A look at Jalen Hurts’ preseason performance so far, hopes for a successful blitz game and why J.J. Arcega-Whiteside didn’t work out.
As the Eagles prepare for joint practices with the Browns starting Thursday in Berea, Ohio, here’s our latest batch of Roob’s 10 Random Eagles Preseason Observations!
1. I still need to see it on the field in regular-season games this fall. I still need to see it consistently when it counts. And more than anything I still need to see it in the playoffs against the best teams in the league. But sitting here three weeks into training camp, I’m awfully encouraged by what I’ve seen from Jalen Hurts. He’s having a very good camp, and he’s showing growth in every area he needed to. He did have a couple bad practices early on. It happens. He’s facing a much tougher defense than his last two training camps, getting challenged on every rep. But since then he’s really strung together a number of quality performances, including the 6-for-6 against the Jets. Had a bad practice Aug. 6 and has been very good since. Stacking days. And you can’t ignore the changes in his game. He’s delivering the ball quicker, more decisively and more accurately, and maybe he’s not doing those things on every single snap, but he is most of the time. Hurts' game looks simpler these days. Drop back, find the open man, fire the ball. He’s seeing the game quicker. And when he’s decisive, he seems to generate more zip on the ball. If Hurts can keep that up? With the receivers this team has? The weapons he has? Hurts will be successful.
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2. There were a few reasons Jonathan Gannon didn’t call many blitzes last year. Mainly, if you’re going to blitz you better be confident in the other guys in the back end to hold their coverage, and he understandably wasn’t. But also because the Eagles didn’t really have any effective blitzers, and they haven’t for years. Last year they had a grand total of 3 ½ sacks all year by players other than defensive linemen (T.J. Edwards, Josiah Scott and Genard Avery had 1.0 each and Avonte Maddox had a half). The last time they had a linebacker or safety with more than 3.0 sacks in a season – not including 3-4 pass-rushing linebackers in Bill Davis’s defense – was Mychal Kendricks, who had 4.0 sacks back in 2013. I would expect that to change this year. Nakobe Dean can blitz. Kyzir White can blitz. Scott and Marcus Epps can both blitz. Maddox, too. Making life difficult for opposing quarterbacks is a necessity in the modern NFL, and it’s something the Eagles were terrible at last year. Blitzing can be a big part of that, and the Eagles might finally have the personnel to be good at it.
3. At a glance, it’s surprising to see A.J. Brown only had 869 receiving yards last year. But remember, he only played in 13 games during the regular season, and in one of them he was limited to eight snaps. And if you include his 142 yards in the playoffs against the Bengals, Brown was 68-for-1,011 with six TDs in 13 games he started and finished. Project that over 17 games and you’re looking at 89 catches for 1,322 yards and 8 TDs. After watching every Eagles practice this summer? After watching him work against Darius Slay and James Bradberry? After seeing how tough, physical and fast he is? And how smart he is with his late hands? And how aggressive he is attacking the ball? After seeing how he uses his strength to fight for the football? Those are the kind of numbers I’m expecting. Eagles receivers with 1,322 yards in a season? Mike Quick in 1983 and DeSean Jackson in 2013. That is all.
4. I’ve been blown away how good Zach Pascal has looked since returning from that severe bout of food poisoning that hospitalized him for four days. Pascal missed the first week of practice, lost 16 pounds and threw up 50 times before finally getting cleared to begin work on Aug. 4. But since then he’s looked surprisingly sharp. He’s got three years experience in Nick Sirianni’s offense from Indy, so I wasn’t worried about the mental side of it. But physically he looks fantastic. Fast, strong and sure-handed. He said Tuesday he’s still not where he was before he got sick, but he’s close. When the Eagles signed Pascal, I thought, OK, special teams, blocking, emergency receiver. But from what I’ve seen? He’s going to have a role on offense, especially in the red zone, where he knows how to use his size. He looks fantastic.
5. The last four times the Eagles opened up 2-0 – 2007, 2012, 2014 and 2016 – they failed to reach the playoffs. During the same span, when they started 1-1 they reached the playoffs eight of nine times.
NFL
6. Don’t be surprised if Josiah Scott finds himself in the safety rotation this fall. The other safeties outside Marcus Epps just haven’t done anything of note, and as soon as Scott added safety to his slot corner responsibilities he popped. Scott isn’t big, but in Jonathan Gannon’s defense the safeties don’t have to be. He’s smart, versatile and physical, and considering that Anthony Harris and Jaquiski Tartt have been quiet, it makes sense to at least see what Scott can do. K’Von Wallace has been OK the last couple weeks and may be working himself back into the rotation as well. The one position the Eagles are just really unsettled.
7. Kind of blows my mind that the Eagles’ Vegas over/under win number is 9 ½. You never know with this stuff, but it seems to me the additions of Haason Reddick, James Bradberry, Kyzir White, Jordan Davis, Nakobe Dean, A.J. Brown and Zach Pascal, the anticipated improvement in Jalen Hurts plus getting Isaac Seumalo and Brandon Graham back healthy along with a head coach in his second season are worth more than half a game.
8. Since his 6-for-6, 80-yard, TD performance against the Jets Friday, I’ve gotten the obligatory tweets sarcastically comparing Hurts’ performance to Sam Bradford’s 10-for-10 against the Packers in the 2015 preseason. The big difference is that Bradford at that point was an established 6th-year veteran who had started 49 games, and nobody was really concerned with his accuracy. That was never the issue with Bradford. That 10-for-10 meant nothing. With Hurts, it’s imperative that he’s more accurate this year than last year, so seeing him deliver the ball on point on that drive against the Jets was important. He has to prove he can get the ball where it’s supposed to go. By 2015, the entire league knew what Bradford was. That story has yet to be told with Hurts.
9. A couple backup offensive linemen I was on high on when camp began have struggled. Kayode Awosika did not look good when he had to play left tackle when Jordan Mailata, Andre Dillard and Le’Raven Clark were all hurt, and Sua Opeta had a rough night subbing at left guard in the Jets game. Awosika is a combo guard-tackle and may be best-suited for guard. Opeta played well last year, but his performance Friday night did not inspire a lot of confidence. With Nate Herbig gone and Jack Driscoll focused entirely on right tackle, the Eagles have some questions at guard. Rookie Cam Jurgens has focused entirely on center and has been fantastic. He hasn’t taken any guard reps in camp because obviously he has to be ready to start at center if Jason Kelce is out into the regular season. But just based on what I’ve seen him do at center, he may be the Eagles’ best backup guard.
10. I liked the J.J. Arcega-Whiteside pick in 2019. Liked it a lot. I thought, here’s a guy with great size at 6-2, 225, good enough speed at 4.49, outstanding production at a big-time program, a knack for the end zone and unparalleled character. Three years and 16 catches later, he’s gone, and I’m still not sure what the heck happened. He worked hard. He prepared well. He cared. But when he got chances, he came up small just about every time. Sixteen catches in three years for a 2nd-round pick is almost impossible. Only one wide receiver in NFL history drafted in the first two rounds who played 40 or more games in his first three years caught fewer passes, and that was Bobby Crespino of the Browns, the 10th pick in the 1961 draft. He had six. That was 61 years ago. I still wouldn’t be surprised if JJAW becomes a functional NFL player. Maybe he just needed a change of scenery. He seemed to lose his confidence very early here and never got it back. And it just got worse and worse and worse. He’s got talent. We just never saw it.
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