A Manufactured Touch Or Two Could Stem Manufactured Controversies For Eagles

PHILADELPHIA - The current incarnation of the Philadelphia Eagles is not a high-volume passing team.

If professional football punditry were a court of law, that less-than-controversial declarative statement could be easily stipulated to by both sides engaging in any debate.

Yet, despite the gaudy team success in the Nick Sirianni-Jalen Hurts era, any time the passing game rings up less-than-impressive numbers by conventional standards, the angst in Philadelphia can boil over quickly.

Mix in a true outlier like A.J. Brown’s target rate during a 24-20 Week 1 win over Dallas, and Chicken Little is put on alert.

However, the sky is never falling, not with this group.

When you’re the reigning Super Bowl champions who’ve won 15 consecutive games when Hurts starts and finishes, substantive uneasiness is even harder to come by than a touch for Brown against the Cowboys.

So it’s manufactured, just like the touches offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo should have drawn up for Brown to quell any of this silliness.

Whenever there’s a dearth of touches for Brown, DeVonta Smith, or Dallas Goedert, Sirianni’s signature explanation is 2022 in Detroit when Smith was the odd man out with no receptions on four targets.

The Eagles won that game as well, but the inability to generate anything for Smith had a week-long shelf life right up until the former Heisman Trophy winner had eight receptions for 169 yards the very next week against Minnesota.

Like clockwork, the head coach brought up the Smith example when he received the A.J. question after the win over Dallas.

Selfless Receivers

Look at Smitty in 2022 against Detroit,” Sirianni said. “A.J. has, whatever, eight for 155 yards, and then Smitty has zero, and then the next game he has eight for 175 yards and a touchdown. So, that's the way it goes.

“I know that A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert are selfless, very selfless, and they want to do everything they can do for the team to win.”

Now, if Brown doesn’t get his first target until 58 minutes of football have been played in Kansas City on Sunday, maybe it’s time to register a complaint.

“When we talk about roles, I tell those guys there’s going to be games like this is going to happen, but to be what we want to be. A.J.’s obviously going to have to be involved more in the offense,” Sirianni admitted. “... I get that will be a story and everything like that, but there are games that go this way.”

To be fair to the alarmists, Brown’s target rate against Dallas was a career low, and there is some concern that the hamstring injury that plagued the All-Pro this summer is still an issue, even though the WR1 himself denied that to Philadelphia Eagles On SI, and wasn’t limited in practice leading up to the game or in his workload during it.

The idea of the Eagles pushing Brown back onto the field for a Week 1 game with 16 more to play in the regular season plus the playoffs to be a decoy is also specious, especially with the depth being better than it's ever been with Jahan Dotson and John Metchie.

What can help is something the Eagles haven’t done much of during the Sirianni era.

A manufactured touch here and there will quash a manufactured controversy.

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