For the second straight offseason, the Eagles opened the door and watched their best wide receiver from the previous season walk through it. With DeSean Jackson, the Eagles gave him a shove and didn’t seem to regret it. With Jeremy Maclin, the process was more cordial even if the results were ultimately the same. Chip Kelly said the Eagles wanted to keep Maclin but they were outbid.
That’s fine. Either way, the situations mirrored each other in upshot. The guy with the best receiving numbers ended up pulling on a new jersey for a new team, leaving the Eagles to consider how to replace that production. The difference, of course, was that the Eagles had Maclin under contract and on the roster when Jackson left. Maclin was coming off an ACL injury, and he hadn’t played in Kelly’s system, but he was a veteran and a known commodity as an NFL pass catcher. That’s not the case this time.
The Eagles have plenty of questions at the moment, many of them Kelly-made: Who will start at left guard and right guard? How will DeMarco Murray hold up after a grueling campaign a year ago? How will Sam Bradford play and will he remain upright all season? How will the overhauled secondary perform? Is Marcus Smith still breathing air or did they dump him in a New Jersey landfill and not tell anyone?
Lots of questions. Add (at least) one more: How will the Eagles’ largely untested wide receivers grade out? When Maclin decamped for Kansas City -– that’s a thing that people evidently do, but only if the requisite amount of money is involved -– he took some big numbers with him. A year ago, Maclin led the team in every significant receiving category, including targets, catches, yards, yards per catch, touchdowns, receptions of 20 or more yards, yards after the catch, first downs, catching the bus, catching fire and catching feelings. (Most of those are true.)
Matthews had a solid-to-good first season, finishing second on the team behind Maclin in all those significant receiving categories. Of course, Matthews played primarily in the slot as a rookie. Matthews is big and strong and fast, but moving to the outside introduces a variable to the prediction process.
When you take inventory of the other wideouts, the list gets pretty thin pretty fast. When Kelly and the coaches mentioned Riley Cooper last year, they usually did so in the context of his blocking. He is (technically) a receiver. Josh Huff had eight catches for 98 yards. Miles Austin was a human being who appeared in 12 games for the Cleveland franchise. That’s grim. That leaves Nelson Agholor. He is the most likely complement to Matthews by default, and one of the two best hopes the Eagles have to identify a number one receiver.
There’s plenty to like with Agholor. He has that size/speed combination the Eagles revere. But if you’re one of the hardcore Birds fans who thinks Agholor will immediately replace Maclin’s production simply because Kelly ordained it, even Kelly thinks you should stop genuflecting at the altar of blind faith.
“Everyone is reaching with the whole parallels between guys,” Kelly said. “He’s still a rookie and he’s going to play inside, he’s going to play outside, he’s going to return kicks. We’re going to find where he fits best. We didn’t target Nelson when we drafted him to say ‘he’s our replacement for Jeremy.’”
They didn’t target him because, as Kelly admitted, “you can’t predict how the draft is going to go and where you’re going to go. To say, hey, when free agency starts, because it’s so much before the draft, to say ‘we’ll let him go because we’re going to get Nelson’ -- no. You have no idea where they’re going to go or when they’re going to go.”
Which doesn’t mean the Eagles weren’t thrilled to land Agholor. Kelly has spoken glowingly of his new offensive toy and how Agholor was “just too good a player at that position for us to pass up.” But even if it was a happy coincidence that someone with perceived talent who also fit a need fell to the Eagles in the draft, and even if Kelly would like to temper expectations with regard to Agholor, the organization will clearly need him to contribute this season. The Eagles were sixth in receiving yards, ninth in receptions and 12th in receiving touchdowns a year ago. Much of that had to do with Maclin and Matthews. One of them is still here, and one of them needs to be replaced -– either by a single candidate or committee. It would surely benefit the Eagles if Agholor could do a lot of heavy lifting on that front, especially because the committee route would include the aforementioned Cooper/Huff/Austin crew. That’s no kind of committee at all. It’s really Matthews and Agholor. The Eagles don’t have many (or any) other good options beyond them.