Did Eagles break ‘unwritten rule’ to spite Rams?

The Rams lost four players to the waiver wire on Wednesday, but was one of them supposed to be getting a free pass back to L.A.? That’s the claim that some have made this week about center Willie Lampkin, who was “waived/injury” on Tuesday and then picked up by the Philadelphia Eagles on Wednesday, the team that was very last in the claim order because they just won the Super Bowl.

Did Eagles GM Howie Roseman break a code between general managers to not touch waived players who are injured because he just wanted Lampkin that badly and doesn’t care what Les Snead thinks? There is some logical evidence out there to suggest that that’s exactly what Roseman did, so losing Lampkin to the team 32nd in the waiver order caught some steam this week as a rumored violation of an unwritten rule.

Number one, the first person to note how unusual it was for Lampkin to be claimed was Field Yates, an employee of ESPN. Yates tweeted on Wednesday that “you don’t see waived/injured players claimed often”, pointing out that everyone probably expected that Lampkin would clear waivers and be able to revert back to L.A.‘s practice squad or injury list.

But Yates only connects the dots enough to suggest that the claim was “a testament to what Philly saw from him this preseason to claim him while he recovers from whatever injury he is dealing with”. Umm, I mean, okay. That could be true and it could also be a very meaningless statement for one simple reason:

Obviously the Eagles were not the only team in the NFL to recognize that Willie Lampkin was one of the stars of the preseason!

Lampkin was PFF’s highest-graded offensive lineman of the preseason:

He was praised by countless analysts and social media users as one of the great finds of undrafted free agency:

Yeah, Willie Lampkin was ironically always going to stand out because of his height (5’11) and that’s the main reason that he went undrafted. However, Lampkin was NOT a star of the preseason for physical reasons in the same way that say Desmond Watson was for being the heaviest player in the NFL. Lampkin was a star of the preseason because….HE WAS A STAR OF THE PRESEASON.

Now don’t get me wrong, the Rams were the team that had first rights of Willie Lampkin and they could have easily avoided this situation by simply not cutting him.

But for someone like Field Yates to tweet that “the EAGLES” must have seen something in him, that’s just a really narrow view of the situation and demonstrates what it’s like to have such a simple train of thought on a waiver claim because obviously Philadelphia was not the only team to realize that Lampkin was out-playing his status as an undrafted free agent and that he should have at least been snagged on day three.

So what does that matter?

BECAUSE THE EAGLES WERE LAST IN THE WAIVER ORDER

The claim that the Eagles broke an “unwritten” rule is actually backed up by the evidence that 30 teams passed on Lampkin on the waiver wire despite his outstanding preseason and easy acquisition as a player who would have cost nothing and is a better investment than at least half of the league’s backup centers.

30 teams passed on Lampkin! The only teams that didn’t are the Eagles…and the Rams.

Of course this is L.A.’s fault for trusting an unwritten rule.

That would not make it any less true that the Eagles acted on a claim that Les Snead and Sean McVay felt was not going to happen because Lampkin was waived/injury. If that is the case, it means that other teams followed the unwritten rule and that would mean that the Rams are not the only team that would be upset with Roseman for claiming Lampkin with the last pick in the waiver order.

What was Lampkin’s injury?

Willie Lampkin suffered knee and ankle injuries in the second preseason game, a problem expected to cost him several weeks according to McVay. That timeline would have made it possible for Lampkin to be ready for Week 1 if he had not been cut. By waiving Lampkin, the Rams were hoping to have him clear waivers — which they may have felt was safe to do because as has been noted, teams almost never claim these injured players — and then make a decision to either give him an injury settlement or put him on IR.

IR would have cost Lampkin the entire 2025 season. Although that’s not ideal, there’s little chance that Lampkin was going to see the field much in 2025 anyway and this could have set him up to replace Coleman Shelton in 2026.

An injury settlement would have made him a free agent, in which case Lampkin could have signed with the Eagles anyway! Or come back to the Rams. The decision would have been up to him.

Instead, the Rams waived Lampkin with the injury designation and now he’s on the Eagles.

That’s their own fault, if they wanted to keep Lampkin, and nobody is denying that it is their fault. But two things can be true at the same time:

The Rams may have made a mistake and the Eagles may have broken an unwritten rule.

If that’s what the Eagles did, they should be crossing their fingers that Lampkin makes it worth it to have agitated several other teams for him.

Did Eagles break ‘unwritten rule’ to spite Rams?

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