DeSean Jackson is the Philadelphia Eagles’ ultimate insurance policy
DeSean Jackson is the ultimate insurance policy for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Hey, have you heard that the Philadelphia Eagles have ‘built a track team at wide receiver‘? You have? Cool.
I mean, for what it’s worth, it’s true; the Eagles went from fielding one of the worst receiving corps in Week 17 of the 2019 season to having eight legitimate NFL-caliber wide receivers with varying degrees of speed precision, and talent.
Emphasis on the word speed.
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Over the course of the 2020 NFL Draft weekend, Howie Roseman drafted or traded for four wide receivers who run sub-4.5 40 yard dashes. Is that a bit overkill? Maybe so, but as we’ve seen oh so many times before, betting on any one prospect to enter the league and become a star is a fool’s errand, even in a historic wide receiver draft. The Eagles selected Donnel Pumphrey during 2017’s historic running back draft to become the next Darren Sproles. How did that turn out?
By adding Jalen Reagor in the first round, John Hightower in the fifth round, Quez Watkins in the sixth round, and Marquise Goodwin via a pick swap with the San Francisco 49ers, the Eagles now have four chances to land their next great speedster at the wide receiver position. They could all turn out to be great, one or two could rise above the pack, or the fearsome quartet could bow under the pressure of being a South Philly deep threat, and the Eagles could be looking for their next, next, next great deep threat some 10 months from now.
However, even if Reagor stumbles out of the gate, Hightower and Watkins fail to generate separation against NFL cornerbacks, and Goodwin is, well, the player he’s been over the first seven years of his career, the Eagles shouldn’t fear. Why? Because they already have the best pure deep threat in the NFL: DeSean Jackson.
Okay, Okay, some may take offense to that statement, as Tyreek Hill has pretty firmly taken that mantle from D-Jax since taking the league by storm in 2017. Still, since entering the league in 2008, there hasn’t been a better deep ball receiver than Long Beach Polytechnic’s favorite son. Even at the tender age of 33, Jackson speed was on full display in the Eagles’ Week 1 win over the Washington Redskins last fall; a game that set seriously unfortunate expectations for the season as a whole. In that game, Jackson caught eight of nine targets for 154 yards and two touchdowns.
Granted, Jackson suffered a basically season-ending injury the very next week against the Atlanta Falcons, but for one week, one glorious week, the Eagles’ offense looked unstoppable.
If the 2019 NFL season taught us anything, it’s that the Eagles’ offense is at its best with a reliable deep threat capable of taking the top off of opposing defenses, and it’s hard to count on Jackson for a full 16 – eventually 17- game season plus playoffs. In that regard, the Eagles didn’t add Reagor, Hightower, Watkins, and Goodwin to serve as insurance for Jackson but retained Jackson as insurance for that quartet’s development.
Need proof? Look no further than JJ Arcega-Whiteside’s performances as a rookie. Had the Eagles hypothetically moved on from Alshon Jeffery after the 2019 NFL Draft, they would have been stuck with a highly-totted second-round receiver out of Stanford who amassed all of 169 yards on 22 targets as a rookie and seldom saw the field down the stretch. Jackson is expensive, an older speed receiver, and an obvious external candidate to be released from those not ‘in the know’ but his ability to change a game with a single catch is second to none.
Worst case, he plays out the 2020 season as a speedy lame-duck paired up with Reagor in the slot, and really, is that that bad? Even at 34, Jackson is a better than any of the receivers the Eagles employed last season – except, of course, Jackson himself.
Next. The Cowboys should go all-in on Jamal Adams. dark
Going into the 2020 NFL season, Howie Roseman had a plan. He wanted to add young, dynamic playmakers who can grow around his young franchise quarterback for years to come. Could Jalen Reagor, John Hightower, Quez Watkins, or even Marquise Goodwin be that guy moving forward? Maybe so, but if they aren’t – at least in 2020 – the Philadelphia Eagles have one of the league’s premier down-the-field targets under contract at least through 2020, maybe longer if need be. After what Chip Kelly did to D-Jax nearly a decade ago, I doubt Roseman is going to do number 10 dirty again.