By A to Z Sports,Kelsey Kramer

Copyright yardbarker

Former Philadelphia Eagles safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson is now a free agent after the Houston Texans released him on Tuesday.Now, the lingering question everyone wants to know is whether or not the Birds should bring him back to bolster their secondary. On Wednesday, reporters attempted to get an answer from head coach Nick Sirianni, and while he didn’t completely shut down a reunion with Gardner-Johnson, he made it clear that he’s happy with the team’s current safety group.

“Ya know, I really am excited about the room that we have,” Sirianni said. “I think they’ve done a really nice job to date. [We have] a good young player in Andrew Mukuba, who continues to get better. And I think that having Reed [Blankenship] next to him is helping him get better. And just how Reed got better having Marcus Epps in the building and Reed has said that before. Just really excited about that room. Sydney [Brown] is doing a really good job on special teams and doing some work on defense as well. And so, I’m really excited about that group and pleased with that group.”

Eagles Traded C.J. Gardner-Johnson to Houston for a Reason

Back in March, the Eagles traded Gardner-Johnson to the Texans for offensive guard Kenyon Green. The Eagles also swapped draft picks, where Philly received a 2026 fifth-round pick, while Houston received a 2026 sixth-rounder.

The move shocked many, especially considering the Eagles were already fairly thin at safety.

However, during the NFL annual meetings in Florida, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman did his best to make sense of the trade.

“Every dollar that you spend is a dollar less that you can spend on some of these younger players that maybe you want to retain,” Roseman said. “Getting out in front of it was important to us. And again, hard decisions. Not asking anyone to agree with them, but that’s part of our job.”

Roseman admitted it was far from an easy “business” decision and emphasized that locking down the young guys was better for the Eagles in the long run.

“I think if you’re just taking the C.J. move in a vacuum, it’s kind of not giving the whole perspective of where we’re at. And I think Chauncey did a great job for us, and both the years that he was with us — obviously, making the Super Bowl twice in two years with him as our starting safety.“Really, when you look at our team and you look at kind of the amount of highly paid players who earned their contracts — we got eight guys who are making $15 million or more — we have from the 2022 to 2024 drafts, we have eight starters who are on the Super Bowl team, none of those guys have long-term contracts. In those drafts, probably be five or six players that will be competing for starting jobs.“So you have a lot of players coming through that aren’t under long-term contracts, plus a lot of guys who are on long-term contracts, and we never want to be in a situation where we have one year where we’re getting rid of 20 guys. And we’ve been very fortunate to be aggressive in keeping our guys and signing guys in free agency, and it’s also got to align with the draft and having young players. Certainly, the important thing to do is draft well and then keep your players. And so we got to make sure that going forward, we have an opportunity to do that, as well. A lot of those players that we’re talking about are good young players that we’re excited about. And so we had to make some tough decisions here.”

In the end, the Eagles didn’t save much money, but the move did free up cap space to invest in some of their younger stars. However, while it may have seemed the Eagles closed the chapter on CJGJ, one can never say never when it comes to Howie Roseman’s decisions.