Eagles News: Jalen Reagor says Derek Barnett told him to embrace the boos

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Eagles’ Jalen Reagor doesn’t mind fans booing him: ‘It shows that they’re paying attention’ - Inquirer
He has been booed at Lincoln Financial Field several times this season as a result, but the wide receiver said advice he got from defensive end Derek Barnett helps him compartmentalize the feedback. “It was funny, honestly,” Reagor said. “... Derek Barnett told me just embrace that type of stuff. It shows that they’re paying attention. That’s just like the saying, once a coach stops yelling at you and stops coaching you, then you should be worried.” Barnett and Reagor share the experience of Eagles players who haven’t played up to the expectations that come with being a first-round pick. Barnett’s in his fifth season since the team drafted him 14th in the 2017 NFL draft and hasn’t tallied more than 6.5 sacks in any of them. Reagor was the 21st pick in the 2020 draft, taken one spot ahead of Vikings star receiver Justin Jefferson. Jefferson has quickly become one of the top receivers in the league, further intensifying the scrutiny on Reagor. Reagor said the advice from teammates like Barnett has been the difference when dealing with the criticism. “It was funny to hear the boos,” Reagor said. “Then just hearing my other teammates just saying, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Just knowing they had my back regardless.”

Eagles All-22 Film Review: Observations from the win over the Football Team - BGN
This was easily one of Jalen Hurts best performances as an NFL QB. He just made good decisions, read the defense well, processed things pretty quickly and was very accurate. This was a game where Hurts had to put the team on the back a little bit as the run game struggled to get going early on (more on that later!). I do this in chronological order so I am going to start with an out of structure play by Hurts but this actually isn’t the stuff that impressed me the most. Anyway, you simply can’t coach plays like these. There are a handful of QBs in the NFL who can make plays like this on 3rd and long. It also highlights why so few teams play man coverage against the Eagles because Hurts can just do this when defenders have their backs turned. This means the Eagles often get pretty predictable coverages which helps Nick Sirianni to call good plays against zone coverage. This is just a crazy athletic play.

NFC East Mixtape Vol.38: Dallas and Philly are both playoff bound - BGN Radio
RJ Ochoa and Brandon Lee Gowton share their thoughts on the best possible playoff starting points for both the Eagles and the Cowboys. They also try to predict the new Washington Football Team name that will be revealed on February 2nd.

Eagles vs. Cowboys: Five players to watch - PhillyVoice
3) CB Zech McPhearson. The Eagles got a rare healthy season out of their cornerbacks in 2021, as Darius Slay, Steven Nelson, and Avonte Maddox played in all 16 games. As a result, McPhearson, a fourth-round rookie, didn’t see the field much in the regular defense, playing only 123 snaps. McPhearson had a great start to training camp, but he struggled a bit in the preseason games. Saturday night could be a good opportunity to get him some action against premium wide receivers like Amari Cooper and CeeDee Lamb. It’ll also be interesting to see the other cornerbacks the Eagles have been stockpiling, like Andre Chachere, Tay Gowan, Kary Vincent, and Josiah Scott.

Assessing the Philadelphia Eagles’ chances to play spoiler in each potential wild-card playoff matchup - PFF
The reigning Super Bowl champs are in similarly murky waters on the opposite side of the ball. While their defensive line is loaded with talent, including Vita Vea and Ndamukong Suh, it has underperformed against the run relative to that talent. The Buccaneers are allowing only -0.08 EPA per rush, which is a bottom-five in the NFL. Additionally, they call two-high shells 43.7% of the time, the sixth-highest rate in the league. While that could help prevent big gains through the air, the Eagles have excelled against two-high looks in 2021, garnering 0.19 EPA per pass — the sixth-best mark in the NFL. Tampa Bay’s saving grace is its league-leading blitz rate, which we have already established causes numerous issues for the Eagles. When this is factored in with the likelihood of the Bucs shifting to more one-high looks in their game plan, it’s likely they will be in a better spot than on paper, but they’ll still be disadvantaged.

2021 NFL playoffs: Projecting all 14 postseason teams and seeding - NFL.com
The Eagles’ most likely situation heading into Super Wild Card Weekend is as the No. 7 seed facing the second-seeded Bucs. Philly’s second-most likely scenario is as the sixth seed, taking on No. 3 seed ... Bucs. In 90.8 percent of my playoff brackets, my model has the Eagles traveling to Tampa Bay. As a team, the Eagles have outperformed their expected rushing yards on 39.8 percent of rush attempts since Week 7 (highest rate in the NFL over that span). Their +226 rushing yards over expected during that period trails only the Colts (+398) and Browns (+276).

NFL picks against the spread: Sheil Kapadia has the 49ers, Chargers, and Steelers in Week 18 - The Athletic
The Cowboys currently own the four seed, and the most likely scenario is they stay there. They move up to No. 3 with a win, a Los Angeles Rams loss and an Arizona Cardinals loss. They move up to No. 2 with a win, a Rams loss, a Cardinals loss and a Tampa Bay Buccaneers loss. Mike McCarthy has indicated he plans to play his starters, but we’ll see if he sticks to that. The Eagles, meanwhile, are locked into the six or seven seed. They had 12 players go on the reserve/COVID-19 list this week, and it seems likely that they’ll be playing a bunch of backups in this one. The pick: Cowboys (-7).

