Another Eagles roster cut expected to sign with Washington

On Sunday, Washington claimed former Eagles running back Wendell Smallwood off waivers just ahead of the Week 1 NFC East matchup. Now, it’s being reported that they are also expected to sign defensive tackle Treyvon Hester to their 53-man roster, not just their practice squad.

Hester was a particularly difficult cut for the Eagles, with Howie Roseman explaining in detail why the team decided to move forward with Hassan Ridgeway rather than Treyvon.

“I think that when you talk about Treyvon, you’re right, Treyvon is an NFL-caliber player and that was a hard cut.

...

Hassan [Ridgeway] and Treyvon are two different players. They are both good players, but they have different skill sets and our other defensive tackles have different skill sets, and we have some defensive ends who can reduce inside if we need that. We went a little heavy at defensive end, but these are not easy decisions. I think we struggled with a lot of these because of the type of players and people that we had to let go today.”

So now, that makes two fairly involved players from Philadelphia with their Week 1 opponent, one on offense and one on defense, which is not particularly great since we’ll also have to face off against them twice. I’m not entirely sure how much information Washington will be able to gather from the two in just a week, but it’s just never a great feeling when former Eagles end up staying in the NFC East.

(Especially when one of those players was responsible for the Double Doink win last season.)

It’s also being reported that Smallwood was one of the most popular players on the waiver wire.

It doesn’t seem super surprising that two of those teams interested include the Colts (Frank Reich) and the Jaguars (John DeFilippo), who are both super familiar with the Eagles’ 2016 fifth-round pick. Bengals head coach Zac Taylor is also the brother of Eagles quarterback coach Press Taylor.