Birds hope Jeffery gives flight to offense
The weekly story to the Eagle’s 2016 season were the wide receivers and for all of the wrong reasons.
— -Baldy on Alshon Jeffery’s ability to go get the ball.
The weekly story to the Eagle’s 2016 season were the wide receivers and for all of the wrong reasons.
Once the euphoria of Carson Wentz faded just prior to the beginning of October, the narrative became the lack of productivity of the wide receivers, en masse.
It started for me in Detroit, Week 4, after running back, Ryan Mathews, fumbled in the final minutes with the Eagles holding a slight lead and the distinct possibility of starting the season 4–0.
On the ensuing series, Carson went deep for Nelson Agholor who was in one-on-one coverage versus Darius Slay Jr.
The safety rotated towards the middle of the field and Carson went for it all. The kind of throw that one day you hope that he will make in a Super Bowl game to try and win it. On the play, Agholor didn’t track the ball well, and eventually fell down as Slay intercepted Wentz’ first pass of his young career.
I don’t fault either player. Slay made a veteran play. But Agholor showed an inability to play big, and to be an alpha make going for what analysts call a “50–50” ball.
That is a ball that either you or the defensive back is going to get and the hungrier more aggressive player catches that ball.
From that fateful moment in Detroit, the Eagles season changed drastically. They would only win two of the next 10 games and in most of those losses it was the wide receivers that came up small.
If they weren’t dropping passes, they were running poor routes. It’s too painful to recount all of the individual errors that were turned in by departed Josh Huff, Dorial Green-Beckham, and Nelson Agholor.
Agholor went so far as to break down and admit that he had no confidence on the field or in his abilities. The Eagles were almost forced to sit him for a game and elevate a practice squad player to take his place.
Almost as soon as the season ended the Eagles sent the wide receivers coach, Greg Lewis, on his way.
How much blame anyone could put on Lewis is hard to say, but when the production was as poor as the position was, someone almost always has to be a fall guy.
Out with Lewis and in with new wide receivers coach, Mike Groh. Mike was a college quarterback at Virginia where his father, Al Groh, was the longtime head coach. for most of mike’s almost 20 years as a coach, most of it has been with the wide receiver position
The current Eagles Vice President of personnel is Joe Douglas, who in 2015 worked for Ryan Pace with the Chicago Bears. Both Mike Groh and Joe Douglas spent that 2015 season together which made their big splash in free agency, Alshon Jeffery, all the more congruent..
All of this backdrop to get to Alshon is vitally important. To an average fan, Jeffery is a huge signing and a big name. And even to the NFL Network, where I work, Alshon was the №1 free agent in all of free agency.
The fact that the Eagles signed him was amazing considering that had very little cap room to sign him and it was the biggest area of need.
But Alshon has to be looked at very closely, perhaps closer than other free agents that has come through the NovaCare complex in recent seasons collecting big fat checks and producing little.
Alshon missed four games with a PED infraction last season.
We have seen what that can do to a team when Lane Johnson incurred his second infraction this season and had to miss 10 games. The admission cannot be overlooked, as to what exactly he put into his body and why?
In addition he has had a series of soft tissue injuries to his calf and hamstrings which has had him miss games, and preseason times. He also has missed time with a fractured hand and a knee cartilage injury. for a young player with an injury history and a PED violation against him would knock him out of a lot of teams free agent lists.
But the fact that both Douglas and Groh signed off on him as a player, a teammate, and a man that will work exceedingly hard to overcome these detractions says a lot on how the Eagles have vetted him.
He turned down a long term contract in Minnesota to come play with Carson says a lot about what the league saw from Wentz in one short season.
In addition, Jeffery is willing to take a one-year contract and try to parlay that into a big-time contract with a lot of guaranteed money. Typically players give you their best of what they have when they are playing without a safety net of a long-term deal.
I have consulted with two former wide receivers that know Alshon very well and they tell me what they thought of him as a wide receiver.
Former Bear WR, and current ESPN analyst, Tom Waddle told me on 97.5 the Fanatic that Alshon is not a pure №1 receiver.
He was at his very best when he was paired with Brandon Marshall as the №1 along with Martellus Bennett as the tight end. He would get a lot of one-on-one coverage against many of the №2 cornerbacks and took advantage of that scoring 17 touchdowns in 2013–14.
Sterling Sharpe, a former Gamecock, who saw Alshon play many games in Columbia, SC., and who spent many hours evaluating him as an analyst for NFL Network had this to say: “Alshon is a big body receiver with great bottom line skills. When you watch him run he won’t wow you with his takeoff at the line of scrimmage, and he won’t take the top off the defense with top end speed. But when you look at the bottom line of NFL WR’s you want him to get open first and catch the ball. Nothing else matters. Alshon does that as well as Marshall, or OBJ, just without the ‘wow’ factor.”
Alshon will be just fine in this offense and exactly what Carson needs. A big-bodied dependable receiver who will battle Darius Slay Jr. for a deep ball with the game on the line. So when they are driving vs. the Giants and they get four shots to the end zone to win the game, Alshon can be that guy to out jump Janoris Jenkins for the ball.
What Alshon lacks in pure speed and wow factor jets will be supplied by Torrey Smith who once provided that for Joe Flacco on their road to a Super Bowl victory.
The Eagles are a much better team today than when they finished the season at year’s end against the Cowboys JV.
The wide receiver follies of 2016 are in their rear view mirror.
As one top flight Eagle executive explained to me after their free agent frenzy of March 9th, “we will surround Carson with weapons”
And landing Alshon Jeffery is a great start to that equation. Welcome to Philly Alshon.*