Greg Ward epitomizes the Eagles’ team-first mentality - PE.com
For a couple of seasons, he was a budding wide receiver threat wrapped around a nice story to tell: Greg Ward, collegiate quarterback at the University of Houston, made the transition to wide receiver at the NFL level and showed that, by golly, he could play the position well enough to catch 53 passes, score 6 touchdowns, and play 70 percent of the snaps in 2020, his second full season on the field in the league. This was a tale that had some legs, some oomph to it, and Ward patiently explained it every time he was asked about the mechanics of going from quarterback to receiver. And, oh, he was asked about it plenty. Then came 2021 and a new coaching staff with the Eagles and Ward’s story took a much different turn. With a wide receiver room fortified with four selections from the most recent two NFL Drafts, where did Ward fit? How did Ward fit? “I know that I have a job to do and that has to be my focus,” Ward said in Training Camp. “I’m here to present the best version of me.” Ward’s playing time hasn’t been as robust as in past seasons – he has played 202 snaps in 2021, 19 percent of the offensive plays. But Ward has been a key member of the team for many reasons – his leadership, the way he has accepted his role, and the plays he has made when he is on the field.

State of the NFC East: Cowboys and Eagles are both headed to the playoffs - Blogging The Boys
When the Cowboys were in contention for the number two seed it seemed very possible for them to host the Eagles in the Wildcard Round. As Dallas is likely headed for the four spot now that scenario has taken a massive hit in probability. As a result this week will very likely be the last Cowboys/Eagles matchup of the season, and considering it isn’t a true and authentic contest like normal, it won’t exactly have the same feel that the rivalry traditionally does. It remains to be seen how much each team even plays their starters, something the Eagles are giving serious thought to.

Building blocks: Who can the Giants count on for 2022 and beyond? - Big Blue View
I’m going to say this right up front: I am not counting Daniel Jones nor Saquon Barkley as cornerstones or building blocks. In Jones has a persistent injury history dating back to his college days and is still making too many of same mistakes we saw on tape from him at Duke. I’ll be writing on this more in the near future, but I firmly believe that the quarterback position is THE foundation piece for the whole football team, and a team that isn’t sure about their QB isn’t going to win consistently. And frankly, we have seen far too many young quarterbacks find significant success in their first or second years (Dak Prescott, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Kyler Murray, Mac Jones, etc.) to keep giving Jones a pass. As for Barkley, his injury history is concerning enough to keep him off the list, but too much of any running back’s production is dependent on outside factors for me to count any runner as a “cornerstone” or “building block” in the modern NFL.

Report: LT Charles Leno signs extension to stay in Washington 3 more years - Hogs Haven
Leno is 30 years old and an 8-year NFL veteran who was drafted by the Bears, and who played for them from 2014-2020. He was released this past offseason after the Bears drafted Teven Jenkins in the second round. The move did not pay off well for Chicago; the team has suffered a great deal of disruption at the position and eventually had to sign 39-year-old Jason Peters as a street free agent just prior to the season in an effort to bring some stability to their situation. Chicago’s loss seems to have been Washington’s gain. Leno has played well at the position, anchoring the left side along with LG Ereck Flowers, but the veteran left tackle has also been active in the community, and both he and his wife are active on Twitter, frequently engaging with Washington fans.

Which NFL QBs Could Be on the Move This Offseason? And Where Might They End Up? - The Ringer
Not too long ago, it seemed like Wilson and the Seahawks were headed for a split. Maybe that’s still the case, but the last month has at least provided a glimpse of how Shane Waldron’s offense could look if Seattle is able to get it up and running—which might be enough to convince Russ to rescind the trade demand he claims he never made last year despite sending his list of preferred destinations to Adam Schefter. The Seahawks star told reporters last week that he “hopes” this past home game wasn’t his last in Seattle—so maybe there’s hope for a future together after all.

The 5 teams with the brightest futures in the NFL - SB Nation
The end of the NFL regular season is often a chance for reflection. It’s a chance to take stock, to look at what the organization is working with, and see what could possibly catapult a team from the cellar to a challenger, or from a middling team to a contender. A couple of weeks back I took a look at the most hopeless teams in the league — organizations with deep problems that will need a lot of time and effort to fix. Today we’ll kick off the new year by flipping the coin and diving into teams who may not be elite right now, but greatness is building. For the purposes of keeping this interesting, I’m not going to look at teams who are already great. You don’t need to hear that the Rams are going to be good for a while, or that the Chiefs have a bright future — that’s already baked in to their recent history.

NFL University #22: Derrick Henry, Chiefs v. Bengals, and Stafford questions - The SB Nation NFL Show
Welcome back to another edition of NFL University! Stephen Serda, Kyle Posey, and Michael Peterson dive into what we learned about playoff-hopeful teams in week 17. The Titans look like they will get the first-round bye in the AFC, and Derrick Henry returned to practice. The Chiefs had a bad game plan against the Bengals but it didn’t change how we view them in the AFC. The Cowboys a week after exploding underwhelm against the Cardinals, and Matthew Stafford’s play should worry Rams fans about their playoff chances.

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