to walk away. Kudos to him for being vulnerable enough to share his story.
For the Eagles’ sake, it’s a bummer that they traded a draft pick swap (albeit a late Day 3 one) in exchange for a player who never even played a single snap for them. But it’s not like there was zero recourse in this regard, as previously reported by Adam Schefter:
“Because of that, the Eagles received $500,000 from the Ravens and $389,000 from Alexander to cover part of his signing bonus and one week’s salary, sources said. The Eagles also received a salary cap credit even though the amount had not counted against their cap when the trade was made, sources said.”
This money is small potatoes, relatively speaking. But, hey, every bit counts.
It’s hard to blame fans who felt like the Ravens swindled the Eagles, especially in the aftermath of Baltimore backing out of the Maxx Crosby trade.
But it sounds like Alexander was ready to give it a go with the Eagles before his body took a turn for the worse. Wasn’t meant to be.
