Eagles have no worries when it comes to Agholor
PHILADELPHIA – One thing the Eagles are not concerned about as they continue to tinker with an offense that hasn’t reached maximum efficiency yet is Nelson Agholor.
There was a time when the excitable wide receiver would allow misplays to mess with his mind. He even famously admitted that minutes after a loss at Seattle in 2016, his second year in the league. No longer. For Agholor, the light went on sometime between his second and third seasons, which is what happens with a lot of promising players in the NFL who are slow to adjust, and he became a productive member of a championship team and one that challenged hard to retain it a year later.
So Agholor is not sweating the drops and the fumble that have contributed to a slow start (19 catches 188 yards, career-low 9.9 yards per reception), and neither are the people around him.
“I feel extremely confident in Nellie,” quarterback Carson Wentz said, “and really since I got here. I just know what type of person he is, I know how he understands the game, I know how hard he works on the field, how badly he wants to be great. I have a ton of confidence in him, and it’s something that you don’t want to overdo it at all and you just keep building him up.
“I feel extremely confident going forward that he’s going to make a lot of big plays for us.”
So does offensive coordinator Mike Groh.
“He’s doing everything we ask him to do,” Groh said. “I got the question about the down-the-field throws and he’s gotten behind the defense and was knocked off his route twice the other day. Otherwise maybe he’s got two touchdowns and we’re sitting here going, ‘Holy cow, what a game.’
“It’s just little things like that that impact the stat line a little bit, but he’s doing a lot of things behind the scenes, as he always does. He’s a tremendous teammate, unselfish player and one of the glues to the offense.”
Agholor believes these first five games are an aberration for him.
“The day you start worrying about [catches and drops] is the day you miss your opportunity, honestly,” Agholor said. “Because I know that it’s going to come and it’s going to come real big and I’m going to fall back in the end zone and I’m going to be all excited and happy and, you know, slapping hands and all that.
“So it’s really just about me putting in the work and trusting that my time will come and [I] will have what you would call another breakout game and get those juices flowing. And after you have them, they come in bunches.”
Agholor is coming off a season in which he contributed a career-high 64 catches. The year before, he caught 62 passes and produced career highs of 768 yards, 12.4 yards per reception and eight TD receptions.
Now he’s playing out the option year of his rookie contract, and given that, per Spotrac.com, he’s earning nearly $9.4 million he’s almost certainly on his way to another team in 2020.
Until that happens, you won’t find a more loyal Eagle.
Now if only the Eagles can begin to get the production from prominent third-year players the way they did from Agholor in 2017, then they can begin to cook.
But of all their draft picks from 2017, only cornerback Rasul Douglas and linebacker Nate Gerry appear to be trending in the right direction. The careers of cornerback Sidney Jones and wide receiver Mack Hollins have been plagued by injuries, and nobody is quite sure what to make of their first-round pick from that year: Defensive end Derek Barnett.
Jones, in particular, is at the same kind of crossroads Agholor faced in 2017, after ostensibly being challenged on Wednesday by coach Doug Pederson.
If he responds like Agholor, he’ll at least have a chance for a second contract in this league. If not, he’ll never see the end of his rookie deal.
This is where the Eagles are, with Agholor as the least of their worries.
“We’ve been getting some good work in,” Agholor said. “I mean, the practices leading up to the last game were really good. We were really getting after it, working extra. And that’s all we’re going to do, because sometimes what you put in doesn’t always show itself right away, but it’s going to show itself at the right time, and I’ve got a lot of faith that we’re going to keep on working and we’re going to cash in soon.”
Morning Call reporter Nick Fierro can be reached at 610-778-2243 or nfierro@mcall.com.