Brent Celek after loss: Breakout game ‘doesn't matter'

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He’s in his ninth year now, he turned 30 back in January, and he’s no longer the big-play threat he once was.

Or maybe he is?

Brent Celek, once upon a time one of the NFL’s top receiving tight ends, doesn't get the football much these days.

The guy who back in 2009 came just 29 yards from a 1,000-yard season had just 340 receiving yards last year and only 71 in the first eight games of this year.

In fact, before Sunday, he had surpassed 15 receiving yards in just five of his previous 24 games.

And then this.

Celek keeps himself in great shape and still has those terrific hands. It’s just that Zach Ertz has supplanted him as the Eagles’ No. 1 tight end.

And Ertz had another solid game Sunday against the Dolphins, with seven catches for a season-high 68 yards.

But Celek, out of the blue, had one of the biggest games of his career Sunday, catching passes of 20, 40 and 60 yards in the first half and finishing with four receptions for 134 yards.

That’s his most yards since 2011 and the third-most of his nine-year career.

“Honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Celek said. “I’m going to go home and I’m not going to be happy about this. This is a team game, and if we don’t win, nothing else matters. It doesn’t.”

A fifth-round draft pick back in 2007, Celek has 355 career receptions for 4,520 yards and 29 touchdowns. He ranks 11th, 8th and 12th in franchise history in those three categories.

Celek is the first Eagles tight end in at least 25 years with two catches of 40 or more yards in a game.

The combined 202 yards by Celek and Ertz are the most in a game by Eagles tight ends in almost exactly half a century — since Nov. 14, 1965, when Pete Retzlaff had 204 yards against the Redskins at Franklin Field.

“They were biting on some of the play-action, so I was able to get over the top of them,” Celek said.

Celek could have had another big gainer — and possibly a touchdown — but Mark Sanchez, playing in relief of injured Sam Bradford, didn’t see him wide open on the fourth-quarter play when he tried to force the ball to Miles Austin and got picked off.

“I don’t know if it would have been a touchdown, but it probably would have had a decent gain,” Celek said.

“That’s how football goes. You have to overcome some of that stuff and we still had an opportunity at the end of the game to win and we just didn’t do it.”

Ertz’s numbers weren’t quite up there with Celek’s, but he did have another solid game. Over the last five games, Ertz has 26 receptions for 278 yards. He’s the Eagles’ first tight end with at least 40 yards in five straight games since Chad Lewis over the 2001 and 2002 seasons.

The Eagles’ wide receivers have certainly been a huge disappointment, but with Ertz (36-for-382) and Celek (11-for-205), the Eagles are one of only two NFL teams with two tight ends with at least 200 yards.

The other is the Titans, with Anthony Fasano (17-for-211) and Delanie Walker (45-for-508).

The Eagles, now 4-5, led the Dolphins 16-3 after the first quarter Sunday but were outscored 17-3 the rest of the way.

They still haven’t been above .500 at any point this year. They remained half a game behind the Giants, but they’re now 5-8 in their last 13 games after going 19-9 in Chip Kelly’s first 28 games.

“It stings bad,” Celek said. “You can’t lose games like this, especially how we came out and then kind of fell off for a few quarters. We were just making too many mistakes and killing ourselves.

“You can’t do that in this league and expect to win games. It doesn’t matter who you are playing.”

The Eagles are up to ninth in the NFL in total offense, but they’ve been so inconsistent it sure doesn’t feel like this is a top-10 offense.

“Mistakes,” Celek said. “You guys see it. We get first downs, and the next thing you know it’s coming back because of a penalty. We have touchdowns called back because of a penalty.

“You can’t expect to win football games like that. That’s the stuff that we really need to fix. It’s got to happen, and it’s got to happen fast.”

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