You almost got your wish.
Defensive coordinator Billy Davis considered benching beleaguered cornerback Bradley Fletcher during the Eagles’ blowout loss in Green Bay Sunday but elected not to after Fletcher bounced back in the second half.
Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers picked on Fletcher early and often during the Packers’ 53-20 win over the Eagles at Lambeau Field.
As Rodgers’ passing yards and the Packers’ points kept piling up and Fletcher kept getting victimized, Davis thought more and more about making a change.
“I kept a real close eye because he had a bad start and it wasn’t going well and a lot of corners have a lot of outs, they don’t keep fighting and battling,” Davis said.
“And I’ve got a lot of respect for Fletch and how he responded. I was watching him close. ‘Wait one more, do I make a move?’
“And then you watched him come out in the second half, [and] he made those same plays that beat him in the first. He was on it, he played the ball, his press was better. He got better and fought through it. He’s a mentally tough human being, and I was very impressed with the way he finished.”
Davis would have turned to either Nolan Carroll or Brandon Boykin if he had decided to make a change at cornerback.
Instead, he stuck with Fletcher, who did make a few good plays in coverage in the second half, although by the time the second half began the Eagles trailed by 24 and the lead reached as much as 40 late in the game.
Rodgers finished with 341 passing yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb both went over 100 yards.
The Eagles rank 28th this year in pass defense. They’ve allowed 22 touchdown passes, third-most in the league, and have just seven interceptions, 22nd-most.
Davis said he took into consideration just how dominating Rodgers has been against everybody in deciding whether to stick with Fletcher or make a change.
“The ball was thrown in a perfect location not sometimes, every time,” Davis said. “[Fletcher’s] technique, yeah, everybody out there had bad technnique plays, and when a corner makes a mistake in technique, it’s a big play. When a defensive lineman does it, you don’t even notice it half the time. When a linebacker does it, you don’t notice it as much.
“In the back half, when they make a technique error and the ball’s thrown at them — especially as well as it was being thrown — all of a sudden it’s a big play and we have issues. Those guys are held to a little bit different standard.
“As a coach I try to make a fair standard and say the best players who are playing the most consistent technique are out there, and right now, Fletch had a couple bad plays but he had some good ones, too.”
One of the bad ones was Rodgers’ 64-yard completion to Nelson on the third play of the game that set up the Packers’ first score, a field goal just two minutes into the game.
On that snap, as was with the case on several early in the game, Fletcher failed to get his hands on the receiver coming off the line of scrimmage, leaving Nelson a free release down the field.
“It was press technique and he didn’t get his hands on him on that play, and he should have,” Davis said. “We talk about that all the time. But when you go to the corner world, I understand completely the stress I put on corners when I go single-high press, especially a guy like that.
“When you can put your hands on him you want to stop him and re-start him so he could have done that better on that play. Later on in the game he did that a lot better.”
The Eagles, 7-3, face the 2-8 Titans at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Linc.
Davis said Fletcher, a sixth-year pro who spent four years with the Rams before joining the Eagles last year, will continue to start.
“Absolutely.”