With the Philadelphia Eagles' Super Bowl LIX rematch against the Kansas City Chiefs just two days away, let's open up the mailbag. As always, thank you for doing half the work for me. This will be Part I of a two-part mailbag.
Question from Steven (via email): Why isn’t the media calling out all these senseless signings and trades?
Hmmm... 🤔. Were they senseless? I think I can make sense of pretty much all of them.
• QB Sam Howell: Neither of the quarterbacks competing for the QB3 job looked capable of playing in a real game, so there was already a need there to begin with. But also, QB2 Tanner McKee injured his thumb. McKee has already missed one game, and looks likely to miss at least one more. The Eagles didn't want to be stuck with just Kyle McCord or Dorian Thompson-Robinson as the QB2 until McKee was ready to return, so they traded for a more legit backup.
• OT Fred Johnson: Nobody competing for the swing tackle job stepped up in training camp, so the Eagles traded for their 2024 swing tackle in Fred Johnson, with whom they seem comfortable. Certainly, everyone has to feel better about Fred playing LT or RT than Matt Pryor, right?
• WR John Metchie: A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith each missed four games last season, and they learned that they were pretty thin thereafter. The Eagles obviously didn't love their wide receiver depth this year either, and for good reason. Metchie brings more to the table than Ainias Smith.
• CB Jakorian Bennett: This one was pretty obvious, right? Nobody was stepping up and taking the CB2 job, so the Eagles added another player to that competition. Bennett still has a chance of replacing Adoree' Jackson in the starting lineup at some point. We'll see.
• EDGE Za'Darius Smith: The Eagles have three edge rushers they can probably feel OK about in Nolan Smith, Jalyx Hunt, and Josh Uche. But when Patrick Johnson is getting double-digit snaps on the edge in real games, you probably have to add to that group.
• RB/KR Tank Bigsby: Will Shipley is hurt, and personally, I don't see the upside with A.J. Dillon. Bigsby upgrades the Eagles' running back depth, as well as their kick return units, which are more important this season with the new kickoff rules.
The Eagles think they can win another Super Bowl, and they're making moves to help improve the roster. Shouldn't that be celebrated? Like, do you not want your team's front office to aggressively upgrade weak positions on the roster?
I will say that maybe a valid criticism could be that they didn't adequately fill a bunch of these spots during the offseason and now they're forced to part with some Day 3 picks to fix them as the season is beginning. But every trade they made has reasonable logic behind it.
Question from @BigsWinz: Why haven’t the Eagles traded for a corner yet? They are watching the same game as us.
Well, they did trade for Jakorian Bennett. Step 2 on that transaction would be to start him over Jackson. Again, we'll see.
But also, cornerback seems to be a pretty thin position at the moment, league-wide. Here's a link to all of the NFL's starting outside corners, by team. The are a lot of injured corners (in red), and a dearth of teams with extra corner depth. Teams around the league have no reason to trade away good cornerbacks at the moment. Honestly, it was kind of a weird circumstance that spurred the Raiders to even trade Bennett. Basically, the Raiders have a new head coach in Pete Carroll, who historically has not employed smaller corners. (Bennett is 5'11.)
Maybe at the trade deadline, when a bunch of teams will have conceded that their season is in the toilet?
Question from @TragicBronsxn: Over/Under on games before Adoree Jackson is benched?
1.5. For me, it's not even that he has given up a lot of completions both in the preseason and in the first game against Dallas. It's that he is also a woeful tackler.
That 👆 is unacceptable.
It's not as if he's some young player who is just trying to find his footing and maybe has some upside. I think this is a "what you see is what you get" situation.
Question from @Bake_me_cakes: How do Ringo, Bennett, and McWilliams fit into the Eagles' short & long-term plans? Curious to hear your take.
I think it's pretty cut and dried.
As noted above, Bennett still has a chance to start in place of Jackson, in my opinion, and that could come soon if Jackson continues to play poorly.
Ringo had a golden opportunity to grab a starting job, but he wasn't up to the challenge. He remains one of the best gunners in the league, so he still has a role here on special teams, and they'll continue to try to develop him at corner.
McWilliams is the backup slot corner, for now. I thought he did some nice things in camp, and they tried him both inside and outside. They'll continue to develop him, too. Obviously he's just a rookie, so he'll have time to grow within the scheme.
Question from @ruckus (via Bluesky): The Birds have 7 edge defenders. What's the next move, because they're not gonna carry all of them thru the season, right?
