Philadelphia Eagles: With volume comes success for DeVonta Smith

It happened, it finally happened: The Philadelphia Eagles‘ offense finally looked good-ish after a pair of ugly outings against the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers.

Mind you, the team’s run-pass ratio was still way less than 50-50, with only 28.3 percent of the team’s offensive snaps going to a rusher and even fewer, 14.9 percent, going to an actual running back and the team’s penalty issues still reared their ugly head but overall, the offense moved the ball well, and Jalen Hurts looked a whole lot better than his Week 3 tape.

Did that ultimately lead to a win? No. The Eagles were once again outscored by double-digit points and left plenty of points on the board due to poor football discipline, but when you give up six touchdowns on seven drives, what can you really expect?

Sidebar: Jonathan Gannon‘s defense has now given up 40-plus points in two straight contests, which is one more 40-point game than Jim Schwartz‘s unit surrendered over his 58 game tenure with the Eagles. While I’m not ready to hit the panic button just yet, it is worth monitoring moving forward.

But do you want to know the best development from the Philadelphia Eagles’ Week 4 bout against the Kansas City Chiefs? DeVonta Smith passed the 100 receiving yard mark for the first time in his NFL career. With a little luck and a concerted effort to get the ball in Smith’s hands moving forward, that accomplishment could be a regular feat of Nick Sirianni‘s offense moving forward and provide Jalen Hurts ample opportunities to target his favorite receiver dating back to their shared tenure at Alabama.

The more the Philadelphia Eagles target DeVonta Smith, the better he’ll play.

DeVonta Smith is a darn good wide receiver.

He can run a full route tree, has experience playing every conceivable position across the line of scrimmage, and oh yeah, will surely go down as one of the best wide receivers to ever don the crimson and white in the history of Alabama, maybe the NCAA in general.

Is Smith a tad slight? Sure, you don’t get the nickname “The Slim Reaper” without having a slender build, but even if he’s not going to be running over linebackers across the middle of the defense anytime soon doesn’t mean he can’t still be an effective wide receiver in the correct scheme.

No, if used correctly, Smith is more than capable of turning his 122-yard performance against the Kansas City Cheifs into a regular occurrence.

He just needs to be targeted enough times to really get his gears going.

You see, Smith isn’t a wide receiver like Quez Watkins or even Jalen Reagor who will finish out one game with three catches for 100 yards and another with three for 33. In college, Smith only had eight games where he hauled in a catch of 50 or more yards, which may seem like a lot but only accounts for 17 percent of his 47 games. Mind you, he surpassed the century mark 14 times, including on nine occasions during his senior season, but in those games, he averaged 8.57 catches per game.

No wonder Smith led the nation in receptions, yards, targets, and touchdowns in 2020; he had a usage rating that was only surpassed by future first-round pick Najee Harris.

While the Philadelphia Eagles have largely found ways to keep Smith engaged in each of his first four professional contests, being targeted an average of 7.75 times a game, there’s a clear discrepancy between the games where Smith hauled in more than five balls versus the two where he had three or less.

Namely that Smith averaged 14.8 yards per game in the former versus 8.8 in the latter.

Now sure, does some of that success come down to the luck of the draw? Most definitely. Smith can’t control how opposing teams play him in coverage and there will undoubtedly be some plays that are more conducive to picking up additional YAC than others. With that being said, it’s not like Smith was hauling in 50-yard bombs versus the Kansas City Cheifs/Atlanta Falcons and being a screen specialist versus SF and Dallas. No, outside of a 39-yard catch versus the Cheifs at the end of the second quarter, all of Smith’s catches have been for 25 or fewer yards with an overall average yards-per-catch of 13.2.

So how, you may ask, can Nick Sirianni capitalize on Smith’s unique set of skills and put the Eagles in the best position to succeed? By throwing him the ball early and often.

Smith is a certified possession receiver. He doesn’t necessarily get stronger as the game goes on but he picks up his yards in bunches, as opposed to 50-plus yards at a time. Like a power back between the tackles, Smith needs volume to turn in a big game, as opposed to a home run hitter like Miles Sanders who could finish out a game with 11 carries for 80 yards despite having a long of 74.

A perfect metaphor? Not really, but I think it gets the point across.

As things presently stand, DeVonta Smith leads all Philadelphia Eagles wide receivers in total yards at 237, 18 more than his outside partner in crime, Quez Watkins. Smith has 11 targets more than Jalen Reagor – or anyone else – leads the team in receptions at 18 and is on pace to become the team’s first 1,000-yard receiver since Jeremy Maclin back in 2014. But to truly come into his own and reach his potential as a player, Smith needs a consistent stream of targets throughout the game, not the sort of spamming Nick Sirianni has become accustomed to over the first month of the season. I mean, considering the Eagles throw the ball an average of 34.5 times per game, there’s no reason eight of those at the bare minimum shouldn’t be thrown Smith’s way.