Philadelphia Eagles: Jonathan Gannon shares initial thoughts on Kyle Pitts

It’s amazing how quickly things change in the National Football League. One minute, Kyle Pitts is seemingly one of the prospects that the Philadelphia Eagles are eyeing. The next, the Atlanta Falcons have robbed Philly of the opportunity to land the most recent NFL Draft’s highest-drafted non-quarterback by taking him with the fourth-overall selection.

Philly got their guy. No one’s going to complain about the addition of DeVonta Smith, but here’s where those two roads intersect. Both the Birds and Falcons will have the opportunity to unveil their phenomenal rookies when the Eagles travel to Mercedes Benz Stadium on September 12th to do battle with the Falcons in the first week of the 2021-2022 regular season.

You know what Philadelphia’s coaches have on their minds. They’re hoping for a strong showing by Smith and that Pitts has an off day.

The Philadelphia Eagles DC shares thoughts on what’s necessary to limit Kyle Pitts.

Much is expected of the Philadelphia Eagles’ defense in 2021. New pieces have been added in key positions, Ryan Kerrigan, Steven Nelson, Eric Wilson, and Anthony Harris for instance. The stars who were already here will have much that is asked of them again (Fletcher Cox, Brandon Graham, and Darius Slay among others).

This is a unit that will attempt to gel during the coming campaign as they attempt to get used to a new captain in Jonathan Gannon. Their first assignment: stop a powerful Falcons offense. Coach Gannon hung out with the media less than a week ago, and when the subject turned to Kyle Pitts, Coach had this to say.

"With Pitts, we watched all that college tape on all those DBs coming out and he was a guy that was winning consistently versus all the DBs I was watching… He jumped off the tape, and I was like, ‘Who is this guy.’ It’s going to be a challenge for us to figure out, especially in Week 1, how they are going to deploy them, what they are going to do with them and what it’s going to look like. We haven’t really started game planning for them right now, but just starting to watch some tape and having gone against Arthur a couple (of) years there when I was in Indy and he was in Tennessee, we’ll have a good plan"

Come on. This team’s been running vanilla schemes during the preseason and has tried to be as tight-lipped as possible. You didn’t think you’d get the game plan, did you?

In 24 games at the collegiate level, the six-foot-six, 245-pound Pitts notched 100 receptions while racking up 1,492 yards and 18 touchdowns. He’s too big for cornerbacks to cover and too fast for linebackers to keep up with. Philly has a matchup nightmare on their hands, but this is a very winnable game in Week 1.

How might this turn out? No one knows for sure, but here’s what we can be certain of. We won’t have to wait too much longer to find out.