Philadelphia Eagles: Andre Dillard can build on a strong Week 3

Andre Dillard could be quite salty with the Philadelphia Eagles right about now.

I mean, he was supposed to be the team’s left tackle of the future. Howie Roseman traded up to draft him 22nd overall in 2019, he found some minor success as a rookie, and even put enough positive play to take to convince the team to finally move on from Jason Peters after a decade with the team.

Sure, Dillard still had Jordan Mailata to deal with, but he was a former seventh-round pick who’d never recorded a single snap of football outside of some preseason action. Dillard, by contrast, was a three-year starter for a pass-happy collegiate offense and one of the most polished pass-blockers in his draft class. Factor in an impressive showing at the combine where he recorded elite performances at the 40-yard dash, broad jump, 3-cone drill, and 20-yard shuttle, and you were left with a player who looked like a borderline guarantee to stick with his new team for a very long time.

All in all, not ideal.

Dillard suffered a season-ending torn biceps before it even began, Mailata transformed himself into a legitimate starting-caliber left tackle worthy of a huge contract extension, and suddenly, his chances of calling the City of Brotherly Love home long-term was all but eliminated.

But then, to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, life found a way.

After watching the team’s starting left tackle hit the injury report with a tweaked knee, Andre Dillard was once again thrust into action at his preferred position for a Week 3 romp versus the Dallas Cowboys, and surprise, it actually turned out pretty darn well. So, with Jordan Mailata out yet again for Week 4, what should fans of the Philadelphia Eagles expect from the team’s once and future(?) left tackle?

The Philadelphia Eagles might just have two good left tackles after all.

At full strength, the Dallas Cowboys have an average defensive front. They have a big named edge rusher on a huge contract, a good mix of veteran and young defensive tackles, and a high draft pick in Micah Parsons, who probably won’t be pigeonholed solely on the edge moving forward but has the physical traits to look the part if need be.

In Week 3, the Philadelphia Eagles didn’t see that line at full strength.

With both DeMarcus Lawrence and Neville Gallimore on IR, the Eagles didn’t have their game plan completely derailed by Dan Quinn’s pass rush. Sure, the Cowboys still got a pair of sacks on Jalen Hurts, one due to poor interior play and another outside the pocket on a blown block, but that had more to do with the increasing predictability of the team’s pass-happy offensive attack than the sort of edge-rushing dominance that Nick Bosa displayed the week prior.

Still, when you watch back the film from Week 3, it’s hard not to conclude that Dillard held his own for 50-plus pass blocking snaps. Granted, his game wasn’t perfect, as he recorded an offsides penalty and stood over Hurts as he was sacked to the ground by Parsons and Osa Odighizuwa, but in the grand scheme of things, Dillard was far from the team’s biggest weak spot in what hopefully serves as their low-water mark of the 2021 season.

And fortunately, that shouldn’t change all too much in Week 4, as the visiting Kansas City Cheifs aren’t exactly known for their elite edge-rushing abilities.

Assuming Frank Clark remains out for the second-straight week with a hamstring injury, the Cheifs will trot out a top-line defensive line with Derrick Nnadi and Jarran Reed on the interior and Chris Jones and 2020 fifth-round pick Michael Danna on the outside. Of those four, only one, Chris Jones, has more than one sack on the season, with the entire Cheifs lineup only having four total to their credit.

Could Dillard potentially see Jones on the outside? Sure, on base downs, the Cheifs frequently use Jones on the outside, but at his heart, the 6-foot-6, 298-pound rusher out of Mississippi State is at his best when he’s rushing against guards. I mean, Jones did make it to two straight Pro Bowls in 2019 and 2020 as a defensive tackle in Steve Spagnuolo’s 4-3 defensive scheme for crying out loud; it’s not like he’s going to be bending the edge any time soon.

Really, of the five defensive ends who earned snaps for the Cheifs over the first four weeks of the season, none are particularly fast or particularly powerful rushers capable of shotgun dropkicking Dillard to the ground with a whip-quick bull rush on their way to the quarterback.

That, my friends, is excellent news for the Eagles’ ability to move the ball in Week 4, as they’ll surely need to put up points in bunches to keep up with Andy Reid’s high-powered offense.

If Andre Dillard can ultimately prove himself a starting-caliber NFL left tackle, it’ll be good news for the Philadelphia Eagles. Sure, Jordan Mailata is entirely a part of the team’s future moving forward, but having a second tackle of similar quality could open up a world of possibilities for Howie Roseman and company moving forward, whether that’s as a backup, as a trade chip, or with one of the two tackles shifting over to the right side in place of an aging Lane Johnson. But for that to happen, Dillard has to take care of business in Week 4, which should be easier than the week prior.