Mailbag: Should the Eagles sign or trade for Justin Simmons, Matthew Judon, Noah Brown, or Treylon Burks?

On Tuesday 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 will be Part I of a two-part mailbag. Let's just get right to it.

Question from @7he_Reason: Should Howie be watching the Matthew Judon situation? Or any others?

Judon is one of the NFL's most underrated players. He had 12.5 sacks in 2021, 15.5 sacks in 2022, and 4 sacks in 4 games before a biceps tear ended his season in 2023. He turns 32 in August.

There was a recent report that he wouldn't play the 2024 season on the final year of his current contract. He refuted that report.

The Eagles have Bryce Huff, Josh Sweat, Brandon Graham, Nolan Smith, and Jalyx Hunt on the edge. If you trade for a guy like Judon, Smith becomes the fifth guy in the pecking order, and the team really needs to see what they have in him this season. I don't think that a veteran edge rusher is on the Eagles' radar at the moment, but if there are injuries or underperformance there and Judon hasn't gotten a new deal, that's perhaps a name to file away for the trade deadline if the Eagles appear to be contenders.

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Question from @MaxwellLang95: Will the Eagles sign Justin Simmons before the season starts? Based purely of familiarity in Vic Fangio's system, I'd have guessed they would have brought him in by now.

The Eagles currently have six safeties on their roster. Only three are roster locks. They are Chauncey Gardner-Johnson, Reed Blankenship, and Sydney Brown. Brown is still recovering from an ACL tear suffered in January, so he may not be ready for the start of the regular season, meaning that they really only have two safeties they can be confident will play Week 1.

They also played Avonte Maddox at safety during the spring, and Cooper DeJean played some safety in college, so he could theoretically fill in there in a pinch, if need be.

Their depth there isn't really that bad, assuming Brown won't be missing for too long, but there is certainly an argument for bolstering depth.

If you search Justin Simmons' name on Twitter, you'll see fans of a lot of different teams wondering why their team hasn't signed him yet. The Titans reportedly kicked the tires on Simmons, but one of their beats said that his price was too high.

There are a lot of old safeties with recognizable names available on the open market, like Simmons, Eddie Jackson (another former Fangio player), Quandre Diggs, Micah Hyde, Jayron Kearse, etc. Safeties are heavy on supply and seemingly light on demand, so the Eagles should be able to bring in one of those guys on a team-friendly deal if they find during camp that they don't like what they see from their safety depth, but I can't see them shelling out good money for one.

Question from BirdGang54: What are some teams that have good or interesting depth at WR that might cut a guy the Eagles would be interested in signing?

If a team were to cut a receiver, he's probably not worthy of a WR3 job. If the Eagles are going to address that spot in a meaningful way, it would probably have to be via trade. The two players that I think make some sense are Noah Brown (Texans) and Treylon Burks (Titans).

Brown is probably the WR4 in Houston behind Nico Collins, Stefon Diggs, and Tank Dell. He has been in the NFL for six seasons, and it took him a little while to become a productive receiver.

He and Kellen Moore were in Dallas together for six seasons. 

But it was 2023 when Brown had something of a breakthrough season. He had 33 catches for 567 yards (a very good 17.2 YPC) and 2 TDs in just 10 games. He had two monster games in a pair of Texans shootout wins:

1. 6 catches on 6 targets for 153 yards and a TD in a 39-37 win over the Bucs.
2. 7 catches on 8 targets for 172 yards in a 30-27 win over the Bengals.

He has good size at 6'2, 215, and plays like it.

As you can see in the bottom tweet above, he made the most of the opportunities that came his way.

In 2023, Brown's snaps were about 40:60 slot vs. outside, so, you know, he can do both. For the Eagles' purposes, with A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith also playing some in the slot, that's a perfectly fine ratio.

Burks was the player the Titans drafted with the first-round pick they got from the Eagles in the A.J. Brown trade. That trade, uhhhh, did not work out for the Titans. He has been a disappointment in Tennessee, and the GM/HC who were in place when he was drafted are now gone. Still, he has talent, and the most common comp for him leading up to the 2022 draft was... A.J. Brown! He's behind guys like DeAndre Hopkins, Calvin Ridley, and Tyler Boyd in their pecking order, so it might not take much to get him.

