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The Eagles announced today that they will place Mike Patterson on the non-football injury list with viral pneumonia, ending his season. It's really sad to hear for Patterson, who spent all offseason coming back from brain surgery, only to see his year end because of a freak illness.
What's worse, Ruben Frank is reporting that guys who are put on the NFI get their pay cut in half. So, not really looking like a merry Christmas for Mike Patterson relatively speaking... He is, after all, still going to get $60k+ checks for the next 3 weeks. Still, it's hard to see why the team would be cutting a guys' pay for getting pneumonia, an illness he could have easily gotten at work. That was exactly the argument of Patterson's agent Peter Schaffer, who plans to file a grievance with the player's union.
"I told Howie (Roseman) this morning that if he could prove to me that Mike didn't get pneumonia at practice I wouldn't file grievance. He said he couldn't."
Either way, I think Eagles fans wish Patterson the best in getting over this latest hurdle and really hope he come back next year fully healthy and with all these medical issues behind him.
Taking his place on the 53 man roster will be rookie TE-FB Emil Igwenagu, who the Eagles have signed off their practice squad. Igwenagu showed some things in preseason and with Celek out, the team needed a backup TE.