Nolan Smith, Jalyx Hunt, and Josh Uche are going to be part of the edge rusher rotation throughout the season. On a side note, Uche actually had a really strong game despite only playing 19 defensive snaps against the Cowboys. Thread here:
And then we'll see what Za'Darius Smith looks like whenever he gets a chance to play.
Thereafter, the Eagles have two guys who were healthy scratches Week 1 in Azeez Ojulari and Ogbo Okoronkwo, and a career special teams guy in Patrick Johnson. So, I do agree there's some overkill there.
I'm glad Ojulari came up, because I've been getting questions about whether he could be cut to preserve a compensatory pick. What does that mean? Well, Ojulari is currently canceling out a compensatory pick that otherwise would have been gained by the Eagles for the loss of Isaiah Rodgers in free agency.
Back in 2019 during the regular season, the Eagles cut Andrew Sendejo, who was going to cancel out a comp pick for the loss of WR Golden Tate in free agency. That move eliminated Sendejo from the comp pick formula. The Eagles were then awarded a fourth-round pick for the loss of Tate the following offseason.
However, what also happened the following offseason is that language was added to the 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement that put an end to cutting players to gain a comp pick. The short-short explanation is that if the Eagles cut Ojulari, he will still cancel out the pick that would have been gained for the loss of Rodgers. The Eagles could very well cut him anyway, but they won't get an extra draft pick out of it.
Question from @Hulkeinstein: Do you think the Za’Darius Smith signing shuts the door on a substantial edge addition via trade before the deadline?
We'll see. If he looks like he still has some gas in the tank — and he did have nine sacks last year — then yes, they're probably done adding to the edge. If he looks like Robert Quinn out there, I could see them taking another shot on someone.
Question from @timwescott (via Bluesky): It seems like Howie overpaid for Bigsby. Am I wrong for getting Genard Avery vibes with this trade?
Bigsby had a good season last year. He carried 168 times for 766 yards (4.6 YPC) and 7 TDs on an absolutely terrible Jaguars team. By comparison, Travis Etienne carried 150 times for 558 yards (3.7 YPC) and 2 TDs. Bigsby averaged almost a full yard more per carry.
Bigsby can presumably help immediately as a kick returner, and then in the regular offense as soon as he gets up to speed to some degree in the Eagles' playbook.
Genard Avery was an undersized, oddball player who was still a bit of a project when the Eagles acquired him. Personally, I wouldn't make a connection between those two players.
Question from @peteb: How pissed should players be that the NFLPA didn’t want Jalen Carter to appeal? Since accepting it has now set precedent for all other players that spitting results in a suspension, when it never has in the past.
I don't know that they "didn't want" Carter to appeal. He just didn't exercise his right to appeal. I would say that simply not spitting on other players should be an easy thing to abide by, and any efforts by the NFLPA to preserve mild punishment for that type of act would be a hill not worth dying on. I doubt that any players care at all about future spitting incidents being subject to suspension.
Question from @mattpd03: Not a question… just requesting a tush push hypocrisy tracker!!
We called out the Bills for running two Tush Pushes Week 1 after they adamantly said it was a dangerous play during the offseason. I have since gotten a bunch of requests for a Tush Push tracker. I cannot commit to that, for two reasons.
I'm spread a little too thin as it as, and have a hard time keeping up with my other in-season trackers / running features.
The Bills were the only team to vote to ban the Tush Push who ran it Week 1. There were like seven or eight teams that ran regular old QB sneaks with no pushing element behind it, so I'm not sure if many teams are going to run it this year. I think many of them probably understand the hypocritical nature of it, and/or want to preserve the ability to claim it's dangerous. If that changes throughout the season, I'll reconsider.
Question from @PhilaBCoulter: Of all the discussions and debates about what happened, can we at least agree that it’s pretty weird that nobody on Dallas’s offense stood up to Carter afterwards? Like, he spit on your QB, the Cowboys' QB, and……???
I agree that was weird, and it would not have gone down that way if a Cowboys defender spit on Jalen Hurts.
Question from @Supamandatho: What are your thoughts on self-proclaimed QB gurus having hurts as the 13th best QB in the league?
We covered that in depth this offseason. My short answer is that I would just say that if a "self-proclaimed QB guru" has someone like Geno Smith (12 years in league, losing record, zero playoff wins) ahead of Hurts, you can pretty easily just ignore them.
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