Philadelphia Eagles: No, Jalen Reagor is not a bust. Stop it.

How can Jalen Reagor be a bust when he isn’t on the field, Philadelphia Eagles fans?

When the Philadelphia Eagles opted to pass on Justin Jefferson in favor of Jalen Reagor with the 21st overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, it forever linked the two wide receivers.

Like Carson Wentz and Jared Goff, Andre Dillard and Motez Sweat, and even JJ Arcega-Whiteside and DK Metcalf before him, Reagor’s NFL career will forever be judged against Jefferson, and to a lesser extend CeeDee Lamb, and when said player goes off for 175 yards in only his third professional game, it’s going to lead to quite a few fans across the 215 expressing their beliefs that the Birds made the wrong decision.

That thought process is understandable but honestly needs to stop. Jalen Reagor is not a bust, and comparing him to Justin Jefferson three games into his NFL career is just foolish.

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Did Jefferson have more yards than Reagor in Week 3? Yes, 175 to be exact because Reagor literally wasn’t on the field. He suffered a torn UCL the week prior and is IR bound for the next three weeks at minimum. How can anyone seriously expect the ex-TCU Horned Frog to put up numbers when he’s not on the field?

Furthermore, even if Reagor was on the field, I highly doubt he’d have even been in the position to pick up 175 yards in a single game in large part because of how Doug Pederson runs his offense.

In Week 3, Jefferson played 51 offensive snaps (78%) and was targeted nine times. Through the first two weeks of the season, Reagor, who has started every game he’s played in, was only targeted eight times combined, which, obviously, is a lot less. If the Eagles were funneling target after target after target to Reagor like they did to Dallas Goedert in Week 1, DeSean Jackson in Week 2, and Greg Ward in Week 3, maybe he too would be looking at 200-plus yards through three weeks but that, unfortunately, isn’t how the Eagles want to do things.

How do the Eagles want to do things? Honestly, at this point, beats me. I don’t call the plays, I just write about ’em.

The Vikings, by contrast, went all-in on Jefferson in Week 3, and for good reason. Facing off against the deceptively good Tennessee Titans, Minnesota’s offensive attack was two-pronged – with Dalvin Cook accounting for 81 percent of the team’s rushing yards and Jefferson accounting for roughly 70 percent of the team’s receiving yards. Seriously, the Vikings didn’t have another receiver with more than 30 receiving yards in Week 3, and they had five receivers other than Jefferson who caught at least one ball.

And most importantly of all: Even with Jefferson’s monster game, it ultimately wasn’t enough for the Vikings to squeak out a win over Mike Vrabel and company.

While it would be nice to see Reagor have his own 175-yard game, his yards per reception average in 2020 is remarkably similar to Jefferson’s on the season (19.2 versus 20.4) despite the latter having a 71-yard touchdown under his belt to bump that number up a full 4.6 ypc.

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Look, could Justin Jefferson eventually prove to be a head-and-shoulders better receiver than Jalen Reagor? Yes, that is without a doubt a possibility, but declaring Reagor a straight-up bust for not having a big game in Week 3 when he wasn’t even one the field is just… no. Stop it. Get help. If you want to blame someone for the Philadelphia Eagles’ offensive woes, that ire should fall on the shoulders of Doug Pederson and his legion of offensive consultants, not a 21-year-old wide receiver who is leading the team in yards-per-catch by a massive margin and is arguably the only big-play threat on the roster.

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