Nelson Agholor's first two seasons in the NFL haven't been very good by any stretch of the imagination, but Eagles legend-in-his-own-mind Freddie Mitchell wasn't any better, as he will try to claim. In fact, Mitchell was far worse, and when confronted with this reality, the retired wide receiver responded with every excuse he could think of — even if it wasn't true.
Mitchell seemed to be set of by an unfavorable graphic that appeared on Thursday's edition of Breakfast on Broad which made a statistical comparison to Agholor, a fellow first-round draft pick. Spoiler alert: as poorly as Agholor's career has started, he practically doubles Mitchell's production in years one and in two in the league.
Naturally, the physical evidence wasn't enough to convince Mitchell that he is anything less than the greatest receiver in Eagles history, and responded with what he no doubt believed to be a clever defense.
There's just one, tiny problem with Mitchell's argument. People keep track of both targets and receptions, and in case you don't want to do the math yourself, the catch rates are readily available. Mitchell caught 49.3 percent of the passes thrown his way, while Agholor hauled in 52.7. Again, neither figure is acceptable, but the advantage goes to Agholor.
But Mitchell wasn't finished. Then the numbers didn't matter at all, because this was by design in the offense under former Eagles coach Andy Reid, and Mitchell was just doing his job.
I guess nobody told him his job was to catch footballs.
It should go without saying that this defense was just as ridiculous as the first. Although Reid's system did spread the ball around — as most highly functioning offenses do — that didn't prevent wide receiver Terrell Owens from racking up 77 catches for 1,200 yards and 14 touchdowns in 2004, or even running back Brian Westbrook from racking up 73 catches for 703 yards and six scores that same season, Mitchell's second in the league.
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I suppose Mitchell has Agholor beat in playoff receptions on 4th-and-26. Although I'd be hard-pressed to award Mitchell the title of "Better Team Player."
Come to think of it, how did Mitchell even find his way into this discussion in the first place? He wasn't tagged in it.
Oh, yeah. This all came about from another attention-seeking rant completely lacking in self-awareness.