4 Keys to a Philadelphia Eagles win versus Pittsburgh in Week 5
By Hunter Doyle
3. Someone in this Philadelphia Eagles linebacker core has to step up.
If you have watched any of the Eagles’ first four games, you know full well that their linebackers have been repeatedly targeted by opponents. Last week, some fans expected the 49ers’ to go after Jalen Mills who had to move back to cornerback due to injuries. However, Mills wasn’t even exposed a ton because San Francisco was just going after the linebackers.
At some point, this has to stop. If it doesn’t, Philly needs to look at their other options because it can’t get much worse. Duke Riley was expected to fill Kamu Grugier-Hill’s former role but it’s evident that Riley is nothing more than a special teams ace for the time being. Nathan Gerry has been atrocious this season and your guess is as good as ours as to why he has still played 99 percent of the defensive snaps. Plus, T.J. Edwards was the lone bright spot of this group and now he’s on injured reserve.
It doesn’t make sense why the Eagles won’t let their rookies, Shaun Bradley and Davion Taylor, make the same mistakes and then learn from them. It’s unlikely that it’ll be much worse than the performance that has been put out on the field by this group. Former Canadian Football League defensive player of the year Alex Singleton has also earned some snaps. Sure, the pick-six was thrown right to him, but he had a couple of nice stops in the backfield before that. Again, it can’t be much worse than what we’ve seen from Riley and Gerry so far.
It’ll be interesting to see how these linebackers line up. Bradley is technically the next middle linebacker after Edwards but Singleton got the bulk of snaps once Edwards left with an injury last week. Hopefully, Philly fans will get see to Singleton, Bradley, and Taylor on the field just to mix it up but it’s unlikely since Schwartz will want to trust the experience of Riley and Gerry whether the fans like it or not.