Spikes should fit right in

TROY VINCENT knows the Eagles and he knows Takeo Spikes, and Vincent says Spikes "will be an excellent fit in that locker room."

From the descriptions of Spikes' fiery leadership of the Bills' defense, it's natural to think of the Birds' middle linebacker, Jeremiah Trotter. But Vincent said Spikes' personality actually is more like that of free safety Brian Dawkins.

"It's going to be a nice, nice combination of leadership styles," Vincent said the day after the Birds acquired linebacker Spikes and backup quarterback Kelly Holcomb for defensive tackle Darwin Walker and a seventh-round draft choice next year. "Both Dawk and Takeo are very exciting, emotional, high-strung, electrifying players."

Vincent was chosen for five Pro Bowls while playing cornerback for the Birds, a tenure that lasted from 1996 to 2003. He went to the Bills as a free agent in 2004 and played with Spikes until Vincent was released in October, a portent of new Buffalo coach Dick Jauron's defensive youth movement, which since has led to corner Nate Clements, linebacker London Fletcher-Baker and Spikes leaving the Bills.

"At the end of the day, they wanted none of us," said Vincent, the NFLPA president, who finished the season with the Redskins, but was cut by them last month. Vincent said Spikes was the most popular player in the Buffalo market.

Vincent predicted Spikes "will come in with a chip on his shoulder," looking to prove he is healthy and can be the same player he was before suffering a torn Achilles' tendon on Sept. 22, 2005. Spikes returned last season but injured a hamstring in the season opener, missed four games, and was limited for much of the year.

"Coming off that Achilles' is not an easy thing," Vincent said. "Now that year is behind him." Vincent noted that another prominent linebacker, Julian Peterson, recovered from an '04 Achilles' tear and returned to the Pro Bowl last season.

Vincent described Spikes, who was selected for the Pro Bowl in 2003 and 2004, as "a big-time football player . . . one of the best outside linebackers in the game, if not the best."

Speculation has held that Spikes will replace Dhani Jones as the Eagles' strongside starter - he played the strongside this past season - but earlier in his career, Spikes excelled as a weakside playmaker. Vincent said Spikes told him yesterday that he thinks he will be playing the weakside for the Eagles.

Spikes and Holcomb are scheduled to meet with Philadelphia-area reporters this evening at 5. At the NFL meetings in Phoenix yesterday, Jauron told the Buffalo News that salary-cap considerations and Spikes' injury history figured into the decision to deal him.

"I think it wouldn't be totally honest to say it wasn't a combination of both of those things," Jauron said. "I was very impressed by him. I really liked having Takeo on our football team. As he moves forward, I think there is a good chance that he may recover the skills that he had. I'm not saying anything he didn't say about himself. He didn't feel like he had played up to what he's done in the past. We just thought it was a good time, in terms of those things, where he is in his career and where we are with a young team developing, that this was a good trade for us."

In order to accommodate Spikes' contract, which will pay him about $4.5 million this season, the Eagles converted some roster bonuses to signing bonuses in the contract extensions they negotiated last season, team president Joe Banner confirmed. Banner would not say which players were affected. The switching of a bonus from roster to signing is often termed a restructuring, which is misleading, because nothing changes from the player's point of view, except that if he has a roster bonus due on a certain date, he no longer has to worry about whether he will be on the roster to get that money at that time (an unlikely hazard for the players the Eagles extended last season). The change means the team can amortize the bonus over a period of years instead of having to fit the full amount under one year's cap.

General manager Tom Heckert said last month that though the Birds entered free agency with much less cap room than usual, they had the ability to create plenty of room by changing the bonuses. Banner reiterated that point yesterday.

"We had players we had signed during the year, that we wrote into their contracts that, at the time of their roster bonus, we have the right to switch it to a signing bonus," Banner said. "We converted a couple, and a couple we didn't. It didn't change anything about the deals. But it cleared some cap room.

"We kept telling people we have room to do things if we want. And we did that with a couple of guys. But we didn't restructure anything or ask anybody to take a pay cut."

Walker, meanwhile, was an example of another tool the Birds use to manage their cap. In 2002, his first year as a starter, he signed a 7-year extension that gave him $4 million up front before his then-current deal was up, but left him underpaid for a healthy, starting-quality defensive tackle in his prime, 5 years later. Walker, who turns 30 in June, is scheduled to make $1.3 million this season and $1.4 million next season. Yesterday he told WIP Radio's Howard Eskin that he knew he would be traded when talks aimed at extending his deal last season didn't produce an agreement. Walker said he felt he was grossly underpaid.

In a conference call with Buffalo-area reporters, Walker went further, saying he had requested a trade (something Spikes also did, according to sources close to the situation).

"I'm very excited about this opportunity and looking forward to getting up there," Walker said on the conference call. "I think we have a young team that has a lot of potential, and I'm just looking forward to being part of something special." *