Question from @BadgerVMD: Is there a position on the team where you think a Week 1 starter is not currently on the roster?

This question got me wondering how often Eagles players not on the initial 90-man roster to start camp have started recent Week 1 games. Let's just go back as far as the Super Bowl season:

• 2023: LB Zach Cunningham.
• 2022: S Chauncey Gardner-Johnson.
• 2021: None, though they did sign CB Steven Nelson a few days before the start of camp.
• 2020: None, though they signed RG LT Jason Peters a week or two ahead of camp to start at RG in place of Brandon Brooks, and then had to pay him more in September to play LT after Andre Dillard got hurt.
• 2019: None.
• 2018: WR DeAndre Carter (!), S Corey Graham.
• 2017: CB Ronald Darby.

Before researching that, I wouldn't have thought it was as common as it is.

If that were to happen this year, I think the obvious spot would be at WR3. Thereafter I'd say safety, if they made a surprise move for someone like Simmons, or at linebacker if they don't like what they see there in camp.

Question from @silverdj7: Is anyone else concerned that the Eagles have no one on the edge that can stop the run?

The run defense in general was a tale of two seasons last year for the Eagles. In eight of their first nine games, they held their opponents to under 100 rushing yards. They were allowing an average of 66.7 rushing yards per game, best in the NFL. Thereafter, they became one of the worst run defenses in the NFL, giving up at least 100 rushing yards to each of their last 9 opponents, and an average of 142 rushing yards allowed per game. Why the drop-off?

1. They were playing a lot from behind in the back half of the season, whereas they had more leads in the first half.
2. Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter had some conditioning issues.
3. The defense as a whole played a ton of snaps during a stretch against the Commanders, Cowboys, Chiefs, and Bills last season, and I think that took a toll on a bunch of players, like Carter and Davis (as noted above), but also guys like Josh Sweat and even Haason Reddick.
4. Players simply didn't know what they were doing in the Eagles' unorganized mess of a defense when the staff was turned over from Sean Desai to Matt Patricia.

Question from @GLCrandall: I think too many people are brushing over just how bad/dysfunctional Matt Patricia was when he took over DC duties last year. That directly coincided with when the team fell apart. I feel like many ignore this and want to just blame Sirianni. Do you agree?

Patricia's awfulness has been covered at length by like everyone. That aside, Sirianni made the obviously insane decision — even at the time — to switch to Patricia (or at least he took the bullet for that decision), so in my opinion he deserves more criticism than Patricia himself.

Question from @JoeJohn06349288: Why is everyone brushing off the Kelce loss? I think the offensive line takes a massive step back without him.

Another "brushing off" question! Are people brushing that off? That was No. 3 in our Eagles dumpster fire post. 

Question from @JALupowitz: Considering factors like age and current contract, if you could “steal” any one NFL player from another team and add him to this Eagles roster, who would you choose?

Hm, let me give that one some deep thought, ha. Patrick Mahomes.

Question from @usfsucks: As a huge Eagles and Phillies fan, why should I find myself getting excited or spend my energy caring about this football season at this point, given the way last season ended for the Birds and how much fun this Phillies season has been so far?

You can't multitask that one? I mean, if MLB and the NFL have some massive screw-up like they did in 2022 when the Eagles played a Thursday night game in Houston against the Texans at the same time the Phillies played a World Series game against the Astros, by all means watch the Phillies. But there's no rule against watching one or the other.

Question from IrishIggles: I'm sure you've been asked this relentlessly but any chance of a new pod soon?

We're working on it.

Question from @PreMoveObserver: How will the new big screen at the facility change your method of operation for this Training Camp? Do you have any suggestions (realistic or never happening) for the Eagles to make the reporters experience better/more comfortable?

The big screen, for those unfamiliar:       

We won't be able to see much on the big screen, I don't think.

As for the Eagles helping out (local) reporters, legit lol. Hell, I'd settle for just having the training camp schedule so I can plan real life things (time with my daughter, etc.) around it.