We may have been miscalculating the importance of all of those Eagles offseason losses.
No team is perfect. No team has everything it wants. Blame the salary cap, but while you’re at it, credit Howie Roseman for the job he is doing. The Philadelphia Eagles’ general manager has the same advantages and disadvantages as everyone else.
Somehow, he keeps making magic. If there are any deficiencies on this roster, he has done a damn fine job of masking them. Arguments can be made that Philadelphia has a star or a star in the making at seemingly every position.
They endured massive losses, particularly on the defensive side of the ball, but through the most recent NFL Draft and free agency, Howie and company have built a fine unit. They may be just as good, if not better than the ensemble that befuddled the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 59.
But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement.
Rumors of the Eagles’ defensive demise may have been overstated
In one fell swoop (pun intended), Philadelphia lost a couple of handfuls of valuable contributors from the Super Bowl-winning roster. Mekhi Becton, Oren Burks, Parris Campbell, Britain Covey, Kenneth Gainwell, and Fred Johnson will all play in new NFL cities during the coming pro football season. So will Avonte Maddox, Isaiah Rodgers, Josh Sweat, and Milton Williams.
Sure, Covey got hurt, and most of those guys are reserves. It still doesn’t take a mathematician to deduce that there are a lot of snaps that need to be replaced. That’s particularly true on the defensive side of the ball, but is it too far-fetched an argument to reason that we may be overblowing the severity of some of these losses?
Becton was a starter, but Campbell didn’t play much. Replacing Gainwell with Will Shipley feels like a wash, but let’s focus on the defensive side of the ball, seeing as how that has been, more often than not, where panic tends to dwell.
We all love Josh Sweat, but he had his moments where he disappeared. Are we sure Jalyx Hunt isn’t just as good? Are we sure ‘Sweaty’ is better than Josh Uche or Azeez Ojulari?
Who’s to say that Kelee Ringo and/or Adoree Jackson can’t fill the voids left by Slay and Rodgers? We’ll revisit that in a few weeks. That one is interesting, but what about Milton Williams? Let’s talk about him. Is it possible that the New England Patriots overpaid for a player who has spent his entire career as Philadelphia’s third defensive tackle (or worse)?
No one is mad at Milton for getting paid, and just like everyone else on this list, everyone still has love for him and what he gave to this franchise, but no one can guarantee whether or not Ty Robinson would be any better or worse as a third defensive tackle. Again, we’ll revisit that soon enough.
The wild card is Andrew Mukuba. He’s a better cover guy than C.J. Gardner-Johnson, but C.J. is a better tackler. Both make plays and turn the ball over. So, did Philadelphia ‘lose’ by swapping a talented safety with another who is less expensive and younger?
These are all questions that we won’t know the answers to until the regular season begins. We won’t learn much from the preseason. We often don’t. The actual test of these guys will come when the games count against the win-loss total come September and beyond.
This team’s young and veteran core is still intact, for the most part. All that has been said sets the stage for the following declaration. Rumors of the Eagles’ demise on defense may have been overstated.
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