January 02, 2024
Eric Hartline/USA Today Sports
Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown is on pace to rewrite the franchise record book.
The Eagles are a rudderless ship falling ass-backwards into the playoffs, but the one constant in a season that could go down in infamy is A.J. Brown.
Even during the Birds' back-to-back blowout losses to San Francisco and Dallas, Brown continued to rack up gaudy numbers, totaling 17 catches for 208 yards in another wise completely humiliating stretch.
Brown is a superstar, the most prolific receiver on a season-by-season basis in franchise history and the team's clear-cut MVP for the 2023 campaign.
He's also, somehow, not getting the ball enough.
The answer to the Nick Sirianni-Brian Johnson offensive paradigm isn't clear and the cracks in the Eagles' once impenetrable unit may not have their true causes revealed until after this regime is ousted at an indefinite point in the future. The Eagles' biggest (and second-biggest and third-biggest...) issue is their mess of a defense and whatever in the world went on with the Sean Desai-for-Matt Patricia swap, but the offense could still be better. All the pressure is on the Eagles' offense to dominate because of the sieve this defense has become, but another level is attainable.
Throw it to Brown more!
Brown was targeted just five times in Sunday's embarrassing loss to Arizona, hauling in four of those passes for 53 yards. It was the fewest times Brown has been targeted in a game since the Eagles' Week 11 win over Kansas City, as the Chiefs' defense blanketed Brown. The wideout was targeted only four times that game and he caught just one of those balls, but the Birds won. Winning cures all, but when losses of this magnitude are piling up, questions will rightfully arise.
The Eagles had a nearly 50-50 run-pass ratio in Week 17, running 23 times for 91 yards (3.96 yards per play) while throwing it 24 times for 184 yards (7.67 yards per play). Erasing some of those early down draws to Hurts that emit a collective groan from the fan base and cooking up more quick, over-the-middle throws to Brown, a constant in their 2022 playbook, would be wise and could save their season from disaster. Whenever Jalen Hurts connects on one of those slants to Brown, it's easy to wonder why they don't just do that three times per drive and march their way into the end zone. There's a difference between being predictable, which the Eagles have increasingly become, and possessing a setup so successful that even prepared defenses can't stop. This Hurts-to-Brown connection falls in the latter camp.
Eschewing the (deserved) negativity around the team for the moment, let's put some of Brown's numbers in perspective.
No receiver to wear midnight (or kelly..) green is doing what Brown is doing.
In 33 games in a two-year stretch, Brown has recorded 2,943 yards on 193 catches with 18 touchdowns to boot. If the Terrell Owens era doesn't end in a tire fire, perhaps Owens, a top-three receiver in the history of the sport, out-paces Brown, but we're not dealing in hypotheticals here. Brown is unmatched.
| Player | Years | Rec | Yds | TDs |
| A.J. Brown | '22-'23 | 193 | 2943 | 18 |
| DeVonta Smith | '22-'23 | 176 | 2262 | 14 |
| Irving Fyar | '96-'97 | 174 | 2511 | 17 |
| Mike Quick | '83-'84 | 130 | 2461 | 22 |
| Harold Carmichael | '78-'79 | 107 | 1944 | 19 |
| Tommy McDonald | '61-'62 | 130 | 2461 | 22 |
It's not a debate. He can be unstoppable.
Brown set the Eagles' single-season franchise record for receiving yards last year with 1,496. If the team correctly targets him on Sunday in the Meadowlands with an outside chance of still winning the division title, he could break his own record, standing just 49 yards away.
There's been talk for a while about the Birds having a "tune-up" game. It was supposed to be each of the last two weeks, but never came to fruition. The defense will never be "tuned-up" at this rate and will likely get the doors blown off them at some point in January, but if the Eagles' offense is up to the Herculean task of entirely carrying this team, it starts with the ball going Brown's way early and often.
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