Playing his old team nothing special to Eagles’ Jeffery
PHILADELPHIA » Alshon Jeffery has six touchdown receptions for the Eagles, just four fewer than the Chicago Bears, his previous employer.
Jeffery is getting $9.5 million from the Eagles this season, more than the combined total of the top three receivers who will line up for the Bears this weekend at Lincoln Financial Field.
A second-round pick on the last Bears team to produce a winning record, Jeffery hoped his Windy City tour would end better. It didn’t, and he could have done more to help. His four-game suspension last season for PEDs contributed to a 3-13 record for the Bears last year.
All of which makes the reunion that Jeffery said he’d circled on his schedule, what’s this, “just a game we’re trying to run.
“Honestly, I’ve been having so much fun this season, every game I just want to focus on,” said Jeffery, on pace for a career-best 11 TDs. “I just look at it as a regular game and hopefully we just come out with a win and just have fun with it.”
The smirks and the grins obviously didn’t match the words. While Jeffery had nothing nasty to say about Chicago, which in recent years has become the NFL’s model for cheap, he’s living the dream with the Eagles.
The Birds are 9-1 and on an eight-game win streak, which is longer than anything Jeffery was involved in playing next to Lake Michigan. The magic number for the Eagles to put Jeffery into the playoffs for the first time in a six-year career is 3.
Make no mistake, there are scars from those days with the Bears. In 2012 they started 7-1 but then lost five of six and finished 10-6 and out of the playoffs. Head coach Lovie Smith was fired. Until Smith was axed, Jeffery didn’t think it was that bad of a rookie season.
“That was a special locker room,” Jeffery said. “Those guys in that locker room, we had some great veterans, some great vets and they took a lot of players under their wings, young players like me. That year was a special year for us. We didn’t make the playoffs that year, but it was a great team and it was a great locker room.”
The Bears (3-7) are doing their thing again this season. Head coach John Fox might not be long for the franchise that finessed him into playing rookie quarterback Mitchell Trubisky sooner, rather than later.
Jeffery declined to directly answer the question about whether he’d imagined being Trubisky’s primary target, and how that would have gone.
But Jeffery did clarify what he meant by, “I guarantee you we’ll win the Super Bowl next year,” in the wake of the Bears being blown out by the Vikings in their 2016 regular season finale.
“I never said a team, though,” Jeffery said. “I never said a team.”
Right now, it sure looks like the Eagles could be that SB winner. Carson Wentz has thrown a league-leading 25 touchdown passes. The run game has been dynamic and the defense, like the offense, ranks in the top 10.
“I think Coach Pederson said that before the season started,” Jeffery said. “He was feeling that we had something special here.”
Jeffery, among other Eagles, has put stats aside to do what’s asked of him in football games. He’s averaging 14.9 yards on 38 receptions, second-most catches on the team. And they’re tough grabs.
In the 37-9 romp over the Dallas Cowboys, the Eagles playing the second half without a placekicker, Jeffery hauled in a 17-yard touchdown pass on fourth-and-five to make it a three-possession game. He also contributed a 17-yard reception on third-and-nine to set up a Corey Clement TD run and caught a two-yard conversion, his third of the season.
“Totally unselfish, hard worker,” offensive coordinator Frank Reich said. “He’s made some huge plays. A couple huge plays in that Dallas game. And that’s why he’s here. Those exact plays that he made in that game, we want to keep seeing them.”
Jeffery only is under contract this season for the Eagles. The $10-million plus question is, what’s up with his future here?
“I love it here in Philly, man,” Jeffery said. “I mean, I hope so. But right now, I’m just playing football. I’m just staying locked in and focusing on one day at a time and the moment. When we cross that bridge, I can talk about that a little bit more.”
It bears mentioning, no pun intended, that Jeffery figured he’d stick around Chicago. Now that he’s made a ton of money, well, you wonder if he’d be a candidate for a hometown discount of sorts.
“A lot of players make a lot of money but they never make the playoffs, never get to experience a lot of things,” Jeffery said. “Like being here in Philly, this goal that we’re trying to reach, we all want that for each other. We all want to go the playoffs. We all want to win a championship. We’re all together. I think players who want a lot of individual stats, their team, basically I feel, in my opinion, their team doesn’t do well.
“It’s not basketball. Basketball, I can go out there and score 40 or 50 and we can win. Lebron James, he’s the best player on the planet right now. He can go out and score 50 and win. Football, you need everybody. One guy just can’t dominate. You’re still going to need the other 10 guys out there.”
As far as that Super Bowl victory prediction, Jeffery sounds like he’s holding to it — just not with the Bears. “Hey,” he said, “I never said a team.”