Philadelphia Eagles: Jamon Brown might actually be a steal
The Philadelphia Eagles finally have some experience coming off the bench.
When the Philadelphia Eagles announced their intentions to sign Jamon Brown off the Chicago Bears’ practice squad, it was met with virtually non-existent fanfare.
Okay, non-existent might be a tad harsh, fans in the know were still met with your standard ‘The Eagles sign Jamon Brown’ articles with a few facts about the well-traveled journeyman, but outside of that, crickets.
Personally, I find that a tad unfortunate, as Brown may actually be a steal for the Eagles depending on how things shake out.
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Measuring in at 6-foot-4, 340 pounds, Brown was selected 72nd overall by the then-St. Louis Rams after two successful seasons playing right tackle at Louisville. Despite his refrigerator physique and lack of invitation to the combine, Brown showed out at the Cardinals pro day, where he ran a 5.08 40 at 323 pounds.
Fun fact: With Brown in the fray, the Eagles now have seven offensive linemen on their active roster who run a sub 5.1 40.
Since entering the league, Brown has appeared in 60 games with 47 starts, splitting time between the Rams, New York Giants, and Atlanta Falcons over the better part of five seasons. Granted, he’s been waived by each of these teams before the end of each respective tenure, with the lone exception coming from his eight-game tenure with the Giants in 2018, but it’s worth noting that the Falcons signed Brown to a three-year, $18.75 million deal in the spring of 2019, with the intentions of starting him on the right side had it not been for first-round addition of Chris Lindstrom out of Boston College.
Fast forward one year and Brown surprisingly found himself unemployed before his second season with the other Birds, unfortunately phased out of the team’s plans after seceding playing time to other reserve options due to an August concussion.
So why, you may ask, should fans have any level of excitement at all for a 27-year-old journeyman whos played for three different teams over the last year and was on a gosh darn practice squad a week into the 2020 NFL season?
One word, my friends: Experience.
As you probably know all too well from watching Week 1’s loss to Washington, the Philadelphia Eagles’ right side of the line is beyond inexperienced. With Nate Herbig and Jack Driscoll getting the nods in place of injury starters Brandon Brooks and Lane Johnson, the Eagles right side of the line had exactly zero offensive snaps to their names at the NFL level.
But wait, it gets worse.
When Driscoll went down with cramps 50 plays into his first NFL game – as either a fan or a player – his replacement, Jordan Mailata, also had zero NFL snaps outside of the preseason, a fact that hardly settled Carson Wentz’s increasingly flustered mind when he needed it most. That’s right, Howie Roseman, in his infinite wisdom, somehow built a roster without a single veteran backup at any offensive line position, with the team’s most experienced reserve being the seemingly excluded Matt Pryor, who played all of 79 offensive snaps for the Eagles in 2019.
Even if Brown is a below-average starting guard with decent burst and only functional athleticism in space, he still has 2,328 more NFL snaps than Pryor, Driscoll, Herbig, and Mailata combined. That has value, even if Roseman didn’t think so at the time when he was putting the team together in March or during his initial trimdown to 53 in lieu of Week 1.
Next. Boston Scott isn’t a starting running back, and that’s okay. dark
Will Jamon Brown go from Chicago Bears practice squad member to Week 2 starter sandwiched between Jason Kelce and a hopefully healthy Lane Johnson? Eh, probably not. For what it’s worth, I’m still a massive fan of Jack Driscoll and think he deserves the nod even if it’s at his second position in as many weeks. With that being said, I’ll certainly sleep better at night knowing that Brown will be available at a moment’s notice, as he turned in eight less sacks in 587 snaps for the Falcons last season than the Philadelphia Eagles’ line surrendered in Week 1 alone.