Forget the catch percentage. Even Eagles wide receiver Jalen Reagor wouldn’t put it atop his NFL resume.
With 25 receptions on 45 targets (55.6 percent) this season, Reagor isn’t near the top 100 catch ratios in the league. Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni, however, scoffs at those numbers.
In fact, Sirianni prefers Reagor to anybody on the roster except Dallas Goedert (70 percent catch percentage), DeVonta Smith (61.5 percent) and Quez Watkins (65.1 percent). All of them got at least 10 more snaps than Reagor in the 13-7 loss Sunday to the Giants. Reagor wound up with 45 offensive snaps, plus nine on special teams.
Reagor’s use won’t change when the Eagles take on the Jets this weekend, so give the benching ideas a rest.
“I’m comfortable with the roles they’re in right now,” Sirianni said Monday of his receivers. “I have not thought about that and not thought through that because I don’t think that’s in the best interest of the team. I think Jalen Reagor gives us the best chance to win.”
Reagor’s critics aren’t going to accept that. Particularly the crowd that won’t forgive him from dropping a jump ball near the goal line with time running out. After all, Reagor made a similar catch on a scramble play late in the first half. The non-play made its way around the league partly because both New York teams won Sunday.
Long-time NFL writer Clark Judge opined, “When you have one pass to pull out a last-gasp victory, why throw it to Jalen Reagor? The guy couldn’t catch a cab in midtown Manhattan right now.”
Maybe so, but the Eagles’ passing game has bigger problems. It was awful on Sunday, largely due to Jalen Hurts’ inability to read coverages and consistently put the ball where it needed to be.
Hurts isn’t there as a passer. He holds the ball too long. He still doesn’t know the difference between open and NFL-open, the latter requiring a very tight throw.
Hurts played the worst game of his career Sunday and one of the sorriest games in the NFL this season, throwing three interceptions (two in the red zone) while connecting on just 14 of 31 attempts for 129 yards and a rating of 17.5.
An ankle injury might have had something to do with his mechanics late, but even early, Hurts was wild and reckless. On third-and-goal from the 1 with eight seconds left, he threw an interception instead of throwing the ball away. The Eagles at least could have called a timeout to kick a field goal.
In retrospect, Sirianni put Hurts in a bad place by not kicking the field goal on third down to get within 10-3 at intermission, with the ball to start the second half. Instead, Reagor became the fall guy.
“He did make a couple nice plays,” Sirianni said of Reagor. “Made a nice catch on a pass that was a little bit behind him, and then he made a nice catch at the end of the first half to put us down there in scoring range, just obviously didn’t execute to finish that off. But what you want out of every player, not just Jalen, is consistency. I think what we saw yesterday is that he wasn’t consistent throughout the game. He knows that. We have already talked to him about that.”
The Eagles need consistency out of Hurts, too. He isn’t on the same page with receivers running routes. That’s partly because the Eagles have been so much more successful running the ball, putting the passing game on the backburner.
“I think what you’ve seen is our play-action game has been able to be successful,” Sirianni said. “But when teams know we’re dropping back and when we’re dropping back to pass, that’s where we’ve struggled in the third and longer scenarios. So, that’s an emphasis that we know we’ve got to get better at because we know if we want to win the games we need to win, and that really just starts here with the next game here against the Jets, when we need to pass the ball, we’re going to have to succeed at doing so.”
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NOTES >> The Eagles (5-7) are back at MetLife Stadium Sunday for a date with the Jets (3-8), who welcomed starter and No. 2 overall pick Zach Wilson back to the lineup. The quarterback scored the game-winner in a 21-14 decision over the Texans on a four-yard run. The Eagles are 6.5-point favorites. … The Jets are coached by Robert Saleh, in his first year on the job. Sirianni is 3-1 against new head coaches this season, defeating Arthur Smith (Falcons), Matt Rhule (Panthers) and Dan Campbell (Lions) but losing to Brandon Staley (Chargers).
