Warning signs aside, a quiet confidence
PHILADELPHIA >> They practiced against the Baltimore Ravens for two days, neither to positive press reviews.
They played three preseason games, lost two, and most recently were caught trailing by 26 before halftime.
Their quarterback, who had recovered from a knee injury a year earlier, is recovering from a back issue and hasn’t been tackled since December. Their backup is 40 and has been around the team for five minutes.
Their offensive line has not been together for meaningful camp reps. Fletcher Cox, the most important defensive player, continues to recover from foot surgery.
In 13 days, they will open a season in which they are expected to thrive, comfortable among the favorites to win the NFC. So the Eagles must be seeing something, somewhere, some time that they haven’t been showing everyone else. Clues? Anybody? “I think just the way these guys have worked,” Doug Pederson said Sunday, before practice at the NewsControl Compound. “The first couple weeks of training camp, there’s these different cycles you go through. The first part of training camp, you’re really getting everyone reps, everybody on offense, everybody on defense. You’re kind of spreading the wealth. And then somewhere in Week 3 or 4, we start giving who we think are going to be starters more time and more reps in practice. And so a couple of weeks ago, that was our time.”
That’s when Pederson started to see a team that was ready for the regular season, if not beyond. And it wasn’t that long ago that he won the eternal right to identify a championship-level team when he sees one.
“I pushed them really hard, offense, defense and our special teams guys, in practice, giving them more reps,” he said. “I was kind of staying on them. If there is a mistake, let’s repeat the play. If a guy jumps off side, let’s fix that. We did that with our starters, and you really started to see the sense of urgency with them, like it’s real, like it’s a real game, like it’s a real situation.”
Pederson sought that atmosphere last week, when the Ravens were in camp. And while both sides had moments that elicited ooohs and aaahs from the selected spectators, the consensus was that Baltimore was the more advanced team. Insignificant as any of those things will be, the exhibition game that followed lent support to that belief.
“I’m very pleased,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said of the week.
Yet, so were the Eagles. Or so they said.
“There’s something to be said for not doing that for seven months,” Zach Ertz said, “and just getting in that rhythm so it’s not new come September 8.”
The Eagles, relatively recently the champions of the world, are a veteran team with an attitude to match. At whatever risk of disrespecting the ticket-buyers, it’s Pederson’s way to protect his best players from preseason injury. So he did not expose his starters to much contact, at least not when anyone was watching. But with one more preseason game to play, the ever-meaningless Week 4 opportunity for soon-to-becut players to audition for the Arena League, he is convinced he has seen enough.
“Against Baltimore, in practice, I saw the energy level, the timing of quarterback and receiver, the surfacing of blocks, defensively being in position to either make a tackle,” Pederson said. “Those are the things you start seeing when you give these guys more time to practice. So for me, that’s a gauge that they’re ready. They’re ready to go. And the more we give them reps, obviously the better they are and the more prepared they will be for the start of the regular season.”
In the newer NFL, a certain faith is required in the system. Coaches are overcautious about protecting their key players from injury, typically keeping them out of preseason games. And with tackling rare in practice, if it is done at all, it’s up to the coaches and players to proclaim their own readiness. But if the Eagles and Pederson have credibility, it has been earned.
“We’re very fortunate as a team to have the caliber of players that we have in backup roles,” said Jason Kelce, as capable a center as he is a critic of preseason football analysis. “They’d start on a lot of other teams.”
Kelce will center a line that has been without Lane Johnson, who has been out with a knee injury, and with Brandon Brooks, who is recovering from an Achilles injury, and has not been whole in camp. And that will be the line entrusted to protect Carson Wentz and his recently healed back. Pederson insists the process will mean that the Eagles will be fully staffed by the time the Redskins visit for the Sept. 8 season opener. But is it a trustworthy process?
“We can’t do anything about it,” Johnson said. “Yeah, we’d like to have reps but you can’t really do anything about it. So we’ll see what happens.”
It will happen soon, and it will happen in public.
Either the tattered offensive line will be ready to protect Wentz, or it won’t. Either Cox will play, or he won’t. Either Wentz will be able to absorb a hit, or he won’t. Either the receivers will be ready for game-speed plays or they won’t.
All the Eagles know is they believe they’re ready. Until proven otherwise, that has to be enough.