Britain Covey offers invaluable insight on what facilitated the Eagles' collapse

Second-year returner Britain Covey seems like one of the most delightful people in the world and there’s no doubt that the Philadelphia Eagles landed a bonafide stud when they signed the undrafted rookie in 2022. Does he look like every single bone in his body turns into dust whenever he gets hit on a return? Yes, of course. Contrary to any amount of medical science, however, Covey can get back up and get out there. That’s grit. That’s how you win people over.

Here we are, and Covey is doing some media rounds in Las Vegas during Super Bowl week. It’s been about a month since the Eagles’ season ended, and we’re still looking for answers about what led up to and what happened during the teams’ gruesome collapse. The ever-reliable Covey gave us some answers.

Yes friends. You're going to want to hear what he said.

Britain Covey’s trip to Radio Row gave some insight into the Eagles season.

There have been a thousand theories about the downfall: Did Nick Sirianni lose the locker room? Is Jalen Hurts' leadership lacking? Did Sirianni's avoidance of implementing anything new into the offense? Did that lower the ceiling of offensive production? Was Big Dom DiSandro the literal heart of the team? Was Matt Patricia a sleeper agent sent by Bill Belichick to sabotage the Eagles? Was it just one thing or a combination of things? 

To find out, we have to piece things together. Britain Covey took to Radio Row, and in an interview, he gave us a pretty good chunk of information. Information that seems reliable.

Think of Covey’s situation. He’s in the offensive room and the special teams room. He hears things first-hand from the offensive side and he hears things from some of the defensive guys in the special teams meetings. He gets information from the whole team. It seems like Covey’s words can be a pretty good gauge of where things were at.

Let this sink in for a second.

Well, that makes a whole lot of sense. There are a few takeaways from what he said. The first one is the emotional drain. 

Emotional drain is a hard thing to parse out. We’re not talking about regular people like you and me. We’re talking about ultra-competitive world-class athletes coming off of a Super Bowl loss. Covey said, “...we got emotionally tired from trying to figure out what the problem was...”  

It sure seems like that’s a big part of a ‘Super Bowl Hangover’. The team’s expectations, from both the outside and from within, were set so high that it seemed like a house of cards. When it started to collapse, there was a panic. ‘We need to use all of our bandwidth to stop this bleeding.’ Unfortunately, that bleeding was a brain hemorrhage and there was no cure.

If you’re spending all of your energy trying to find a fix for something, and all of your fixes are unsuccessful and fruitless, it’s going to drain you. On a human level, that’s understandable. 

Another thing Covey brought up was finger-pointing. He said, “...there was some pointing fingers from player to player…” Now, to be fair, the context in which he said that was almost like he was listing parts of a communication breakdown, regardless that sucks to hear. 

If it was coach-to-coach finger-pointing, that’s one thing. We know that the offensive and defensive schemes, designs, and play calls were objectively below average. If the coaches wanted to start blaming each other, then that makes sense. 

But, for the players to blame each other? That’s tough to hear. These are our guys. Yes, some (read: a lot) of them underperformed through most of the year, specifically on defense. We constantly saw linebackers and safeties yelling at each other, trying to line up correctly before, and while, the ball was snapped. 

If we’re to believe that those guys are on the sidelines and in the meeting rooms passing the blame for a lack of success, it’s entirely reasonable. It just sucks to hear that the dysfunction dropped down to a player-to-player level. 

The last, and potentially biggest thing Covey said was at the end. “...I think we overcorrected in some areas last year and undercorrected in others.” Hmmmm… What could that possibly mean?

Overcorrecting in some areas? You mean like, I don’t know… demoting your defensive coordinator and getting a new defensive play caller IN DECEMBER? Yeah, that’s probably it.

Britain Covey is a gem. He’s insightful, and for a guy who looks like he gets his brain scrambled into a million chunks every single time he gets hit, he’s very well-spoken.

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