After a week spent discussing the Eagles’ offense and his role in it on social media, with reporters and with Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, wide receiver A.J. Brown was involved early and often in Sunday night’s 16-9 win over the Lions.
Brown was officially targeted 11 times during the game and he picked up seven catches for 49 yards on a night when both team’s defenses reigned supreme. Brown was targeted a 12th time late in the game on a play that drew a controversial pass interference flag on Lions cornerback Rock Ya-Sin and he was asked after the game if he felt like it was the kind of night he had in mind.
“It wasn’t about targets last week or the week before,” Brown said.” It wasn’t about that at all. It was me trying to help and contribute. That’s all. Regardless of what that looked like in phases, I think I did. But, like I said, I think there’s a lot of stuff that we as an offense and me myself, that we gotta continue to get better at.”
Quarterback Jalen Hurts said, via a transcript from the team, that he was “just going with the flow of the game” based on the plays that were being called when he was asked about targeting Brown more often and suggested it might be a better question for offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo as a result. That’s likely to happen this week along with more general questions about how to spark an offense that has scored 26 points over the last two games.