For Birds, a preseason that will matter more than most
PHILADELPHIA » The Eagles and Packers will play a preseason game Thursday in Green Bay. Carson Wentz will participate. Aaron Rodgers will not. And for one reason, both of those decisions are sound.
The reason: Not every team, not every season, not every game or quarter or down, needs to approach the preseason the same way. While they all seem like the same blur, and while they all expand from the same basic money-grab, some preseasons are more important than others.
For the Eagles, this is one of those important preseasons. This is a preseason that should be as much a chance to improve as it is a training-camp inconvenience. This is an exhibition season that the Eagles must use to be ready to compete at their best before – not during, not after, not way after – the kickoff of their forkeeps opener, Sept. 10 in Washington.
If the Packers don’t view it that way, and if they believe that there is nothing more that their 33-yearold, Hall of Fame-bound, Super Bowl-winning quarterback can gain by running two series against the Eagles in August, who would argue? They are favored to win the NFC North. They can set whatever pace they deem responsible. But the Eagles, particularly this year, are different. They need every opportunity to become ready.
Begin with the early schedule, which only seems like Roger Goodell’s revenge for being booed so many times during that draft on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. It starts with that division road game against the Redskins. Then, it will be to Kansas City, where the Chiefs will have had played the previous Thursday, allowing Andy Reid 10 days to prepare. The Giants will visit the Linc in Week 3, giving the Eagles two division games within their first three. And the following week, the Birds will do the 6,000-mileround-trip thing to visit the Chargers. Then there is a home game against Arizona and a trip to Carolina before a three-game homestand.
If the Eagles are not ready for that early barrage, they could be quick TKO victims. So Doug Pederson must take the preseason as seriously as possible without being ridiculous. He sounds like he will.
“The first thing is, I want everybody to play,” the Birds’ coach said the other day, after practice. “I want to see our veterans play and execute and pick up where they left off at the end of the season.”
Pederson has a touchy task this season. Deeply committed to Wentz, the Eagles have fit him with two, new, veteran receivers and a new running back. Already, though, Alshon Jeffery, Torrey Smith and LeGarrette Blount have missed at least some training camp time. And not that ramming them long into exhibition games against frenzied free agents and rookies looking to impress at whatever physical cost is the solution, but, at some point, Wentz needs to gain peak comfort with his many new surrounding weapons.
“I just want to see execution,” Pederson said of the preseason opener. “That’s something everybody strives to do. But we want to see execution and see our players develop.”
Even if that is a generic approach to any sporting endeavor, Pederson himself needs to have his players executing at a high level as soon as possible. Rightly or not, he already is on wobbly professional ground in a desperate organization. He was 7-9 last season, appeared to be marginalized by front-office sorts during the draft, and is not an overwhelming fan favorite. A slow start – and that early schedule suggests the possibility – can start the who’s-next conversations swirling.
To Pederson’s credit, he doesn’t care much what others think. He occasionally orders full-contact training-camp practices (quarterbacks not included) and chooses not to punt on fourth down and dismisses criticism well. That’s one reason why he will try Wentz for a few snaps in the opener, rather than choose the Aaron Rodgers route. And Wentz, even if he was injured in the preseason last year, is OK with that challenge.
“It’s not a concern,” the quarterback said. “If you’re scared to get hurt, you wouldn’t play this game ultimately. I think the live pass rush will be good. You get out there and start feeling some things. Obviously in practice you try to make it game-like. You try to react the way you would. But when you’re live, things are a little different. “I think it’ll be good.” The Birds were 4-0 in the preseason last year, then began the regular season on a three-game winning streak. Considering that they changed No. 1 quarterbacks between the exhibitions and the start of the season, there likely was some coincidence. But there might have been some connection.
A long-time boxing trope is, “the wetter the better.” It means that a fighter should enter the ring in a sweat, not work one up while he is being hit. That may work for some, not for others. But a football team with a relatively new quarterback, many new skill players, a terrifying early schedule and a coach already on show-me alert can’t afford to try anything else.
The Eagles need to be ready this season, and they need to be ready early. That doesn’t make their preseason so vital that they need to freeze kickers with timeouts or that Wentz ever has to play after the halftime show. But it does make it different than some others.
To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery