I avoid the week-to-week swings and usually find myself being neither as high as Eagles Twitter is after a win nor as low as it is after a loss like yesterday. Any single game in any single week in the NFL yada yada… And I hate writing the same thing everybody else is posting, both of us have better things to do with our time.
And this isn’t really a frustration post, but is a “time to say I was wrong” post, specifically on Reagor. I always value player traits over short-term performance as players take time to develop and traits usually pan out. Reagor has them. So does Hurts. And while Reagor could still pan out (heck, anybody can), it is pretty clear that he is failing. Hurts continues to be more complicated as his floor is a good quarterback but that isn’t want the Eagles are shooting for.
Jalen Reagor
He is just shy of Instagram posting the picture of a cat hanging from a rope with “Hang in there!” with his tone deaf motivational posts. I never care what players post or don’t but seriously dude, stop. It’s bad it’s the ame thing I told my teenage daughters
Like everybody, I hated the pick of Reagor over Jefferson. I wrote in the Eagles history of WR draft analysis that Howie’s reasoning that Jefferson played the slot made no sense at all. That said, I believed in Reagor that he could be a good WR2 because of his traits – he does have speed and in his rookie season he showed an ability to separate. I watched every one of his targets and he did separate, his route running was rough but thought Sirianni would improve that, and despite the narrative Reagor had two drops in his rookie season (officially he had one drop but I thought there was a second he should have caught).
In his rookie season Reagor averaged 3.3 yards of separation on an average depth of target of 13.9 yards which was very good (stats from NextGenStats). The majority of WRs that averaged more separation than him were slot receivers (who will always skew high) – receivers around or above him in separation at that depth of target included Henry Ruggs, Marquise Brown, and Darnell Mooney. Like almost every receiver ever, he should have grown in his second season.
What happened? He has gotten worse in every way possible:
- He got worse at separation, dropping to 2.6 yards from 3.3. How??!? Seriously. How.
- He totaled 16.8 EPA last year in a partial year and somehow has dropped to NEGATIVE 12.8 EPA this year. A -29.6 swing in total EPA. How?!? There are only four WRs worse than him this year in cumulative EPA.
- His punt returning has actually been the most valuable part of his game, ranking 22nd out of 47 kick returners and 32nd of 36 in punt returns by yards per return. These are both bad, but as I said, they are relatively his best value this year.
I will absolutely take the L here and it is clearly not reactionary – he needs to sit or go. And the Eagles will need to once again go back to the well to solve receiving either in the draft or free agency.
Jalen Hurts
I was optimistic on Hurts vs. expectations entering the season but still wondered how high he would rise to. His mobility alone gives him a middle of the league floor but the goal should always be to be a top 10 QB. My last couple of posts on Hurts and historical QB progression showed that:
- QBs typically “are what they are” around 1,000 career passing attempts with few continuing to materially improve after that.
- Hurts’ accuracy as measured by CPOE has improved from last year’s -8.3 to -0.9 this year. Big improvement but if he is to be the guy moving forward, he needs to be much better than that (top QBs will be near 4 or above).
- Hurts has really struggled at the highest volume part of the passing game, the 1-10 yard range. Up to yesterday, he still only has 3 games where he had a positive CPOE in that range with the last two weeks again being really bad.
- And his deep ball accuracy, a relative strength last year, has regressed and is also a negative CPOE.
Hurts has improved turnovers from last year greatly, yesterday’s three picks aside. But he is just not improving enough to be sure of him moving forward. Could he still? Sure, but as the season goes on it becomes more of a statistical outlier. Is he a great guy and a good leader? Yep, but that doesn’t help when he doesn’t see open receivers.
Hurts is the guy this year and any calls to bench him are silly. But at the end of the season, Howie will clearly see what his best option is moving forward. Would he draft one of the QBs this year? Depends what they think of Corral or maybe Pickett or Willis. But they will most likely have to move up to get who they want with where our picks are landing. Would he go after Wilson? I think absolutely but could he get him? Just my opinion, but I would expect the likelihood of scenarios to be:
- Howie goes after Wilson
- Howie trades down in the 1st for 2023 draft capital, Hurts gets another year
- Howie drafts one of the 2022 QBs
Of course the above is all academic if Hurts either shows enough this year or buys another year because of his performance and lack of better options.
On the bright side…
The OL has been relatively healthier than last year, even with the Seumalo and Brooks injuries and the Eagles have better depth behind them with Landon and Driscoll in year 2. I showed the relationship before on OL health and offensive DVOA and the healthier line is paying off this year with the Eagles somehow sixth in offensive DVOA (11th pass and 3rd run).