Philadelphia Eagles: What role will CB Zech McPhearson play in 2021?

Starting slot corner.

While McPhearson did play a good chunk of his college ball as a boundary corner for the Red Raiders defense, he also saw a healthy amount of time as the team’s primary slot option. This notion of versatility was one of the main reasons he was viewed as a draft-able corner this past weekend.

While I’m sure the Philadelphia Eagles front office would prefer to see their fourth-round investment turn into a starting caliber outside corner, the odds of that are frankly quite slim. It’s hard enough to get first-round CBs to get accustomed to the challenges of guarding NFL wide receivers, expecting that quality of play from a fourth-round prospect is a tad rich.

With that said, there’s an obvious pathway to playing time for McPhearson as the team’s slot corner, if the before mentioned option of being CB2 doesn’t work out. While Maddox appears to be the team’s current plan at that position, I doubt there’s any real sense of attachment to him at this point in his playing career.

Maddox has oft been injured, and hasn’t been all that productive when healthy, With his contract set to expire after this season, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to see the team start prioritizing his replacement.

Let’s say the Eagles acquire a veteran corner to line up alongside Slay sometime in the following weeks, naming McPhearson the starting slot option would be an obvious corresponding move to make.