Eliminated Eagles may finally replace Bradley Fletcher

Share

Talk about closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.

Eagles defensive coordinator Bill Davis said Tuesday that beleauguered cornerback Bradley Fletcher may be replaced Sunday when the Eagles finish the season with a meaningless game against the Giants at the Meadowlands.

Davis, who has sent Fletcher out to cover Jordy Nelson, Dez Bryant and DeSean Jackson with little or no safety help in losses to the Packers, Cowboys and Redskins, said the coaching staff will decide later in the week whether Fletcher, Nolan Carroll or Brandon Boykin will start at cornerback opposite Cary Williams.

The Eagles, 9-6, were eliminated from playoff contention on Sunday. The Giants, 6-9 with a three-game winning streak, have been eliminated for over a month.

“We haven’t made that decision,” Davis said. “What we’re going to do is look at it all week and at the end of the week we’ll make a decision on what groupings we’ll use in the game.

“We’re looking at all of it. We’re looking at them and we’re looking at us and at the end of the week, we’ll make that decision.”

Bryant had three touchdown catches against Fletcher and Jackson caught two 50-yard passes.

Jackson was 9-for-243 in two games against the Eagles, Bryant was 10-for-187 in two games and Nelson was 4-for-109 in one game.

Asked what about Fletcher’s game finally convinced him to consider benching Fletcher, Davis said ... everything.

“I think it’s the whole from the start to the finish,” Davis said. “You know, Bradley Fletcher has a lot of good football that he’s played for us the last couple years, and he and I have talked a lot about the confidence issue.

“If you just go back to our Giants game from a year ago where they threw probably 10 verticals on us and I think about five or six went to Fletch and he made unbelievable plays at the ball on the vertical routes, and I just need to get him back to that place, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do over the last couple weeks.”

Davis did finally get Fletcher out of the game Saturday in the fourth quarter against the Redskins, but it was too late. The damage was done.

Why not bench Fletcher sooner? Before the Eagles were eliminated?

“You can’t just yank and jerk all these guys,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot of players that you have options for anyway, but you can’t just bail on a guy right away and sometimes you wait too long, sometimes you don’t do it quick enough, sometimes maybe you do it too quick and it’s a fine line.

“You’ve got to make that call and that’s what we as a group did, and hopefully we can get Fletch back around where he’s playing the ball that he has played for us.”

Contact Us