Ranking the Eagles' 7 Most Important Pending Free Agents

6. Nicholas Morrow

Only James Bradberry, Reed Blankenship and Haason Reddick played more defensive snaps than Nicholas Morrow's 834 last season. Morrow and Blankenship were also the only Eagles to play over 50% of the team's defensive snaps and over 10% of hte special teams snaps (of which Morrow played 26%).

But unlike Zaccheaus, Morrow's importance isn't simply limited to being a warm body who was on the field a lot. His contributions were important to the defense.

Morrow didn't offer a ton of versatility, only really thriving from the inside linebacker spots, but he played a big part of his role very well. He was terrific against the run.

Morrow made 66 solo tackles (95 total) on teh season, with his 12 TFLs marking a career-high. And going further to Pro Football Focus' "stops" metric (a measure of a play being a negative for the offense — so a two-yard run on 3rd and 3 is a "stop" despite not being a TFL), 42 of Morrow's tackles counted as stops. He wasn't just cleaning up plays after they were over — his high tackle count was making a real impact.

What prevents him from being higher on this list was his struggles in coverage. It's important to have a stout run-stopping linebacker on the team, but he's miscast in an every-down role that forces him to play in coverage.