Picking one singular problem from the 2020 Philadelphia Eagles is impossible to do, and in fact, limiting the list to just 10 still seems light. It was a disaster of a season in every way for the Eagles, as they finished 4-11-1 and in sole possession of last place in the worst division ever.
Quarterback was a problem. Coaching was a problem. The general manager was a problem. There were low moments after low moments, and really the only good thing to come from the year is that it’s over and there’s a high draft pick as a result.
The following 10 problems aren’t necessarily in order, but it’s fair to say that when your quarterback isn’t playing well, your team likely isn’t playing well.
Carson Wentz
Franchise quarterbacks are paid to fix problems, not be the problem. Whether you think Carson Wentz was in a terrible situation in 2020 (true) or just played terrible football (true), the results speak for themselves and they don’t speak well.
Before mercilessly being benched during Week 13, Wentz was on track to win the NFL’s futility triple crown – interceptions, sacks, and fumbles. Those are bottom-three starting quarterback numbers, in line with Drew Lock or Sam Darnold, not Deshaun Watson or Russell Wilson. In fact, Wentz ended the year with an all-time porous season. Among non-rookie quarterbacks with 400 passing attempts, Wentz had the single worst era-adjusted ANY/A (think of this stat as passer rating plus sacks) in league history (per Pro Football Reference).
That’s a far cry from the quarterback that led the Eagles to four straight wins down the stretch last year while throwing to wide receivers that didn’t make the 2020 team (outside of Greg Ward).
All the tools that made Wentz look like a promising young player evaporated. He no longer sensed pressure; in fact, he seemed to wait for it. He made a bad offensive line look worse. He made bad receivers look pitiful. He made poor playcalling look even more anemic. He couldn’t even throw from a clean pocket, where his 10 interceptions when not pressured lead the league. Even his good plays – the 41-yard completion to Dallas Goedert right before being benched – could have been so much more.
With even average play from Wentz, the Eagles likely win Week 1 at Washington, Week 3 vs. Cincinnati, and one or both of Weeks 11 and 12 at the New York Giants and Cleveland. That’s an easy division title. With the reality of Wentz’s performance, he likely turned in the worst production-for-dollar season in the history of the NFL.
The quarterback controversy
It’s bad enough that Carson Wentz couldn’t just have his horrific season in peace, but Howie Roseman did his part in manufacturing a quarterback controversy when he drafted Jalen Hurts in the second round in the 2020 NFL draft.
Teams don’t usually pay their quarterback over $100 million and then draft what may be his replacement a year later; in fact, it’s never happened. Whether Roseman somehow anticipated Wentz’s shocking decline (doubtful) or wanted to have a cheap backup to develop and then trade off for an asset (likely), all this did was perpetuate the quarterback saga all year.
If Wentz struggled with no Hurts on the roster, no one would be calling for Nate Sudfeld to play. (In fact, after his performance in Week 17, it’s likely no team will ever call Sudfeld to play for them again). But with Hurts on the roster, Wentz literally had to look over his shoulder to see if Hurts was coming in – especially because Pederson insisted on actually using Hurts for a few snaps each game.
Doug Pederson’s playcalling
The head coach that became famous for The Philly Special in the Super Bowl is still here, but it’s fair to wonder whether that innovation left when Frank Reich left after 2017.
Pederson’s offense in 2020 was as bland and vanilla as the ice cream he loves. In a league in which jet sweeps and motion at the point of the snap have become almost synonymous with winning, Pederson essentially did nothing to help a struggling quarterback.
If the run was working, Pederson swayed from using it. Pederson’s usage of first-round rookie Jalen Reagor was puzzling; rather than getting Reagor in space any way possible, the play calls made Reagor (and all the Eagles receivers) win one-on-one constantly. And it seemed as if Pederson tried to force feed Jalen Hurts into the offense, using him for a predictable RPO run and nothing else.
The mismanaged way in which Pederson handled the end of the Cincinnati tie stands out. But it was also his refusal to be normal in the way he approached fourth downs or extra points. Pederson has always been aggressive, but sometimes it seemed as if he was simply going for fourth down because that’s what he always does, and not because he truly felt it was a good move. And while he had a kicker that struggled on extra points, Pederson also had the Eagles go for an NFL-record 16 two-point conversions, shattering the previous single-season record of 11.
Howie Roseman’s draft misses
Since Howie Roseman re-emerged as GM after the Chip Kelly firing, he’s drafted exactly one Pro Bowler – Carson Wentz – and he looks nothing like a Pro Bowler right now. Roseman has had some good picks like Dallas Goedert and Miles Sanders, but he’s whiffed so many times that’s it’s hard to remember them all.
Everyone knows about the smartest guy in the room pick of Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson. There’s also J.J. Arcega-Whiteside over D.K. Metcalf and Derek Barnett over Marlon Humphrey, and that Sidney Jones pick was just disastrous. They picked Andre Dillard in the first round without having even met him in person. There’s Clayton Thorson, Donnell Pumphrey, Shareef Miller, and Mack Hollins. Every team has their misses, but the misses become more magnified when the hits aren’t hits, and especially when a quarterback on a $30 million deal takes up a sixth of the salary cap.
Howie Roseman’s veteran contracts
Howie Roseman was so awful in 2021 that he gets two of the 10 bullet points. Not only have his recent draft picks missed, but his biggest skill – manipulating the salary cap – was a defining weakness this past year.
