Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Birds should keep activity at deadline to a minimum
On repaired ankles and healing legs, on functioning knees and with freshened muscles, vital players are beginning to return to the Eagles. For one reason more critical than the rest, the timing will be a front-office and sideline challenge.
Blessed to be surrounded in the
NFC East by some of the worst professional teams ever conceived, including one of historically high visibility that will bring its indifference and incompetence into the Linc Sunday night, the Eagles would almost have to try to miss the playoffs. Not that they aren’t heading to the midway point with a losing record, but whatever they have should be enough to win their division’s automatic tournament bid.
The challenge, then, is to decide if what they have available and in storage is enough to make them dangerous once the playoffs begin. With the NFL trade deadline about to hit Tuesday, it’s a test about to be magnified.
Do the Eagles, recognizing that they are going to be in the playoffs in spite of a 2-4-1 record that shouts overall incompetence, need to move draft picks, money and priorities to prepare themselves for a lengthy postseason push?
Or, considering that help is on its way anyway, would such a plan-shift be unnecessarily difficult?
“It’s challenging,” Doug Pederson said. “It’s difficult. Obviously, you’re always looking to add talent, to add depth to your roster. But at the same time, this person has to come in on offense, defense or on special teams and feel comfortable.”
That’s the puzzle, and it’s complicated, particularly so in a year when coaches are under irrational professional restrictions in an over-zealous effort to reduce a coronavirus threat.
It’s not like the Eagles have such a well-functioning machine that they couldn’t use help. Yet the early-season struggles have revealed something interesting about the roster Howie Roseman has assembled and Pederson has nurtured: It has a noticeably strong bond.
Despite multiple chances to surrender their season, the Eagles have continued to play hard into fourth quarters. That was enough to earn a tie against Cincinnati that likely will be to their playoff tie-breaking benefit despite the heat Pederson took when it happened. The same effort nearly gave them a victory over Baltimore. And it was the difference in their last game, a 22-21 defeat of the Giants.
“It just says a lot about this team,” Boston Scott said. “It’s never been a matter of ‘want to.’ It’s never been a matter of effort. It’s never been a matter of fight.
It’s just the little things that have caused us to fall short.
“As long as we’re firing on all cylinders and dialed into the little things, I don’t think there’s many teams that can really stop us.”
The Eagles have demonstrated all the characteristics of a team with a strong nucleus and work ethic. Soon, Dallas Goedert, Jalen Reagor and Jason Peters, just to name three potentially game-changing contributors, will return from injury. Eventually, wall-of-famer-elect Zach Ertz will be in the mix. Counting on Alshon Jeffery is folly. DeSean Jackson probably won’t return. Lane Johnson is ever willing though eternally iffy. But the reinforcements already have begun to report.
In a season effectively played in a cocoon, and with the Eagles showing such determination, a headline-making trade-deadline move has to be helpful without being distracting.
“We have to feel comfortable as coaches before we put players out there and that’s a little bit of a challenge halfway through your season,” Pederson said. “But it can definitely be done. So, we’ll see where we are next week, but it can be a little bit of a challenge to get that person ready to go at least that first week.”
Since the Eagles’ organization long has been addicted to winning the bottom-of-the-TV-screen scroll, it is not likely to allow the trade deadline pass without making some sort of scene. The linebacking has been unacceptable, and there will be a handful of potential upgrades available from programs already committed to deadline selling. The Eagles should make a minor move for one.
Though Miles Sanders soon will return, the Eagles have to be certain that his knee has sufficiently healed for him to help long into the postseason. And since they will forever be aware that they would not have won their only Super Bowl had they not acquired Jay Ajayi at the deadline, running back depth could be a trade-deadline option.
The standard exercise at this point in any sports season is to declare whether a team is a buyer or a seller. The chances of being in the playoffs often provide the No. 1 tiebreaker. Since the Eagles likely will reach the postseason, that typically would direct them into the buyers’ line.
Their dilemma: Deciding if the returning wounded will be healthy enough to help for the second half of the season.
“From a coaching standpoint you’ve got to be smart with that, right?” Pederson warned. “You just don’t throw a guy out there and expect him to kind of pick up where he left off. It is a slow process.
“Our veteran players are good players and the guys that are injured are good players. If they’re capable of playing, we’ve got to find a way to get them on the field.”
Get them on the field. Limit the deadline activity to one or two modest and inexpensive upgrades. Preserve the chemistry.
Do that, and by the time the playoffs arrive, it will work.