Philadelphia Eagles: DeVonta Smith’s best pro game goes to waste

Week 8 of the 2021 NFL season wasn’t one to write home about for DeVonta Smith.

Sure, his Philadelphia Eagles secured a commanding win over a really bad Detroit Lions squad that looks borderline destined to finish out the season as the NFL’s first 0-17 team, but Smith didn’t contribute much time to the second, as he finished out the game with one catch for 15 yards in three targets.

Now granted, that isn’t all on Smith. The Eagles threw the ball the fewest times of any game this season, and only Dallas Goedert received more than four receiving targets, but Smith didn’t exactly make the most of his targets either.

Smith, at his heart, is a high volume possession receiver. He plays better with more targets and picks up his yards in bunches. Like a good rushing attack, to truly optimize Smith’s potential, you need to get him the ball consistently in the hopes that he rips off a big one a la Miles Sanders versus the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2020.

Well, fast forward one week into the future and Nick Sirianni bought into that philosophy and the results, predictably, were very good, even if they didn’t ultimately result in a Philadelphia Eagles win.

The Philadelphia Eagles need to keep targeting DeVonta Smith regardless of the gameplan.

The Philadelphia Eagles targeted DeVonta Smith six times in Week 9.

That seems like a lot, right? But it’s really not. Over the first eight games of the regular season, Smith was targeted an average of seven times per game, which was notably bogged down by a lean Week 8 workload.

But in a game where Jalen Hurts only threw the ball 17 times – six of which went to Dallas Goedert – it accounted for 60 percent of the team’s targets thrown to wide receivers.

The results? Smith hauled in five passes for 116 yards and scored on his second touchdown of the season.

These numbers are fairly impressive, right? Yes. Anytime a receiver racks up triple-digit receiving yards is an accomplishment worth celebrating, but Smith’s Week 9 performance is particularly noteworthy because of how he picked up those yards.

You see, Smith didn’t luck his way into a massive gain off of a blown defensive assignment or have a play schemed up to exploit a very specific situation like Quez Watkins did in Game 2. No, Smith’s longest catch on the evening only went for 28 yards and required some skill to get into the endzone.

That, my friends, is how Smith’s game works. Sure, he had some massive gains at Alabama worthy of a highlight reel, but the meat and potatoes of his game came on, well, meat and potatoes plays. He’d get 15 on a comeback, pick up seven more on an out, and then pick up a bigger play on an ankle-breaking slugo.

Exciting? Maybe not for fanbases like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who are used to getting big plays out of their receivers on a weekly basis, but I can tell you firsthand that those dink and dunk passes to Smith got the Linc popping in a way typically reserved for a good run between the tackles.

At this point, most fans would pretty much settle for any sort of consistent offense, let alone the sort of big plays DeSean Jackson used to bring to the table.

The Philadelphia Eagles have stumbled on a new offensive identity. They’re running the ball more, throwing the ball mote strategically, and taking advantage of both play action and Jalen Hurts’ legs to consistently move the ball through both the air and the ground. While all of that is for not if Jonathan Gannon‘s defense continues to allow opposing quarterbacks to move the ball at will, relying on a steady diet of rushes, Dallas Goedert, and DeVonta Smith is much better than their old 40 throws par game strategy. Maybe it’ll even cultivate a win or two as the crop comes ready to harvest.