Jalen Carter helped dismantle the Kansas City Chiefs on the biggest stage in football. He was double-teamed on nearly every snap of Super Bowl LIX and still made Patrick Mahomes’ life miserable. The Eagles won 40-22. And now, a year and a half later, Philadelphia is quietly telling their best defensive player that he hasn’t done enough to earn a new contract. Let that sink in.
Jalen Carter helped the Eagles demolish the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Philadelphia still won’t pay him
Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer didn’t sugarcoat it when a reader asked about Carter’s contract situation this week. The Eagles are hesitant to pay him, full stop. What makes that remarkable is the context. Howie Roseman is one of the most aggressive GMs in the NFL when it comes to extending his own players early. The Eagles have built their entire roster philosophy around locking up talent before the market sets the price. That’s how they’ve maintained a championship window for years.So when Roseman, of all people, goes quiet on a 25-year-old two-time Pro Bowler and Super Bowl champion, it means something. As Breer put it, the fact that they’re deep into June without a Carter deal is notable because the earlier you do a deal, the better the price you get, and Philadelphia knows that better than anyone.
The red flags are real, but so is what Carter has done
To be fair to the Eagles, this isn’t just a front office being cheap. Persistent shoulder issues limited Carter to just 11 of 18 games last season, and the team has concerns about his maturity alongside his health. His own defensive coordinator brought up unprompted that Carter was out of shape early last year, which is not the kind of thing you say about a guy you’re about to hand $40 million a year to.But here’s the other side of that. In the Super Bowl, Carter had no sacks, no tackles, no batted passes on the stat sheet, and was still arguably the most important player on the field. The Chiefs double-teamed him all night. That freed up everyone else. The Eagles won by 18 points. He played over 84% of snaps that season and was double-teamed on the majority of them, and still racked up 73 pressures, including the postseason. That is a generational interior pass rusher doing generational things.
What happens next
The most likely outcome now is that Carter plays the entire 2026 season on his current deal, uses 17 games to make his case, and forces the Eagles’ hand heading into 2027. If he stays healthy and dominant, they pay him. If the injury concerns and maturity questions resurface, Philadelphia has quietly set itself up to either lowball him or move on entirely.Carter is 25 years old. He has a Super Bowl ring, two Pro Bowls, and a defensive coordinator who can’t stop double-teaming him. The Eagles are asking him to do it all again for free before they’ll talk money. That’s cold. And in Philadelphia, it just might work.