The Eagles are cutting Fred Johnson on November 13, and the move immediately shifts one of Philadelphia's veteran offensive line pieces off the roster. Johnson, who had been with the team since 2023, is now on waivers and will have to clear before he can become a free agent.
The timing matters because the move comes after the trade deadline, which means any team that wants Johnson has to claim him and take on the contract rather than waiting for the Eagles to work out a deal. If nobody claims him by 3pm CT Monday, he is headed to free agency. That is a notable turn for a 29-year-old tackle the Eagles re-signed in March to a one-year, $2.1MM deal after he had played a career-high 626 offensive snaps last season.
Johnson's role shrank sharply this year. He played only 24 offensive snaps, far below the usage that made him a useful swing option in the Super Bowl-winning 2024 season, when he was a six-game starter and logged 351 snaps at left tackle and 119 at RT. The Eagles instead turned to rookie Markel Bell as their right tackle after Lane Johnson's in-season retirement, and that decision left Fred Johnson on the outside looking in.
That is the friction point in Philadelphia's decision. Johnson has 22 starts on his resume, and the Eagles brought him back in March expecting a familiar veteran presence on the line. Instead, they moved on after using Bell, a sign that the roster had already shifted away from the depth chart Johnson once occupied. Johnson had been added on a practice squad deal in November 2022, spent three years in Cincinnati, and played five games with Tampa Bay in 2022 before settling into his Eagles run.
The cost of the move is manageable for Philadelphia, but it is real. If Johnson goes unclaimed, the Eagles will carry nearly $2MM in dead money, while an acquiring team would inherit barely $600K in base salary. That is why the next several hours matter more than the release itself: Johnson's future now depends on whether another team sees enough value in a veteran tackle with starting experience to act before the waiver window closes. If not, Philadelphia loses the depth, and Johnson gets a fresh start.
