DeSean Jackson is coming back to the Eagles, and there’s plenty of reason for optimism | Mike Sielski

You need a reason that the Eagles traded for DeSean Jackson? You need an explanation for why they were so eager to bring him back, and why he was so eager to return?

Here are three:

Kirk Cousins.

Jameis Winston.

Ryan Fitzpatrick.

They’re the three quarterbacks with whom Jackson played most after the Eagles released him in March 2014. Over those five seasons – three with the Washington Redskins, two with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – Jackson still averaged 17.8 yards over 233 receptions and still led the NFL in yards per catch three times. Now, when given time and opportunity, each of those quarterbacks can throw a lovely and well-placed deep ball. But you’d be hard-pressed to find an NFL head coach, offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach, wide receivers coach, general manager, talent evaluator, or wide receiver who – if injected with a healthy dose of sodium pentothal – would prefer to have one of those three quarterbacks over Carson Wentz.

You need a reason that the Eagles were so quick to send a 2019 sixth-round draft pick to the Buccaneers to get Jackson and a 2020 seventh-round pick? You need a reason that Jackson and the Eagles were so quick to re-negotiate his contract, reportedly agreeing to a three-year extension that, in all likelihood, will trim his salary-cap figure for this season? That prospective partnership, Wentz and Jackson, is one, a big one. Wentz will be the best quarterback Jackson will have played with since he left the Eagles, and Wentz has not had a wide receiver of Jackson’s field-stretching speed and dynamism – and that’s true even though Jackson is 32. Torrey Smith was fine in 2017. He dropped a few too many passes, but he was a threat for whom opposing defenses had to account. He was not Jackson then. He is not Jackson now.

You need another reason to be optimistic that this reunion will be a happy one, five years after Jackson last suited up for the Eagles?

Here are three more:

It’s no secret that Chip Kelly, when he was the Eagles’ head coach and accumulating power within the organization, pushed Jackson out the door. It remains something of a secret, all these years later, as to why he did it.

The theories were disparate, and there was probably at least some truth to each of them. Kelly wanted to establish a particular culture within the locker room (which could be just a euphemistic way of saying, Kelly preferred players who didn’t rock the boat or give him guff or cause him headaches), and he had determined that Jackson did not fit that culture. Kelly also preferred wide receivers who were taller and more physical than Jackson, who is 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds. (“Bigger people beat up little people.”) There was the infamous NJ.com report about Jackson’s alleged “gang ties.” It came less than a year after Aaron Hernandez’s arrest for murder, and at the time, the atmosphere around the NFL made it easy for the Eagles to justify jettisoning a player who may or may not have been a burgeoning off-field problem.

But Kelly isn’t around anymore. Neither is Anne Gordon, the franchise’s former senior vice president of marketing and communication, who provided the spin and cover whenever the Eagles removed a wide receiver from their roster or a reporter from the press box – and who wasn’t all that good at her job. This is a different organization from the one that Jackson left.

The organization is different, but for Jackson, not all the faces will be. Jason Peters, Jason Kelce, Lane Johnson, Zach Ertz, Fletcher Cox, Brandon Graham: All of these respected veterans were Jackson’s teammates in 2013. More, head coach Doug Pederson was on Andy Reid’s staff for four years, from 2009 through 2012, while Jackson was on the team, and football-ops czar Howie Roseman has been one of Jackson’s biggest advocates since the Eagles drafted Jackson in 2008.

Jackson had his moments against his past and future team. In Week 2 last season, he burned the Eagles for a 75-yard touchdown catch on the first play of the Buccaneers’ 27-21 victory, and in 2014, he took great pleasure in thumbing his nose at Kelly after he caught four passes for 129 yards in a 27-24 Redskins win that pretty much eliminated the Eagles from playoff contention.

But the Redskins and Bucs went a combined 31-48-1 over Jackson’s five seasons with them. He played in just one postseason game. He has been traded, with a late-round draft pick, for a late-round draft pick to a place where he’s comfortable, where he has wanted to be for a while. The conditions and circumstances are set up for him to be motivated, to make this work. It’s all the reason DeSean Jackson should need.