Philadelphia Eagles 5 most fascinating offseason storylines on defense

3. What Sidney Jones and Derek Barnett take that step forward?

There have always been discussions about what Jalen Mills is or he isn’t, but here’s something that must be said about the ‘Green Goblin’. He was a guy many saw as a first or second-rounder, but because of the two most dreaded words in the draft process, ‘character concerns’, Philly’s 233rd-overall selection in 2016’s selection meeting slipped all the way to Round 7.

So with that being said, we can all now say that the Mills experiment was a success. The Eagles spent a seventh-round draft choice and got a starter and a team leader. You’d be hard-pressed to convince anyone that this guy had any character concerns at all.

The draft process is a crapshoot, but here’s the general consensus of most NFL teams. If you take a guy in Round 7, you hope he can contribute. If you take someone in Round 1 or in Round 2, you expect him to start. For all of his flaws, Mills still exceeded expectations regardless of whether he’s here in 2020 or not. Sidney Jones and Derek Barnett haven’t done that. They haven’t even met reasonable expectations. Period.

Time flies, and now two guys that were taken in Round 1 and Round 2 of the 2017 NFL Draft are in contract seasons. This is a make-or-break year for both, and you can trust and believe the spotlight will be on both all offseason, all the way through training camp, and in all four preseason games. It’s now or never for Barnett and Jones.