Busts happen to everyone. Typically, the teams that have the fewest/least impactful busts are the better teams. Lately, the Philadelphia Eagles have been one of those bust-resistant teams.
That being said, the Eagles are set up for a handful of players who have been on the roster for a few years to show us whether or not they are going to be busts. Hopefully, none of them are, but as we saw last year with Bryce Huff, this team is good enough to get past a dud or two.
It’s a big year for the Eagles' 2023 draft class
In the first round of the 2023 draft, the Eagles picked both Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith. Those two guys are absolutely, 100%, without a doubt safe from being considered busts. In the sixth round, they drafted Tanner McKee, and based on everything that we’ve seen from him, he should probably be a starting quarterback in the NFL, and he’s definitely not a bust. In the seventh round, it was Moro Ojomo. He’s going to be getting a bigger workload this season, but it's wild to consider a seventh-round pick a bust.
Now, the Eagles also drafted Tyler Steen, Sydney Brown, and Kelee Ringo in the third and fourth rounds. Those guys? Those guys aren’t safe for the B-word accusations. Luckily for them, they’ve each got pretty solid opportunities to show that they can be dudes.
Kelee Ringo:
When the Eagles picked cornerback Kelee Ringo in the fourth round of the 2023 draft, he was just 20 (almost 21) years old. The entire idea behind getting him was so that he could develop into a starter and still be very young.
By the time the 2025 season starts, Ringo will be 23 years old with three training camps and two seasons under his belt. Darius Slay went to the Steelers, and now it’s time to see how much of that development happened.
All he has to do this season is beat out Adoree’ Jackson and Mac McWilliams for the starting job. It’s not like he needs to beat a first-round rookie or even a $12 million per year free agent for the job; it’s a relatively easy task ahead of him. Then, if/when he gets it, he needs to be good. No one is asking for him to turn into Darrelle Revis or anything like that, but he needs to get out there and not be a complete liability.
If he can’t do both of those things, then when it comes time to grade that 2023 draft class, he’ll more than likely be considered a dud.
Sydney Brown:
Sydney Brown’s situation isn’t super different than Ringo’s: He’s heading into his third season in the NFL, and his competition to get the starting safety job isn’t mega-tough. Right now, he’s one of three or four guys who are fighting for that spot: It’s him, Tristin McCollum, Drew Mukuba, and maybe Cooper DeJean.
If Fangio wants DeJean at safety when the Eagles are in base, then that’s totally fine because the defense is better with him on the field. For the other 90% of the snaps, someone needs to step up, and it’d be cool if it were Brown or Mukuba (who the Eagles pick in the second round of the 2025 draft).
The problem is that Brown had an ACL at the end of the 2023 season, and it took him out of offseason stuff, training camp, and then he wasn’t able to find the field last season. On top of that, when he was drafted in the third round in 2023, Vic Fangio wasn’t the defensive coordinator. There’s a chance Brown doesn’t fit the Fangio scheme.
That stinks, because he’s jacked, fast, violent, and a ton of fun to watch play. Unfortunately, if he doesn’t get on the field this season and Mukuba ends up winning and keeping the second safety job, Brown’s going to have to be considered another dud.
Tyler Steen:
When Tyler Steen got picked in the third round of the 2023 draft (one spot before Sydney Brown), Cam Jurgens was the starting right guard. Steen only ended up playing 71 offensive snaps that season.
In 2024, there was a camp competition for the starting right guard between Steen and Mekhi Becton, and Becton ended up winning. Steen got more playing time during that season (316 offensive snaps) because of injuries, but he was never the full-fledged starter.
During this offseason, the Eagles traded C.J. Gardner-Johnson to the Texans and in return, got Kenyon Green. Green was Houston’s first-round pick in the 2022 draft, and he’s well on his way to being a bust (if he’s not already there). The Eagles are hoping that the offensive line coach, Jeff Stoutland, can rehab him like they did with Becton, but that's a tall task because he flat out stinks.
Green is pretty much the only competition for Steen at this point. If he can’t be a starting-caliber guard after two seasons and three training camps at Stoutland University, while also playing next to Lane Johnson, he probably never will be.
Jahan Dotson:
Jahan Dotson is a little different from the other three guys, and it’s not because he wasn’t part of the Eagles' 2023 draft class. For him, it’s because this is a contract year. Washington picked him 16th overall in the 2022 draft, and it was to be a WR2 to Terry McLaurin. Instead, he ended up just kind of being a turd over there.
When the Eagles traded for him last offseason, it was to be a WR3, and because that trade happened at the very end of the offseason, it was kind of expected that Jalen Hurts was going to need to get comfortable throwing the ball to him. That kind of trust takes time to build.
Unfortunately, that time didn’t come in Week 4 when both A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith were injured. It would’ve been really, really cool if the Eagles went into that game with a semblance of a passing game. Instead, the trust was built/shown in the Super Bowl, and it was really, really cool.
Now, Hurts and Dotson have an entire offseason and training camp to turn the Eagles' wide receivers into a three-headed monster. If Dotson can do that and turn the 33 targets and 19 catches that he had last season into 50 or more targets and 30-ish catches, he’ll be set to make some cash going into the 2026 season.
If he can’t do that… then yeesh. Not only would he end up being a bust for the Commanders, but also a kind of rough trade for Howie Roseman.