Philadelphia Eagles: The WR position was always going to be an issue

The Philadelphia Eagles should have seen their WR woes coming.

For the second year in a row, the Philadelphia Eagles quite possibly have the worst wide receiver group in the NFL. DeSean Jackson is out due to injury, Alshon Jeffery is out due to injury, Jalen Reagor is out due to injury, Marquise Goodwin opted out before the season even began, and rookies John Hightower and Quez Watkins will likely both miss Sunday’s game against the San Francisco 49ers.

At the moment, Greg Ward (the legend himself) is the only healthy, active wide receiver on the Eagles 53-man roster. That’s probably less than ideal.

While Howie Roseman sits in his office feeling bad for himself, I want to propose the idea that he (and we) should have all seen this coming. While it may seem like hindsight bias, this was a concept that I’d been hammering home as early as May. The Philadelphia Eagles never once had a “good” group of wide receivers heading into the 2020 season.

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Staring first with DeSean Jackson (the presumed WR1), this is a guy who hasn’t played a full season since 2013 (!). That’s six consecutive seasons where he simply hasn’t been a reliable target each and every week. He essentially missed 15 games last season for the Eagles, and yet the team continued to push the narrative that he was ready to come back guns-a-blazing here in 2020.

At 34 years of age, it took no more than three games for the veteran to pull up limp with a pulled hamstring.

When it comes to Jeffery, the situation was about the same. As of right now, he has missed 10 consecutive games in a row, soon to be 11. Even before his foot injury, the former Bears WR looked slow and lethargic on the field in 2019. Whether it was due to poor on-field chemistry with QB Carson Wentz, or just overall regression due to age, Jeffery has never looked like a legit WR1 since the team’s playoff run a few years back.

A lot of people have been quick to point out that this team would look different had Goodwin not opted out, but once again, there’s very little substance to that argument. Goodwin logged just 35 catches over the last two seasons playing for San Fran, as he too was constantly bogged down with injuries.

Set to turn 30 in November, the idea that Goodwin come come in and replicate his near 1,000 yard season from 2017 was based in pure fantasy.

Reagor, Hightower, and Watkins all missing games so early into their Eagles careers isn’t something you can necessarily blame on the front office, but a few weeks of watching how the team utilized Reagor and Hightower was enough to tell me that some speedy rookies wouldn’t be enough to solve the Philadelphia Eagles WR struggles.

Reagor and Hightower saw a combined total of just 12 targets through Weeks 1 and 2, and they were largely unproductive targets outside of the one Reagor deep ball. While there was definitely reason to be optimistic about these two (especially Reagor), it’s hard to imagine a world where either of them would’ve blossomed into a Pro Bowl caliber WR1 anytime soon. The same goes for Quez Watkins.

Even if the Philadelphia Eagles WR room had stayed 100% healthy, I still don’t think this was a group of pass-catchers that was truly set to contend. All around the NFL the league is dominated by the likes of Stefon Diggs, DeAndre Hopkins, Michael Thomas, Tyreek Hill, etc., and the Eagles simply don’t have anyone like that quite yet.

*Trust me I didn’t forget about JJ Arecga-Whiteside. He’s just simply not even worth mentioning when it comes to the WR position. Healthy or not healthy, he provides next to nothing on the field.*

Howie Roseman can blame injuries all he wants, but ultimately, his bad drafting and poor free agency decisions have left this team without any sort of reliable WR1 moving forward. The sooner he actually acknowledges that, the better off this team will be.