The Eagles on Monday night pulled off a trade to acquire cornerback Jakorian Bennett from the Raiders for defensive tackle Thomas Booker IV.
About 12 hours later, head coach Nick Sirianni was asked about the move at his Tuesday press conference.
“Howie (Roseman) does such a good job of continually trying to improve our football team,” Sirianni said. “No one does it better than he does and we thought that was an opportunity to add some depth at corner. We feel good about our depth.
“Obviously, we’ll miss [DT Thomas Booker] Book and wish him the best. We feel good about our depth at defensive tackle, but just a way to add some depth there at corner.”
Bennett, 24, was an early fourth-round pick out of Maryland back in 2023 and was actually taken one spot ahead of Kelee Ringo. In two seasons with the Raiders, Bennett played in 24 games with 11 starts. He started seven games last season before his season ended with a shoulder injury that needed surgery.
As the Eagles took the field on Tuesday morning, Bennett was already with them but not in uniform. Eventually, he’ll wear No. 49 when he does start practicing.
For the first 10 days of training camp, there has been a battle for the starting cornerback job opposite Quinyon Mitchell and defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has said the competition has been “close” between Adoree’ Jackson and Ringo.
Will Bennett join that battle?
“We’ll see,” Sirianni said. “We’re excited to get him out there and start getting him going and see what he has.”
It’s probably too early to definitively say that Bennett will compete for a starting job, especially before he has ever even participated in a practice in Philly. But it’s hard to not see this trade as a comment on the state of the battle for that job or at least the depth at cornerback.
While Bennett has already missed 10 days of training camp with the Eagles, there’s still plenty of time left this month for him to catch up before the season opener on Sept. 4.
“We’ll get him going and we’ll see how that goes,” Sirianni said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of meeting times that we have to make up. We’re getting him early in camp though, and so we’ll catch him up in some off time, catch him up during the meetings and have some other things to get him ready to go.”
Bennett likely became available because Pete Carroll has taken over as the Raiders’ head coach and has a specific body type he likes at the corner position. But Bennett did perform well last year in limited time.
According to NextGen Stats, Bennett had 291 coverage snaps last season and gave up 23 caches on 45 targets (51.1%) for 294 yards with 2 touchdowns. While he doesn’t yet have an interception in his NFL career, he did have 8 pass breakups in 10 games last season. Bennett has primarily played boundary corner in the NFL.
Coming out of Maryland just a few years ago, Bennett had an impressive athletic profile.
“We liked his tape coming out,” Sirianni said. “We liked his tape when he was with the Raiders, and just that he’s got speed, coverage ability, and special teams value, so we’re excited to have him.”
