Brandon Graham’s potentially surprising role, the likely plan at cornerback with Isaiah Rodgers out and a pivotal play in Eagles history.
It’s an opening-day version of Roob’s 10 Random Eagles Observations, and 235 days after the catastrophe in Tampa ended an unprecedented collapse, the Eagles try again with a new roster, a revamped coaching staff and once again, Super Bowl aspirations.
1. If you’re thinking Brandon Graham is only here to take a few bows, make a few rah-rah speeches and ride the bench during his 15th and final NFL season, you might have to think again. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio loves B.G. and indicated this week that the 36-year-old may be asked to play more than last year: “I told him, ‘Be ready to play.’ There's no pitch count on him.” Graham averaged 23 snaps per game last year, his lowest figure since 2013, when he played about 20 per game. But he was productive when he did get on the field and ranked 24th by Pro Football Focus out of 115 edge rushers who played at least 250 snaps. He finished the season with 3.0 sacks, six QB hits and 11 pressures playing about a third of the defensive snaps. With Haason Reddick gone, that’s 862 snaps the Eagles have to replace. Bryce Huff will get a lot of them but not 862. Josh Sweat probably won’t go over the 49 snaps per game he played last year. If Nolan Smith is productive, he’ll play a lot. But Graham said he’s ready for a bigger workload. At 275 pounds, he’s lighter than he has been in over a decade and he said he feels fast and strong as he’s set to become the first Eagle ever to play 15 seasons. “I feel great and I’m ready to go,” B.G. said. “Whatever they ask, I’m ready.”
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2. One of the key matchups Friday night will be the Eagles’ rebuilt interior offensive line contending with Packers interior lineman Kenny Clark, one of the best in the league. Clark, a three-time Pro Bowler, lines up everywhere but on the left side a little more than the right side. This will be Mekhi Becton’s first NFL start at right guard and Cam Jurgens’ first NFL start at center, and they’ll be tested by Clark, who had career highs with 7 ½ sacks, nine tackles for loss and 16 quarterback hits in 2023. The Packers have a new defensive coordinator in Jeff Hafley, and they were as vanilla defensively in the preseason as the Eagles were offensively. So there will be unscouted looks all over the place. But you don’t need to watch a whole lot of film to know what Clark is capable of. Jurgens and Becton are going to see things they haven’t prepared for, and their ability to understand what the Packers are doing defensively and how Clark and his teammates are attacking is going to go a long way toward determining how well the Eagles’ offense can operate.
3. The Eagles are one of only four teams that’s won undefeated in season openers since 2021. The Saints have won five straight openers, and the Bucs and Dolphins have also won three straight. Going back to 2007, the Eagles are an NFL-best 13-3 in season openers. The last Eagles head coach who had a losing record on opening day is Ray Rhodes, who was 1-3 from 1995 through 1998.
4A. Jason Kelce still technically has started an Eagles-record 156 consecutive games, but that streak obviously will end Friday. So who’ll replace Kelce with the Eagles’ longest active consecutive starts streak? Haason Reddick is the only other Eagle to start all 34 games the last two years, and that streak will end as well. Only five other Eagles started all 17 games last year – A.J. Brown, Jalen Hurts, Jordan Mailata, Jordan Davis and Josh Sweat. Out of that group, Brown and Mailata have both started 29 straight and Hurts 18. Sweat and Davis didn’t play in the 2022 finale against, so Brown, Mailata and Hurts are the only guys on the team who have a streak of consecutive starts that goes back before last year.
4B. The Eagles’ longest current streak of consecutive games played belongs to long snapper Rick Lovato, who has played 118 straight since joining the Eagles late in the 2016 season. If he plays all 17 games this year, he’ll pass Sheldon Brown (128) and Frank LeMaster (129) and tie Herm Edwards (135) for the 8th-longest streak of consecutive games played in Eagles history. The club record is shared by Lovato’s predecessor, Jon Dorenbos, and Hall of Famer Harold Carmichael with 162 straight.
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5. Jeremiah Trotter Jr. is 21. If he plays Friday – or in any of the Eagles’ first 15 games – he’ll become the first Eagles linebacker to play in a regular-season game before his 22nd birthday since Jeremiah Trotter in 1998.
6. Jahan Dotson was by any measure a failed 1st-round pick with Washington. Same with Mekhi Becton with the Jets. Dotson was the 16th pick in 2022 and had just 1,041 yards to show for his first two seasons as a starting receiver and Becton was the 11thpick in 2020 and the Jets didn’t even try to re-sign him – for anything – which tells you what they thought of his potential. But one team’s bust can be another team’s productive steal. The jury is obviously still out for both those guys, but going from a team with a losing tradition and culture like the Jets or Commanders to a team like the Eagles can change everything. All of a sudden the expectations are different. don’t have to come in and be a star. On a deep and talented roster all you have to do is your job. When you have that winning tradition and culture of excellence – which the Eagles clearly have, despite the way last year ended - you really create an atmosphere where guys can come in and just be a part of the answer without having to try to become something they’re not. Dotson no longer has to play like the 16th pick in the draft. He just needs to catch a few passes here and there. And Becton no longer has to be a franchise offensive tackle. If he can be a decent guard he’s helping himself and his team. Howie Roseman acquired a bunch of these sort of 1st-round guys this offseason and while some didn’t work out – John Ross is out of the league, Devin White might never be a starter here, Kenny Pickett didn’t have a particularly good preseason – these are all no-risk high-reward types of moves. Will be fascinating to watch Dotson and Becton starting Friday night. If the Eagles can just get honest, solid play out of them, that’ll be a huge win.
