Joe Banner Quotations

There is no question he's a vital part of our team and we have always maintained a strong desire to get a deal done with Brian.

Whenever we have cap room, it is spent in these ways, in this priority. First, we spend it on anybody who can help this year's team in any way.

We are going to have to see what happens throughout the year. We are already convinced that Brian is a very good football player and a very valuable member of our team. Hopefully at some point, we can translate that into a contract that we both feel comfortable with.

I don't get it. He was so happy. He's a guy who by his own description had a tough time in life finding a place that felt right, finding a peace of mind and finding a place where he felt appreciated. And he was very, very verbal in feeling that he had found that in Philadelphia. And not just publicly, but privately with us. If you sought that for so long, why not enjoy it for a bit and take the ride? I wish there was something more to all of this, but I don't know what it would be.

I don't know what's going to happen two, three, four years from now, if we're still here,

He's done a great job for us and I think he'd be a great head coach. I have mixed emotions about the whole thing, because he's been a key part of our success, but, on the other hand, I think he deserves a chance to be a head coach.

I think a lot of people, including myself, do and say a lot of things in the context of negotiations that tend to go away and be forgotten,

It is an honor to be recognized by our peers and a great credit to our staff. We continue to strive for relevant and entertaining content on our web site and we know that our fans return again and again for news about the team. The enormous growth of this medium has allowed fans all over the world to be part of the Eagles family.

I think there's a long list of things, some of which you know about and some of which aren't public, but it was a culmination of things.

Otherwise, there's no foundation to the business, no foundation for knowing where we stand.

Our hope, obviously, is that he comes back next week and is what he can be in every sense, whether that's how he contributes to the team on the field or off the field,

I think everybody knows that we have this Monday deadline that I think helps a little bit. But we have been working diligently in the last week to try to get something done. And we have tried to approach this since last summer. And there was a very strong drive on both sides to compromise and to be as reasonable as we could to try to get it done. He (Westbrook) clearly wanted to be here. We clearly wanted him to be here. The system is perfect for him and he is perfect for the system. So in the end we were able to get it done.

wanted to make sure there was no ambiguity regarding the things we weren't happy about.

You don?t really hit everything in free agency. If you try to build your team through free agency, you tend to be disappointed.

What we see happening is exactly what he said was going to happen. It kind of puts you in a hard position to then have any kind of deniability. You can try to blame other people if he wants, but it's a little bit of a stretch in credibility in light of what he said before he got here.

What we see happening is exactly what he said was going to happen, ... It kind of puts you in a hard position to then have any kind of deniability. You can try to blame other people if he wants, but it's a little bit of a stretch in credibility in light of what he said before he got here.

We didn't expect him to come in here with the biggest smile on his face in training camp. We understood that. But we thought we knew him well enough to know that he's such a prideful guy, such a competitive guy, that once he got here, we'd have a guy working as hard as he's always worked.

We've been clear that the choices are to play under this contract or not. I'm not sure he still believes that, but we've said from day one those were the choices on the table, and he had to make a choice between one of the two things. That's not going to change.

We've been aggressively trying to extend his deal, ... We like him. We think he's a valuable member of our team.

We want Brian to be here. We recognize him as an important part of this team, a quality person. I think Brian recognizes that this is a great situation for him. I think he recognizes that this system probably matches up to his own strengths and weaknesses better than any other system out there. So I think that in the long run, because we both have that mind-set about it, we'll find a way to get it done. I hope it's in the short run.

Brian is a valuable and important part of the team. We've made it clear we want him here, and he's also made it clear he wants to stay. Hopefully, at the right time, we can get a deal done with him.

Between the three things above, we always end up spending 100 percent of our salary-cap money. It will get spent on making us the best football team we can be. Our history is more proof of that than the words. We're sitting here right now with a football team we feel pretty good about.

Andy will basically figure out where we go from here, ... He indicated to T. O. that he'd talk to him later this week and give him a more definitive status report.

Normally I'd say the player is not likely to just pass up getting paid. But in this case, you really can't say. This isn't a very predictable situation.

This is an effort to set a positive tone as we move forward,

There's an accumulation of events culminating with a series of things last week, including the very public interview that he did, ... I think there's a long list of things, some of which you know about and some of which aren't public.

It is patently irresponsible in this day and age to question the motives behind a policy driven by and recommended by security experts,

It may not be acceptable to him, but it was a significant offer. I think the level of disrespect, if there is any, is pretty minor.

Does this make us a better team? If the answer is yes, then we make the move. If the answer is no, we don?t.

The next priority is to extend as many players as we can during the season.

The beauty of having cap room is you have flexibility. You make your moves based solely on the best interests of the football team. When you don't have cap flexibility, sometimes you have to make moves based on the cap. Whether it's at the end of training camp with cuts, or pursuing free agents, we've always had the opportunity to do what's best for the team.

There was a need to reinforce that we needed to stay aggressive. We were aggressive in the Terrell Owens thing, and you don't want that to slow you down when the next situation shows up. Our belief is that teams that have significant success are those that aren't afraid of making mistakes or taking chances.

After that, we push as much money into next year's salary cap. Our first priority with that money is that we want to sign our players, and the second priority is it allows us to be active in the free-agent market.

I?m not going to get into any figures. But it?s quite significant. And obviously we voted for it because it was in the best interest of the league to vote yes.

I made sure I was in the best shape possible. I wasn't the guy who got tired in the Super Bowl.

I have no problem with anything Brian said. We are already convinced Brian's a very good player and a very valuable member of our team. He wants to be here and we still want him here and we remain optimistic it will work out.

He still wants to be here, we still want him to be here, and in the end we think it will have a positive (resolution).

Certainly this will help knock that down quite a bit.

He's a quality guy and a strong leader. He's a physical guy who sets the tone, and he wanted to be here. He's one of a number of 30-year-old guys that we have signed, and I think that's good. The notion that we don't care about those guys is false.

The Eagles continue to offer the city a deal that meets the city's revenue-neutral goals that is the best deal any team has offered in the NFL,