Six weeks ago, shortly after the Eagles signed Asante Samuel and gave every indication that Lito Sheppard would be on the next train out of town, I offered the boys at One NovaCare Way some unsolicited advice.

I suggested they should keep Sheppard. I suggested that the pluses of a cornerback foursome that would include both Samuel and Sheppard, as well as Sheldon Brown and Joselio Hanson, far outweighed the pluses of getting rid of yet another malcontent who doesn't think his contract has enough zeroes.

I suggested that Sheppard ultimately would keep his mouth shut and play hard out of respect for his good friend, free safety Brian Dawkins, who, at 34, is running out of Super Bowl opportunities.

In retrospect, that probably was a little naive of me. Cut through all the bullbleep and the truth is, football is first and foremost a business for players. And in business, money trumps everything, including friendships and Super Bowls.

When even Dawkins is expressing doubt that the Eagles can keep Sheppard and make it work this season, as he did yesterday in an interview with Comcast SportsNet, well, that's enough to convince me.

"Could it work? It could possibly work," he said. "Anything can work. I just don't know what [Lito's] mind-set is. That's the thing about it. You don't know what he's thinking."

For weeks, the Eagles hinted that Sheppard would be traded no later than the draft. Club president Joe Banner spoke of several "very significant" offers the Eagles had received for Sheppard. Then, on draft day, they started singing a very different tune.

"We'll see how it goes," coach Andy Reid said on Saturday, after the first two rounds came and went without a deal for Lito. "There's still some people interested. But he's a good football player. I'm not just going to give him away. That's not what I'm going to do here."

By Sunday, Sheppard's agent, Lamont Smith, who has been trying since February to find suitors for the two-time Pro Bowl corner, was on the phone to the Jacksonville Jaguars, seeing if they might be willing to do something. But Sheppard's poor play last season, along with his injury history, along with his desire for a new contract, made him a tough sell for the Jags and everybody else. At least for anything above a third-round pick.

How is this going to play out? Well, we'll have a little better idea tomorrow morning when the Eagles take the field at the NovaCare Complex for their first minicamp practice. Will Lito show up for the mandatory camp? Will he talk about his situation? Stay tuned.

This much is clear: This is not the kind of disruption a team with Super Bowl ambitions needs right now. Lito won't turn his contract situation into the circus that Terrell Owens did a few years back. But he's always needed ideal circumstances to be at his best. He's never played well hurt and it's doubtful he'll play well with a bruised psyche and a contract he doesn't want.

Throw in the fact that Brian Westbrook also isn't happy with his contract, and that Brown, who signed a long-term extension about the same time as his pal Sheppard, also thinks he is underpaid, and well, it could get interesting. And I don't mean that in a good way.

There is an obvious solution to all of this, of course. According to league sources, the Eagles, who currently have 78 players under contract, are $9.517 million under the league salary cap.

Subtract the salaries of the 25 players they're going to have to cut by the season opener, add the approximately $6 million in cap money they're going to spend to sign their draft choices, and you end up in August with a pretty healthy $12 million to $13 million in cap space, which might be enough to do contract extensions for Westbrook, Sheppard and Brown. Or at least Westbrook and Sheppard.

Talk to them now and tell them you'll sit down with their agents in September or October and try to hammer out extensions then, once you know how much cap room you have to play with.

Maybe that's what will happen. Maybe hell will freeze over too.

For now, the Eagles are insisting that, by golly, the idea of a secondary that includes Samuel and Brown and Sheppard might just be swell after all, even if Dawkins disagrees.

"It gives us one great opportunity for a nice secondary," Reid said last weekend. "The way to use them is just like we used Bobby Taylor, Al Harris and Troy Vincent. We just rotated all of them and they were all starters in our eyes. Just let them play. That's the way I look at this secondary." *

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