Roseman has always operated the salary cap like it’s a credit card. He consistently gets players to restructure their deals, in turn pushing the guaranteed money back and lowering the cap hit for that one year. It usually works. This year? It failed.
It’s unfair to blame Roseman for a global pandemic that lowered the salary cap for 2021, but let’s focus on what Roseman could control.
He signed Wentz to a record-breaking nine-figure contract; the contract hasn’t even started and Wentz reportedly wants out of Philly. Roseman inexplicably paid Alshon Jeffery and DeSean Jackson not only for ’20 but for ’21. Malik Jackson got a $12 million per year deal to be a rotational defensive tackle. Brandon Brooks is an All-Pro guard but after another season-ending injury, he has a $14 million cap hit at age 32 in 2021 with a $13 million dead cap charge if he’s released. Even the kicker got a multi-year extension and then had his worst year as a pro.
Here were the highest cap hits for the 2020 Eagles, per Spotrac:
And here are the biggest for the 2021 team:
The Wentz contract is an obvious disaster. Fletcher Cox is probably worth it, but then both years are filled with aging veterans like Alshon Jeffery, Zach Ertz, and DeSean Jackson. Brandon Graham is a terrific player but nearly $18M in 2021 for a 33-year-old player is a lot. Lane Johnson and Brandon Brooks are Pro Bowlers when healthy but on IR too frequently. Darius Slay will be on the wrong side of 30.
When the Eagles won the Super Bowl in 2017, every contract worked. Patrick Robinson was a low-key nickelback signing, and he made the biggest defensive play in franchise history with his NFC Championship Game pick-six. This year, Nickell Robey-Coleman was supposed to be the next Robinson, and he was a massive disappointment on the field.
Simply put, every contract Roseman touched turned out to be a bust, and then the players he kept (think Zach Ertz) saw their value depreciate amid an injury-plagued lackluster year.
Injuries
When you have a bad year of injuries, it’s logical to assume it’s simply rough luck. When you have two years, it’s probably two years of rough luck. When it happens three years in a row, there’s a problem. The Eagles are officially at the problem stage.
For whatever reason, this team has been swamped by injuries since winning the Super Bowl, and 2020 was no exception. From Brandon Brooks to Lane Johnson to Rodney McLeod to Zach Ertz to Miles Sanders to Dallas Goedert to Jalen Reagor to DeSean Jackson, this team couldn’t catch a break. Just two Eagles players (Jason Kelce and Brandon Graham) started all 16 games, and that required Kelce to heroically play through a dislocated elbow.
You can’t start Michael Jacquet at cornerback and expect to compete. You can’t have an NFL-record 13 offensive line combinations in the first 14 games of the season and expect offensive continuity. It’s just not normal.
Jason Peters
Jason Peters was everything wrong with the 2020 Eagles. Bringing him back at all was quietly an indictment on last year’s first round pick Andre Dillard, but then there was the whole fiasco of Peters moving to right guard and then demanding a pay raise to move back to left tackle, and then Doug Pederson having the audacity to say on WIP how much of a team player Peters was for agreeing to play his natural position.
Between removing himself from the overtime tie with Cincinnati for being tired and then rating as one of the worst OTs in the NFL (per PFF) at over $4 million, everything about Peters was a disaster this year. No one player more represented the inability of the Eagles’ front office to move on from the key pieces of the 2017 Super Bowl team.
Zach Ertz
Before the season, Zach Ertz made it public that he wanted to be paid as one of the top tight ends in the NFL, which was a reasonable request given his recent production. From 2015-2019, Ertz averaged an 86/914/6 statline with three Pro Bowl selections and the game-winning catch in the Super Bowl. Howie Roseman refused to give in, and what ensured was by far Ertz’s worst year as a pro.
Whether he quit on the team or showed a scarily decline in athleticism, Ertz was a non-factor all year. He missed five games due to injury, caught just half the balls thrown his way, and ranked 31st among tight ends in receiving yards. His backup, Dallas Goedert, is the best backup tight end in the league, but Ertz’s backup’s backup, Richard Rodgers, even had more yards than Ertz (345 to 335). One hundred twenty five NFL players had more TD catches than Ertz’s 1. Heading into this coming offseason, it’s almost a certainty that Ertz won’t be on the 2021 roster.
Jake Elliott
Add Jake Elliott to the list of players that went bad immediately after receiving a contract extension from Howie Roseman.
An underrated Super Bowl hero in 2017, Elliott now struggles to make a simple extra point. Actually, he’s been so unreliable the Eagles literally don’t even attempt extra points. They’ve shattered the single-season record for two-point conversion attempts.
Elliott has missed two extra points, two field goals under 30 yards, and he’s caused Doug Pederson to do nonsensical things like go for 4th-and-15 from the DAL 33 in Week 16 rather than attempt a 50-yard field goal.
Linebackers
The Eagles have never required good linebackers so long as Jim Schwartz is running the defense with his wide-nine scheme, but they’ve still always had competent play. Jordan Hicks was a good to great player and Nigel Bradham was paid almost $10 million per season in free agency.
This year, the team filtered through bottom-of-the-barrel players like Nate Gerry and Duke Riley until Alex Singleton finally emerged halfway through the season as a building block for the linebacking corps. Still, the Eagles were routinely beat by tight ends (think George Kittle’s 15-catch day in Week 4) and when the front four pass rush wasn’t getting pressure, there was no one to save the day.
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