May 13, 2024
On Thursday we solicited questions for an Eagles mailbag via Twitter or whatever it's called now. Thank you as always for doing half the work for me. This is Part II (Part I here). Let's just get right to it.
Question from @nicknugget: If Jurgens has a good season, will the Eagles give him a big extension or do you think he plays on the last year of his deal? Extending him after one season of playing center seems risky.
If Jurgens has a good season, you can be pretty sure the Eagles will want to lock him up long-term as soon as they're able, like they did with Landon Dickerson this offseason. That's just what they do along their offensive line. They don't let good ones leave.
Question from OblandOb: Do the Eagles have any hope that Mekhi Becton could be the RT of the future or is he strictly a short term swing tackle option?
I don't think the Eagles signed Becton with any reasonable hope that he can be a long-term successor to Lane Johnson. He signed a one-year deal worth $2.75 million, with an additional $2.75 million in incentives.
Becton is a mammoth 6'7, 364-pound tackle who was a first-round selection (11th overall) of the Jets in the 2020 NFL Draft. His career got off to a promising start when he played reasonably well as a rookie at left tackle. However, he suffered a knee injury Week 1 in 2021 and missed the rest of the season. In 2022, he moved to right tackle but was injured during training camp and missed the entire season. He then reportedly ballooned to around 400 pounds.
In 2023, he dropped weight and started in 16 games. PFF had him down for 12 sacks allowed and 18 (!) penalties.
Last offseason, the Eagles signed a bunch of players who fit some or all of the following criteria:
Some examples of those guys include Marcus Mariota, Terrell Edmunds, Rashaad Penny, Greedy Williams, and Justin Evans. I would put Becton in a the same bucket. He's a lottery ticket.
Maybe Jeff Stoutland can coax the raw talent out of Becton that the Jets could not (possibly even at guard), but it's more likely that he'll be a guy who is with the team for one year and then moves on.
Question from @bigseb31213: The Eagles signed/drafted a bunch of "lottery pick" offensive linemen. Which do you think are most likely to make the roster?
In addition to Becton, the Eagles added five rookies:
We outlined our projected drafted rookie roles last week. The CliffsNotes:
• Keegan should get a shot to compete for a starting job at RG, though he'll be a longshot.
• McMahon probably has to bulk up a bit in the weight room. I believe he'll probably make the team, but could be a gameday inactive while Matt Hennessy serves as the primary backup at center in 2024.
And then the two undrafted rookies were thought of as draftable players:
• Ayedze had a 5th/6th round grade from both Dane Brugler of The Athletic and Lance Zierlein of NFL.com
• Dankwah had a 7th round grade from Brugler and Zierlein.
And finally, the Eagles signed another Aussie with no football experience in Vakalahi, after Jeff Stouland had enormous success molding Jordan Mailata into a star left tackle. You can read about Vakalahi's backstory here.
I'll be publishing a "way too early 53-man roster projection" next week, but I would probably have Keegan, McMahon, and Becton making the team.
Question from @RealEthanGruber: Can we gain any insights from the Top 30 pre-draft visits? If they speak to a prospect early, are they more likely to get selected, and later visits are a smoke screen? Or that they don't want to tip their hand early, so they meet more likely draftees later?
In 2022, the Eagles' first reported top 30 visit was Jordan Davis. In 2023, three of their first 15 reported top 30 visits were Jalen Carter, Nolan Smith, and Kelee Ringo. And in 2024, their first reported top 30 visit was Cooper DeJean. So yes, I think we can deduce that if the Eagles bring someone in for a visit early in the process, they are probably pretty interested in that player.
Question from @shadysburner: How do you feel about the linebacker group and do you think Howie adds another safety before the season? The secondary looks great on paper but I don’t feel too good going in with Nakobe Dean and Devin White, especially with Dean's injury history thus far.
Linebacker is pretty clearly the shakiest positional group on the roster, which isn't out of the ordinary for the Eagles. I don't think they'll add anyone really notable there though, with Dean and White penciled in as the starters, and a mix some vets with experience and rookie Jeremiah Trotter behind them.
On a side note, one of the Eagles' offseason signings was Zack Baun, who played both on the edge and at off-ball linebacker for the Saints. Because he played a lot more on the edge, the general feeling was that he would primarily play there in Philly as well. However, Vic Fangio said last Thursday that he'll play off-ball linebacker.
We've got [Zack] Baun here who's played a little bit of inside linebacker in New Orleans," Fangio said when asked about the linebacker group. "He really didn't play a whole lot of defense there, but he was inside some, more outside. We think he can play inside, and I have not seen anything so far that says otherwise."
Interestingly, Baun was the first player Fangio mentioned, before getting to White, Dean, and the others.
As for safety, yes, as noted in our post-draft "remaining holes to fill" post, I think the Eagles will add a fourth safety at some point.
Question from @TripleCeePee: With receiver contracts exploding is there a chance an 80-100 reception season for Barkley makes his deal extremely good value?
Well, if Barkley catches 80 passes this season, I think that the Eagles' offense will have gone in a direction that it should not have, given that they employ A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Dallas Goedert. Those guys — mainly Brown and Smith — will dominate targets.
That said, if Barkley can stay healthy (a significant "if"), he can have somewhere in the ballpark of 300 touches in 2024. Let's say, for example, 260 carries and 40 receptions. If he's touching the ball 300 times and making $13 million per season, I think that's a way better value than what some receivers got this offseason, like Darnell Mooney, who averaged 36 receptions per season the last two years and who somehow got a new $13 million/year contract this offseason.
Question from InlandCaGuy: Where did the Eagles rank last season in terms of percentage of receptions made by receivers outside the top 3? I expect it was extremely low - do we think Kellen Moore will change that this year?
Brown, Smith, and Goedert combined for 246 receptions and 353 targets in 2023. The other 10 players who got at east one target had 123 receptions and 171 targets combined. I don't have any kind of league ranking on that at my fingertips, but you can be pretty sure their percentage of receptions outside the top 3 was super low.
Ideally, Barkley can have more positive contributions in the passing game than D'Andre Swift did last year, but I don't know that Moore will (or even should) actively try to spread the ball around to other guys, because, I mean, what else do they really have in the passing game aside from Brown, Smith, Goedert, and Barkley?
Question from @bula412: Jimmy, how difficult will it be to keep the Cowboys under 10 bullet points in the dumpster fire series?
Ha, I do think there should be a lot of material for the Cowboys this year, and the Giants are always easy pickings. I'm a little concerned about not finding 10 really good bullet points on the Commanders, though. I think they've had a great offseason.
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