Birds hope settled Tate can feast on defenses
PHILADELPHIA >> The timing was amusing, considering how Golden Tate was coming off his least productive game with the Eagles.
But the enthusiasm was real, and Tate wasn’t about to fake it. In the wake of his first victory with the Eagles, Tate posted the winning formula on his verified Twitter account for all 402,000 followers to see, give or take a few thousand bots. It featured a photo of Tate holding an electric knife while standing next to quarterback Carson Wentz and a fine-looking bird. Cheese!
“Break bread with your QB = @Eagles Victory? Think we have a new pre-game routine
@cj_wentz,” tweeted @ ShowtimeTate.
Three days after the Thanksgiving repast, Tate, Wentz and the Eagles registered a 25-22 success over the New York Giants that moves them within a victory and a Dallas Cowboys loss of the NFC East lead. It wasn’t a masterpiece. No single game ever is. That made it special.
“Definitely I was hungry for that first one, just to get the feeling around here, the city,” Tate said. “It was definitely important to get that one. Hopefully we can string a few together. In this league it’s never over. We played a much better second half, and Jake (Elliott) came through at the end.”
Elliott drilled the gamewinning 43-yard field goal in the last minute of play, and the defense did the rest.
Tate finished the Giants game with four catches for 30 yards, just one of the receptions going for a first down. He had two receptions worth two first downs in his Eagles debut, a loss to the Dallas Cowboys, and two first downs among five grabs in a horrific loss to the New Orleans Saints. Wentz twice forced the ball deep to Tate against the Saints, Marshon Latimore picking off the second throw.
Though the numbers suggest the chemistry failed to advance this past Sunday, the reality is that everything Tate can do to get familiar with Wentz could benefit the Eagles down the stretch. Typically, Tate accomplishes this in the offseason. Catching up in midseason is new for the 30-year-old veteran of nine seasons.
Tate has 11 receptions for 97 yards and no touchdowns with the Eagles, which projects to a 59-catch pace for a 16-game season. That’s just four more grabs and three fewer TDs than Tate had in seven games with the Detroit Lions, who shipped him to the Eagles for a third-round draft pick.
“I just don’t know what to expect in this process so I’m just trying to fit in wherever I can,” Tate said. “We have a lot of talent on our offense, that’s for sure. And I never was expecting to come in and have the world kind of revolving around me. I’m just trying to help this team win, help this organization win and give this fanbase something to cheer for.
“I look around and I just see endless amounts of talent. We’ve just got to put it together each and every play. Every man just does their job the best they possibly can. I’ve seen it already that we can march down the field on anybody. We’ve just all got to be on the same page. That’s an exciting feeling. And that’s what we’re trying to find each and every drive.”
The Lions (4-7) are slightly less relevant than the Eagles. They’ve gone in a different direction from what Tate signed up for as a free agent. Lions head coach Matt Patricia, the Bill Belichick knockoff, is as different as you can get from Jim Caldwell, who the Lions canned after back-toback 9-7 seasons, one of which resulted in a trip to the playoffs.
Tate decided against signing an extension with the Lions before this, the final year of his contract. So it would sure seem like the Tate-Wentz relationship could go a long way toward making Philadelphia the place the quarterback-receiver combo could grow old together. Early indications are that it’s a match.
“Definitely a soft-spoken guy,” Tate said of Wentz. “Loves family, loves God, just loves being around his buddies. We’re trying to build that camaraderie, which is easy to do when you have a lot of the same morals and values deep down. So, we’re just hanging out. We just happened to have Thanksgiving together. And now I’m trying to burn some of those calories off.”
Tate smiled when asked if Thanksgivings together were really the type of thing that build chemistry with the quarterback, explaining in so many words it happens more by actually playing football.
But Tate wanted to make one thing perfectly clear. Playing nice with the quarterback isn’t something he’s doing to be a bigger part of the offense.
“If it helps, then awesome,” Tate said. “But I’m not going into it saying ‘hey, if we hang out on Thanksgiving it’s probably going to get me more passes.’”