Eagles enjoying battle at punter
Incumbent Jones facing competition from rookie Johnston
PHILADELPHIA » This isn’t a good time to grow old with the Eagles.
Less than 24 hours after the Birds shipped 37-year-old long snapper Jon Dorenbos to the New Orleans Saints, 37-yearold punter Donnie Jones got a job alert from head coach Doug Pederson.
The competition with Australian import Cameron Johnston, the rookie punter out of Ohio State, is real and spectacular.
“It’s a great battle to watch,” Pederson said Tuesday. “I mean, you’ve seen these games, they’re alternating punts. I think sometimes it might be unfair one way or the other because one guy may get more kicks in a game than the other. At the same time, again, it’s making both of them better. Donnie has done an outstanding job. Cameron has come in and worked his tail off. It will be exciting this week to see who gets that job.”
Jones and Johnston didn’t stop in for the open locker room. That might not be a coincidence.
New long-snapper Rick Lovato revealed he hasn’t longsnapped to Jones at all in training camp or the preseason. He’s snapped only to Johnston, the latter in a dual role as punter/holder. Add it together and it spells change.
If the Eagles saved a ton of
money against the salary cap and coaxed a seventhround draft pick out of the Saints in dealing Dorenbos, you’d have to think they’d get at least a seventh-rounder, maybe even a sixth for Jones. Say what you want about Jones, he’s deadly proficient dropping the ball inside the 20-yard of the opposition.
Johnston (5-11, 194) isn’t as big as Jones, giving up two inches and 25 pounds. But Johnston has days where you think he’s Ray Guy, the only punter in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Johnston was one of the highest-rated punters entering the draft, although none were taken off the board. He averaged 46.7 yards last year punting in extreme conditions with the Buckeyes. Johnston had the job since he was a freshman. He was projected to come off draft boards in the sixth round.
Johnston also makes $465,000 this season while Jones is slated to make $1.375 million, 20th among punters. Three punters average $4 million or more including league leader Justin Colquitt ($4.9 million) of the Chiefs.
For the Eagles, the danger in disposing of veteran
players like Dorenbos and possibly Jones is losing a grip on the special teams that have carried them the past three years. The Eagles annually rank among the top three teams in the league in special teams.
The loss of Dorenbos doesn’t help as he’s been with the Eagles 11 seasons. Then again, Lovato proved to be a capable replacement having stepped in when Dorenbos sustained a fractured wrist this past December.
The more Pederson tried to deny the Eagles dealt Dorenbos because they were probably going to cut him, the more you knew that was the deal.
“I mean, it’s a little more than that,” Pederson said. “Without getting into a lot of the details, Rick has done a nice job, even going back to last season when he came in late in the season and filled in for us last year. He’s done a good job. Competition makes everybody better. At the end of the day we felt like he was in a good position to help our football team.”
The greater special teams loss for the Eagles is linebacker Bryan Braman, who recently joined the Saints. Braman is among the top core special teams players in the league. The Eagles also parted with Kenjon Barner, another core special teams standout.
“It’s just like at any position, it’s the next man,” Pederson said. “It’s the next-man mentality. Coach (Dave) Fipp does an outstanding job of getting those guys prepared and ready to go. You saw the emergence of Kamu Grugier-Hill a year ago. He made an impact, kind of filled up that role a little bit. So it’s part of football. It’s part of life. Guys come, guys go. That’s the nature of the business we’re in. Coaches come and coaches go. It’s the next-man-up mentality. We get those guys ready to play.”
If anything happens to safety Chris Maragos, the heart and soul of special teams, the Eagles are in trouble. Though it’s only the preseason they’ve been gashed in their punt and kickoff return coverage. It’s also unclear how fast and how well the Eagles pick up the blocking schemes that came so naturally to Braman, Barner and Nolan Carroll, who also has exited.
Lovato is the least of the Eagles’ worries.
It’s hard to imagine Dorenbos delivering the ball to the holder or punter faster than Lovato, who gets it there at 41 mph.
“I’ve never used a speed gun before or anything like that,” Lovato said. “The stop watch is how all long snappers, kickers,
punters time everything that they do. I snap it roughly between .69 and .73. That would be around 39 to 41 mph. The average snapper in the NFL snaps around .75, about 37 or 38 mph. But it’s all about operation time.”
At the same time, Dorenbos was a stabilizing force on special teams. And he was pretty good at using the magician skills to keep teammates loose.
A couple of weeks ago the Eagles traded Jordan Matthews, another leader who also is best friends with quarterback Carson Wentz.
“Yeah, it can definitely affect the team,” Pederson said. “It’s my job to coach those guys. There are things I like about the NFL. There are things I don’t like about the NFL. What I don’t like about it is the business side of it. Guys are going to come, guys are going to go. It’s the nature of the business.
“I shared with the guys this morning how I was cut six times in a 14-year career and I moved on. You learn from them, obviously, not only as coaches, but also players. These guys were big, big guys in the locker room, around the players. Guys really respected them and liked them. It can affect guys but it only affects you if you let it. That’s my job, not to let that happen.”