Philadelphia Eagles: Golden Tate trade shows lack of faith in Jordan Matthews

The Philadelphia Eagles trading for Golden Tate shows the team couldn’t fully rely on Jordan Matthews to be consistent on offense.

In what shouldn’t come as a surprise to any Philadelphia Eagles fan, the team pulled off the unthinkable once again by surprising the league with a trade before Tuesday’s deadline in which they landed Golden Tate from the Detroit Lions.

Without question, the Eagles have been a team in desperate need of help at the position when looking at all of the inconsistent play behind Alshon Jeffery and Nelson Agholor, so the addition of Tate seems to have the potential to work wonders right away.

The fact that Tate has recorded at least 90 receptions in the four previous seasons leading up to 2018 as a member of the Lions shows just how special of a player he truly is. But like most trade acquisitions, the addition of Tate means another member of Philadelphia’s offense will most likely lose some snaps as a result, which is where Jordan Matthews comes into play.

Despite coming off his best game of the year in 2018 during the team’s trip to London in which he caught four passes for 93 yards against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Matthews has been far from reliable for the Eagles since returning to the team in September.

At the time, it was easy to understand why Philadelphia was willing to give Matthews a shot since the Mike Wallace injury was a crushing blow to the offense, and the team was desperate for help at the receiver position.

However, Matthews hasn’t exactly been the most reliable option in the world, and the fact that he only had six catches leading up to Sunday’s win over the Jaguars will back that claim up.

Compared to Tate, Matthews doesn’t even come close from a reliability standpoint, and while Philadelphia will most likely still try to use him whenever possible, this also says a lot about how the team feels about the former Vanderbilt star.

Chances are that if Matthews were more consistent with his playmaking abilities, the Eagles never would have pushed for the deal to land Tate.

For obvious reasons, having both players on the roster certainly doesn’t hurt since Matthews will hopefully continue to figure out a way to make some sort of impact from time to time. But at the end of the day, the decision by the team shows how little faith the Eagles have in Matthews, and it’s great to see Carson Wentz receive a more reliable weapon in Tate to help take some of that pressure off running the offense.