Eagles news: Contenders, Defensive line snap counts, and Jordan Mailata’s availability

The Philadelphia Eagles have a short week of rest after dismantling and embarrassing the Cowboys at home, all while sowing dissension in their locker room. It was a game to be remembered. Unfortunately, that celebration will have to wait, because the Eagles are on a short rest this week with a divisional game against the Washington Commanders coming up on Thursday. 

Although there are only four days between the two games, there’s plenty of news coming out about a key player possibly returning, a young player getting more playing time, and the validity of the Eagles’ winning streak. Let’s hop right on into it.

Eagles News: Jordan Mailata’s 21-day practice window has been opened

Back in Week 6, left tackle Jordan Mailta hurt his hamstring pretty badly. Most of the time you see someone with a hamstring injury, they kind of just limp around until they get to the sideline then lay down or go into the blue medical tent. That wasn’t the case for Mailata. He went down and wasn’t able to get off the field without the help of Landon Dickerson.

Then he was seen after the game with the (unconfirmed) hugest compression sleeve the world has ever seen. Get a load of this thing:

That’s wild. To be fair, he’s a huge guy, so it has to be that size … but that doesn’t stop it from being a marvel of modern engineering. It’s crazy that someone was actually able to construct such a massive piece of material. If Mailata was smart, he’d auction that sleeve off as a girdle. Someone would buy it.

Anyways, since he’s been out, Fred Johnson has come in as the Eagles’ starting left tackle. Fred’s been playing pretty well, but not nearly as well as Mailata can play. On top of that, Fred was on the injury report last week with a knee.

We got news today that the Eagles opened Jordan Mailata’s 21-day practice window. That’s obviously good news, but the issue comes with the Eagles playing Thursday night and Jordan being able to test everything out in a week of walk-throughs and very light practice

During his media availability on Monday, head coach Nick Sirianni was asked how the team would assess Jordan’s availability. Nick said,  “We’ll see how this week goes… see if he can do some things. Obviously, we’ll have to be creative there knowing that we will be doing walkthroughs. There’s some different things we’ll do later in the week that will be a little bit more than walkthroughs to help with that as well... So we’ll have to be creative with Jordan… we’ll have individual periods at times to get the guys going… so those will be opportunities... We’ll see where he is by the end of the week… I’m excited that he has the possibility to be back, but again, Fred’s done a nice job. We’ll play it by ear. If Jordan’s not ready, he won’t go. If he’s ready, he’ll go. So we’ll see where we are at the end of the week." (19:19 in the video below)

So there might be some semblance of a plan to figure out if Mailata will be ready to play on a short week. If he’s not all good, it’s important to note that Fred wasn’t on Monday’s estimated injury report. Clelin Ferrell and Jalyn Holmes are the Commanders’ two guys that normally play on that side, and luckily they’re not exactly what you would call, ‘Powerhouses’ or ‘good.’

Eagles News: Defensive line snap counts

When the Eagles blew out the New York Giants in Week 7, a handful of defensive linemen completely came out of the game in the fourth quarter. In Week 10, the only player who saw a significant decrease in snaps in the fourth quarter was Jalen Carter. He played 35 snaps in the first three quarters and only five snaps in the fourth. Josh Sweat and Milton Williams also played fewer snaps, but it wasn’t near as big of a drop as Jalen.

Just keep that in mind when you’re looking at the snap count percentages for this game. This is what Next Gen Stats has for us this week.

The most notable thing here is Jalyx Hunt’s playing time. He had a HUGE increase in snaps. As a matter of fact, he actually got on the field before Bryce Huff. Maybe that’s because the Eagles are putting Huff on the back burner, or maybe it’s because he’s still dealing with his wrist thing from Week 9. 

Whatever the deal is, it’s something to keep an eye on. Having the Week 11 game on Thursday might make the numbers a little wonky again because if it is the wrist thing for Huff, it’s hard to believe that it’ll be any better four days later. 

It’s also good to see that Brandon Graham’s playing time is going down too. He played 68.6 percent of the snaps in Week 9, and so the 39.3 percent is MUCH closer to his average. He’s going to be a lot better down the stretch (and, again, going into a short week) when he’s playing 22 snaps rather than 35.

It’s great to see the young, developmental guy getting more playing time and the old guy getting some rest. That seems like a combination for success. 

Eagles News: Are the Birds real?

Every week, ESPN has a whole bunch of their reporters write about the takeaways, questions, and reactions to every game. For the Eagles Week 10 performance, the piece starts very directly. Tim McManus writes:

“Is it time to start looking at the Eagles as a legit title contender? Not quite yet, but they're building a compelling case after winning five straight. The only knock is all of those wins came against teams with sub-.500 records.”

Well... that’s kind of a bummer when you think about it. The Browns are 2-7, the Giants are 2-8, the Bengals are 4-6, the Jaguars are 2-8, and the Cowboys are 3-6. That’s a combined record of 13-35. That’s, um … that’s not great. The combined record of every team that the Eagles have beaten is 22-45 (32.8% winning percentage).

Spin zone: in those five weeks, the Eagles have outscored teams 164 to 65. That’s a +99 point differential. That’s very, very good. In the last three weeks, the Eagles have a point differential of +53. That’s actually the highest point differential in the entire NFL over that period. So, yeah. The Eagles are playing bad teams, but they’re winning and they’re doing it demonstratively. 

McManus continued, “Philadelphia has several quality opponents coming up, including the Commanders at home Thursday night in a game that could help the Eagles take command of the NFC East. Let's see how they do in this upcoming stretch before elevating them to Super Bowl contenders, but they are emitting positive signs.”

Hey... Wait a minute. What about the Commanders? What have they done? Sure they’re 7-3, but what has that looked like? Didn’t they just lose to the Steelers a couple of weeks after they just barely snuck away with a win against the Bears?

So, that tweet isn’t entirely correct. The Commanders did beat the Cardinals in Week 4. The Cardinals have a 6-4 record and they’re shockingly at the top of the NFC West. So let that be a reminder to fact-check people on Twitter, especially if it’s a Giants fan trying to bring people down.

But diving into it a little bit: the Commanders did go on a four-game winning streak from Weeks 2 through 5 where they had a point differential of +57, and they had another three-game streak where it was +41. 

They’ve been winning and doing it at a pretty high level too. If you’re looking to argue with people, you could bring up the fact that their three-game streak did include a game against the Carolina Panthers, but you shouldn’t because you don’t want anyone to bring up the Eagles' opponents.

For posterity’s sake, the combined record of the teams that the Commanders have beaten is 23-45 (33.8 winning percentage). The difference between that number and the Eagles’ opponents’ 32.8 percent is negligible. 

These are two teams that are wildly similar from a season-long viewpoint. Tim McManus is right: for the Eagles to get real credibility, they need to show up this week and put the NFC East’s perpetual little brother back down where they belong.