Eagles film review: Is Jalen Reagor as bad as his numbers indicate?

Jalen Reagor could use some help from the Philadelphia Eagles’ play-caller.

Wrapping up, Jalen Reagor isn’t being asked to run a variety of routes. It’s still mostly nines (go routes), outs, digs, comebacks, and hitches near the sideline.

Last year, I voiced my complaints about the lack of YAC routes for Reagor especially drags and crossers. In all fairness, there was a shallow cross-screen pulled from Lincoln Riley’s playbook versus the Saints last year and Reagor ran five yards upfield instead of just running horizontally immediately. Yet, that is easily corrected and there is still room for more horizontal routes for 18. In the example used on the previous slide, Reagor only ran 1-2 yards upfield before getting horizontal.

Not to mention, Nick Sirianni calls such a high percentage of jailbreak and bubble screens that the defense often reads the play before the ball is in Reagor’s hands. It’d be nice to see Sirianni run some counters off of those looks to prevent the defense from being overaggressive.

As Cody Alexander from Match Quarters put it, today’s game is predicated upon the offense creating space and the constraining space. There has been very little pre-snap motion from the Birds offense in a league where most successful offenses use motion to their advantage.

The one game in which Siriainni used Reagor on end arounds and jet sweeps was successful, but he got hurt early in the game. It was eerily similar to when Miles Sanders received six carriers in 12 snaps versus the Raiders before the injury. At least Doug Pederson would use the orbit return motion a little bit with Reagor. Sirianni has not done much in the department of using Reagor as an extension of the run game.

No wideout is going to get targeted every play, have the game plan always designed around them, or have perfect protection from the offensive line. Reagor is no different and absolutely needs to do a better job of taking advantage of the opportunities he gets.

It still appears one year later that there are also plenty of missed opportunities that could slightly change shift opinions on him. There is no debate that he should continue to be the number three wideout behind Smith and Watkins but he can still be productive in that role moving forward.