Canadian linebacker Alex Singleton made a difficult decision between believing the process in Philadelphia or coming back to Calgary.
Singleton had a standout training camp and pre-season with the Eagles in 2019. He was released among the final 53-man active roster cuts, though Philly wanted him to stay on the practice roster.
“We had an agreed upon number that he may come back for,” said Dave Dickenson on Sportsnet 960 The Fan radio in Calgary. “Then he called me and said, ‘Hey Dave, they upped their offer.’ I said, ‘Don’t even question yourself, take it. You’re already there, why not keep pushing and trying to work through some of the red tape and see what happens?'”
“I originally told the Eagles, ‘No, I’m going to go back’ and they guaranteed me the full season to stay,” Singleton said on SN 960. “They’re telling me I’m going to play. If I leave and week one, a guy gets hurt and I would’ve been playing by week two, I would be pretty upset. If I don’t play for 17 weeks I can just go back to Canada.”
Singleton weighed the options of returning north of the border and playing eight games versus being one injury away and debuting in the NFL. He decided to stick it out for the full season in the NFL. Six weeks later Singleton was playing his first career NFL game in Dallas.
“It was like a Grey Cup week, the Eagles playing in Dallas is huge. We got to the hotel and there was so much security, there were so many fans for both teams,” Singleton said.
“It was a Sunday night game, so everybody who hadn’t played on NBC yet had to go up and say where you went to college and your name. It was pretty cool. Not that I was going to start, but they have everybody filmed for it.”
Everything is bigger in Texas and Singleton experienced those words firsthand. Philadelphia suffered a 37-10 loss to the Cowboys on October 10. On the bright side, Singleton managed to register a tackle and take in the experience at AT&T Stadium, which holds 80,000 people.
“Jerry World — nothing cooler than playing there. The opening kick-off I was on kick return, standing right on the middle of the star… standing on the star in Dallas as an Eagle as a hated human,” Singleton said.
“And then after that it was just football. Bouncing around and hating the NFL for a long time and being over it … made it a lot easier just to be like, ‘It’s just football again.'”
