The Eagles are starting to build their 2026 roster by first looking at internal free agents and who they want to bring back. One player who will NOT be returning, however, is linebacker Nakobe Dean, who reportedly agreed to a three-year, $36 million deal that includes $20 million guaranteed with the Las Vegas Raiders \u2014 leaving behind a plethora of Georgia teammates he\u2019s played with since college.<\/p>\n
Dean has struggled to stay healthy at times but he\u2019s always locked in even if it\u2019s from the sideline. Still, that history \u2014 including a Lisfranc injury, a torn patellar tendon, and a hamstring injury \u2014 impacted his free agency options.<\/p>\n
Through four seasons, he\u2019s played in 47 regular season games, has been a starter the past three years, when healthy, and has recorded 226 total tackles, 13 QB hits, 7.5 sacks, three forced fumbles, and one interception. His 2024 season was so good, Dean received votes for Comeback Player of the Year, and the LB was a dominant force up until he got injured ahead of the team\u2019s Super Bowl win.<\/p>\n
He was able to get back on the field in Week 6 of the 2025 season, and while the plan was to slowly reintegrate him into the linebacker rotation, Dean was quickly back taking most, if not all, the reps he once shared with Jihaad Campbell. Unfortunately, he suffered a hamstring injury late in the season, and sat out Weeks 17 and 18, but was able to come back for the Eagles\u2019 sole playoff game.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s nice to know that he didn\u2019t go to the Dallas Cowboys. There was speculation that could\u2019ve been the case. UPDATE: More than just speculation.<\/p>\n
Dean signing with the Raiders puts the Eagles in position to potentially earn a fifth-round compensatory pick in the 2027 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Eagles are starting to build their 2026 roster by first looking at internal free agents and who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,6,5406,24295],"class_list":{"0":"post-803454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-philadelphia-eagles-news","11":"tag-philadelphia-eagles-free-agency"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116202366945835985","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}