The Eagles weren’t supposed to be in the 2022 NFL Playoffs. What comes next?
The Philadelphia Eagles lost to the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers Sunday in the Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs. That’s fine. They weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.
The Eagles were supposed to be rebuilding in 2021. This was, after all, the year in which they’d traded away one-time franchise quarterback Carson Wentz but not the cap hit his guaranteed money left behind. That contributed to a league record $62 million in dead cap space this year. Philadelphia came into the season with roughly 1/3rd of its spending room committed to players who weren’t on the roster by midseason and still made it to the postseason.
That is stunning. Now comes the hard part; sustaining this momentum into 2022.
The Eagles thrived, in part, thanks to a soft schedule; they only played one playoff team after Week 7 and went 9-2 against teams that failed to qualify for the postseason in a 9-8 campaign. Philadelphia also succeeded because first-year head coach Nick Sirianni played to his strengths and went against the grain of a pass-heavy NFL. Sirianni, fully understanding the power of his blocking and quarterback Jalen Hurts’ speed, engineered an offense that ran for more yards than anyone and averaged 190 rushing yards over its last 10 games.
On Sunday, the schedule got tougher and the Bucs took away those running lanes. The Eagles’ regular season approach stopped working. They had nothing else to offer Tampa Bay.
Hurts threw for 258 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions. 118 of those yards and the TD came after the Bucs took a 31-0 lead into the fourth quarter. He was unable to make plays when it mattered and often looked unsure of his throws downfield.
It was a frustrating performance from a player who may have been limited by injury but ultimately failed to come through. That leaves a clear dilemma in Philly. Should it buy into the Hurts experience for Year 3, or should it begin looking for an exit strategy?
Hurts led an offense that threw for more than 300 net yards twice and less than 200 10 times. He ran for more than 50 yards per game but ranked 22nd in the league in passer rating, sandwiched between Davis Mills and Ben Roethlisberger. His legs made him a middle-of-the-road passer when it came to overall value, according to Next Gen Stats’ expected points added model, charted here helpfully by RBSDM.com
We already know he has the pass protection other quarterbacks could only dream of. So how can the Eagles build around him?
There’s a solid market of veteran wide receivers who could help upgrade a position of need, including Allen Robinson, Chris Godwin, and maybe even Davante Adams. Philadelphia can’t afford any of those guys because of limited cap space. Another $22 million in dead money is on the books for next season. Their estimated $13.6m in spending room ranks 22nd-most in the league.
The Eagles can address the position at a receiver-heavy draft, where they’ll have three first round picks — Nos. 15, 16, and 19 — thanks to previous trades. They’ve selected a Day 1 wideout each of the last two years with the result ranging from disastrous (Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson in 2020) to promising (DeVonta Smith in 2021). Plucking Jameson Williams or Chris Olave with one of those picks could give the team a badly-needed playmaker to pair with Smith and Dallas Goedert (and create space for Quez Watkins to fly) while providing the upside of a future WR1.
That would be a boon for the emerging young QB. Hurts’ 9 air yards per pass was the fourth-deepest mark in the league and his 14 percent bad throw rate was third-lowest. Questions remain about whether or not he could sustain that with more volume — he threw 62 fewer passes than Jared Goff this season despite playing one more game — but it’s clear he’d be better off with a receiving corps that didn’t drop more than five percent of this throws.
Philadelphia could also see Sunday’s loss as a reason to develop its Plan B at quarterback — a reasonable possibility for a team that drafted Hurts in 2020 despite having Wentz signed through 2024. The Eagles’ passing game had a small-sample uptick with Gardner Minshew behind center. The Jaguar castoff’s success could provide evidence of brighter days for the Philly aerial attack.
Minshew will remain on the roster as a viable, inexpensive QB2 for at least one more year. He may have company. After drafting a flawed but intriguing quarterback in 2020 general manager Howie Roseman could do it again in 2022. The upcoming crop of rookie QBs is one of the weakest in years, but the Eagles could opt to turn one of those first round picks into a lottery ticket behind center.
Who’d fit the bill? They have the ammunition to trade into the top 10 and select a guy like Kenny Pickett, though that seems like a waste of assets for a team with holes to fill. Quarterbacks currently expected to last until the late teens include Malik Willis, Desmond Ridder, Sam Howell, and possibly Matt Corral.
Willis, who plays at 6’1 and 215 pounds just like Hurts did in college, would be an interesting pickup. He’s a dual-threat QB whose legs carry him out of trouble, just like the Eagles’ incumbent. He had worse passing stats than Hurts despite playing against low-major FBS competition at Liberty University, but you can also argue he had significantly less talented receivers to throw to and blockers to clear a space than the guy who played his college ball at Oklahoma and Alabama.
Would the Eagles wade back into the fray by picking up the Christian school version of Hurts? It’d be weird (and, honestly, pretty dang funny), but it’d allow the team to keep the foundation of a playoff playbook intact. Would Sirianni opt for a more classic pocket passer to evolve his offense? Or was the success of his run-heavy game enough to try another year of handoffs-and-scrambles to set up occasional deep shots?
This is a tough situation to be in, but Philadelphia is ahead of schedule in its rebuild and will have several opportunities to get better in 2022 even without oodles of salary cap space. Hurts has proven he’s capable of being a playoff quarterback, with some help from a soft schedule. He also showed he’s not capable of winning a postseason game on the road without more help.
Ultimately, Roseman and Sirianni are staring down a good problem to have. Their team can succeed even without the kind of high octane passing game that’s propelled the bulk of 2022’s contenders. Now they need to figure out if Hurts can be that kind of quarterback. And if they even need him to be in order to get back to the playoffs next winter.
