Time To Shine For Eagles' Talented Young CB

The NFL is a young man’s game, and the need to turn things over is a yearly reality in a sport that is often taxing on the body.

The Super Bowl champion Eagles are preparing for turnover at multiple positions in 2025, in some cases for financial reasons and others, because of age creeping up.

Six-time Pro Bowl cornerback Darius Slay is where the rubber met the road between both issues, highly paid and set to turn 35 on New Year’s Day of 2026. The popular Slay will continue to try to fend off Father Time across the state in Pittsburgh for Year No. 13 with the Steelers.

The Eagles have been preparing for Slay’s departure for several years and nearly lost him as a salary-cap casualty to Baltimore before the 2023 season, the same year GM Howie Roseman drafted his projected replacement this season by trading up in the fourth round at No. 105 to draft Kelee Ringo.

Ringo, who won’t turn 23 until June 27, is tailor-made to play outside cornerback in the NFL from a physical perspective with size, length, physicality, and speed. At 6-foot-2 and 207 pounds with sub-4.4 speed, Eagles fans have gotten hints of Ringo’s raw ability during his work as a punt gunner.

During the 2023 draft process, many analysts believed there was a chance that Ringo could go in the first round despite his youth and inexperience at the college level with Georgia.

In what was a deep draft at the top for CBs, The Athletic’s Dane Brugler ranked Ringo as the sixth-best CB behind only first-round picks Christian Gonzalez, Devon Witherspoon, Joey Porter Jr., Deonte Banks, and Emmanuel Forbes.  Ringo himself was projected to be a bridge pick – either a late first-round or early second-round selection.

Most in the NFL were a little more cautious with the projection, and when Ringo fell to Day 3, the Eagles went in with the plan to move up near the top of the fourth round by giving up a future third-round pick to do it. The belief there was had Ringo stayed at Georgia for one more season, he’d have a first-round grade.

Because Ringo was the youngest player in the NFL when he was drafted, he’s still younger than many of the CBs who were drafted this April with the added luxury of two years interning under one of the best cornerbacks of the generation in Slay who has been all in on passing along what he has learned due to his own upbringing in Detroit under veterans like Glover Quinn and Rashean Mathis.

Of all the young players the Eagles are counting on to take a step forward in 2025, Ringo, spring a new look with jersey No. 7, might have the highest ceiling of them all.