There's No 'Dream Team' Redux with Miles Sanders
Miles Sanders didn’t exactly step in the you-know-what, but the fourth-year running back did show significant excitement when talking to CBSSports.com about the Eagles' offense and what it looks like on paper.
The final piece to that puzzle was a true WR1 in A.J. Brown, who should make things much easier for his projected running mates – DeVonta Smith and Quez Watkins – as well as the Eagles’ third-year quarterback Jalen Hurts.
Sprinkle in perhaps the game’s best offensive line, a top-tier tight end in Dallas Goedert, and the explosive ability of Sanders himself in the backfield and there is every right to be excited about the Philadelphia offense under Nick Sirianni and play-caller Shane Steichen.
“Oh man, we all feel like we’re on an All-Star team, so we feel great,” Sanders told CBS when asked about what adding Brown means for the offense. “We feel unstoppable, I’m not gonna lie. The vibes are great, always have been. Nick Sirianni is doing a great job just keeping the vibes right, the chemistry good.”
Sanders, by the way, quickly contextualized that in his next sentence.
“But we’ve gotta see,” the Penn State product cautioned. “It’s gonna come down to camp, taking it day by day, putting everything together.”
Sanders, a Pittsburgh-area native, has been doing a bit of a press junket to promote his youth football camp in the Steel City next month.
He was all of 14 and more concerned with the Steelers when Vince Young went all in and called the 2011 collection of Eagles, “The Dream Team.”
And maybe those Eagles were the best .500 dream team ever cobbled together but the fact that someone like Young, who was brought in to be the backup quarterback after flaming out as a one-time No. 3 overall pick, was making those proclamations was more comical than anything else.
That also didn’t stop many from pointing to Young’s words as part of the blame for an underachieving team, which is kind of silly.
After all, those blaming Young were the ones who bought his tortured prophecy in the first place with the understanding he wasn’t even going to be part of any on-field success or failure unless Michael Vick was injured.
As for the 2022 "Eagles All-Star team," what exactly would you like Sanders to say?
Confidence is a very big thing in professional sports and fans should always prefer players who act like they own the gym rather than the shrinking violet in the corner of it.
Admittedly, there’s a fine line between a productive self-assuredness and boastfulness that could find its way into becoming the much-overhyped bulletin-board material.
The Eagles did add significant talent in the offseason as a whole, headlined by potential difference-makers on both sides of the ball in Brown and Haason Reddick.
In addition to that high-profile rookies from the national champions in Georgia, Jordan Davis and Nakobe Dean, have been added to the fray as well as a number of targeted veteran signings on the defense side that could be the next Chris Long or Patrick Robinson, names like James Bradberry, Kyzir White, and Jaquiski Tartt have piqued interest in and around the Delaware Valley.
Sanders himself is about to enter a contract year hoping to stay healthy for the first time since he was a rookie and earn a second deal with the Eagles.
Being hyped over an upcoming season is a much better place to be than the alternative and while every coach would like every player to stay disciplined when it comes to messaging, in a social media world where a live microphone is always a step away, that’s an impossible standard.
If things do go south for the Eagles' offense in 2022, Sanders will undoubtedly be reminded of his June comments somewhere down the line, but there will be no causal connection between flippancy in an offseason interview session and competency on the football field.
-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's Eagles Today and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Sports. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talker Jody McDonald, every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on YouTube.com and JAKIBSports.com. You can reach John at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen
