DeVonta Smith is already the Philadelphia Eagles’ WR1

Micah Parsons is really good at football.

A native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Penn State product has turned into a serious player for the Dallas Cowboys only 13 games into his career, where he’s become the guy on a surprisingly good defensive front.

Do you want a dedicated edge rusher who can attack the quarterback off the edge? That’s the role Parsons was tasked with in Week 3 following a string of injuries, and he picked up .5 sacks for his troubles. How about a standup linebacker who can blitz, provide run support, and drop into coverage? Parsons can do that too and might actually be more lethal in that role since he can move around the field. Heck, considering Parsons’ athletic measurables, he could probably log snaps at safety and do so effectively, even if that might not be the best utilization of his immense talents.

Considering Parsons was drafted with the pick the Philadelphia Eagles initially held when the draft opened up, it’s tough to watch the PA kid thrive down in Dallas, even if he weirdly has always been a Cowboys fan, at least according to his trip around the post-draft media circuit.

Is Parsons going to be a thorn in the sides of Philly fans for years to come? Yes, but do you know what? Something tells me DeVonta Smith is going to be similarly irksome to the southernmost team in the NFC East.

The Philadelphia Eagles should be over the moon with Smith’s early production.

Through the first 13 games of the 2021 NFL season, DeVonta Smith has amassed 50 catches for 701 yards and four touchdowns.

Are those numbers good? Well, contextualized against the Philadelphia Eagles’ recent receiving production, that’d be a resounding yes.

In 2020, the Eagles’ top receiver was Travis Fulgham, who joined the active roster via a practice squad elevation roughly a month into the regular season. Like Smith, Fulgham appeared in 13 games, but he was targeted 15 fewer times, caught 12 fewer passes, and finished out the season with 539 yards and four touchdowns, which isn’t bad at all but clearly didn’t differentiate him enough to even guarantee him a roster spot in 2021.

Jalen Reagor, who was drafted 11 spots after Smith one draft earlier, in 11 games as a rookie, was targeted 54 times, caught 31 balls, and finished out the season with 396 yards and a touchdown. While those numbers weren’t particularly good among rookie receivers, ranking 12th, 15th, and 18th, respectively, they’re notably better than his sophomore statistics, which is a really unfortunate turn of events.

That’s… moving on.

Pulling things back to a more macro view, the Eagles haven’t had a wide receiver surpass 700 yards in a season since 2018, when both Alshon Jeffery and Nelson Agholor cleared that bar. That season marked the second-straight season where that duo both cleared the 700-yard marker and only the fourth individual 700-plus yard performance by an Eagles wide receiver following 800-plus yard performances by Jordan Matthews in 2015 and 2016.

While Smith almost surely won’t surpass Jeremy Maclin‘s 1,318 campaign in 2014, as he’d need to put up 617 more yards in only four games, he’s certainly in rarified air among Eagles’ wide receivers over the past half-decade, even if he sometimes doesn’t impact an individual game as much as some would like.

Then again, it’s not Smith’s fault that he was targeted just eight times over the past two games; that falls on the shoulders of Nick Sirianni, Jalen Hurts, and Gardner Minshew.

If Micah Parsons finishes out his NFL career with a gold jacket in Canton, there will surely be a segment of the Philadelphia Eagles’ fanbase who laments the decision to draft DeVonta Smith instead. The team hasn’t had a Hall of Fame defensive player since Brian Dawkins in 2008 and a Hall of Fame defensive lineman since Reggie White in 1992. But the Eagles also haven’t had a true WR1 since Alshon Jeffery from 2017-18, and a top long-term option since before Donovan McNabb was getting paid to play football. If DeVonta Smith can be that guy, his drafting will unquestionably go down as a win.