7. Jalen Hurts has the 2nd-highest opening-day passer rating in Eagles history at 99.5. He’s completed 67 percent of his passes for 677 yards in three opening-day starts with four touchdowns and no interceptions. The only higher opening-day passer rating by an Eagles QB is Sonny Jurgensen’s 105.4 in four starts in the early 1960s. Hurts’ 99.5 mark is 6th-highest among active quarterbacks, just ahead of Carson Wentz’s 98.7.
8. Only five head coaches in NFL history have reached the postseason in each of their first three seasons and had at least a .667 winning percentage after that third season. And two of them will coach against each other tonight in São Paulo. Guy Chamberlin did it from 1922 through 1924 with the Canton and Cleveland Bulldogs, Paul Brown from 1946 through 1948 with the Browns (who played in the AAFC, whose history was absorbed by the NFL when it folded in 1949), Jim Harbaugh with the 49ers from 2011 through 2013, Matt LaFleur with the Packers from 2019 through 2021 and Nick Sirianni with the Eagles from 2021 through 2023.
9A. With Isaiah Rodgers out with a hand injury for the opener, Vic Fangio has a few options on how to line up his defensive backs. The initial plan was for Quinyon Mitchell and Darius Slay to play when the Packers went with two wide outs and for Mitchell to move inside to the slot with Rodgers taking over outside when the Packers went three wides. Now, he could simply leave Quinyon Mitchell outside the entire game and play Avonte Maddox in the slot or just replace Rodgers with Kelee Ringo in three-wide situations, with Mitchell still swinging inside. A less likely option is to leave Mitchell outside and go with Cooper DeJean in the slot. But DeJean missed the first three weeks of training camp with a hamstring injury, and that’s crucial time for a rookie, and I can’t imagine Fangio feels like he’s ready. I really like Ringo, but he’s only played 199 defensive snaps in his career and you’ve already got one rookie out there in Mitchell, so I think what makes the most sense is leaving Mitchell outside the entire game and going with Maddox in the slot. He’s in his seventh year, he had a very good summer, he’s been a capable slot when healthy and he’s played nearly 3,000 career defensive snaps, so he’s got a ton of experience.
9B. You feel bad for Rodgers, who missed all of last year with that suspension, hasn’t played in 620 days and had a terrific training camp. But the reality is if he’s out for any extended period of time, it could open up the door for DeJean to become the full-time slot, which would mean Mitchell and Slay would be the full-time outside corners. We don’t know when DeJean would be ready, but certainly by the Browns after the bye in mid-October. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Howie Roseman could try to trade Rodgers since he probably doesn’t have a long-time future here, thanks to Mitchell, DeJean and Ringo. He’s only on a one-year deal anyway. Roseman has always said you can’t have too many talented corners, so it’s probably unlikely. But it would be the most Howie thing ever if he got a pick or a player in exchange for a guy that cost the Eagles virtually nothing that nobody else wanted.
10A. You can make the case that the Eagles’ surprise on-side kick to open their 2000 season opener in Dallas was one of the most pivotal plays in franchise history. Up till that point, the Eagles had won two playoff games – both wild-card games – in the previous 19 years and had 11 winning seasons since 1962 – a span of 38 years. They hadn’t won an NFC East title since 1988 and had won just two since the merger in 1970. Then Andy Reid and John Harbaugh, assuming correctly that the Cowboys would be preoccupied by the hottest weather in NFL history – it was 109 at kickoff - called a surprise onside kick (a play that’s no longer allowed). David Akers hit a perfect pop-up kick that Dameane Douglas recovered at the Eagles’ 42-yard-line. A Donovan McNabb TD pass to Jeff Thomason, Duce Staley TD run and Jeremiah Trotter pick-6 off Troy Aikman gave the Eagles a 21-0 lead a minute into the second quarter and with Duce rushing for 201 yards the Eagles won 41-14 over a team that had beaten them 13 of the previous 17 times, including nine of the previous 10 in North Texas. The Eagles went on to go 11-5 that year with a wild-card win, starting a 24-year stretch that’s seen them reach the playoffs 16 times, have just five losing seasons, win 16 playoff games and reach three Super Bowls with different head coaches and different quarterbacks. That onside kick was a signal to the rest of the NFL that the Eagles, with Reid running the offense and Jim Johnson the defense, were no longer pushovers, were no longer the laughing stock of the NFL. From their inception in 1933 through 1999, the Eagles had a .454 winning percentage. Only the Cards were worse among original NFL teams. Since 2000, the Eagles have a .592 winning percentage, 6th-highest among the 32 current teams.
10B. The Eagles go into the 2024 season just 12 games under .500 in franchise history with an all-time record of 624-636-27. They’ve never had an all-time winning record at any point in their 91-year history. They were 1-1 two games into the 1933 season, then lost four straight and as early as 1942 they were already 59 games below .500 at 23-82-4. Their low point was 96 games under .500 at 220-316-22 two weeks into the 1978 season. Since then they’re 84 games over .500 at 404-320-5. The closest they’ve been to .500 since they were 9-21-1 going into 1936 is eight games under .500 at 623-631 after their win over the Bills last Nov. 26.
10C. This will be the Eagles’ 31st season since Jeff Lurie bought the team from Norman Braman before the 1994 season. Of the Eagles’ 624 wins, 43 percent have come under Lurie’s ownership.
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