4 takeaways from the Eagles' loss to the Browns (and the rest of the weekend)

Technically, the Philadelphia Eagles played a football game against the Cleveland Browns on Saturday. The Birds lost, 25-13, and except for three or four plays, everything was painful to watch. 

It was three hours of our lives that we’ll never get back, but that’s what happens in the preseason. Fortunately, we learned some things from that game. Unfortunately, they weren’t all good things.

It was a weird weekend for the Eagles

When you woke up on a Saturday in August and knew that there was an Eagles preseason game at 1 p.m. ET, the vibes were already off. Football isn’t supposed to happen on Saturdays in the summer; That time is set aside for mowing the lawn and thinking about changing your bedsheets before you end up deciding not to. 

Luckily, you were right: The vibes were just as off in your life as they were in that game; everything stunk. Then, Howie Roseman followed that game up by making a weird trade the next day. These are the takeaways from a very strange mid-August weekend.

Sydney Brown is on the hot seat

This hurts to say, because Sydney Brown plays an incredibly fun style of football. He sees someone, and he bashes them as hard as he can. It rocks. Unfortunately for him, rookie safety Drew Mukuba showed what kind of upside he can have as the second starting safety.

Mukuba's whole thing going into the draft was that he flies around and finds the ball. Then, in his first preseason game (he missed the opener against the Bengals), he did exactly that … twice. First was the interception where he pulled a Moses and split the Brown Sea. 

You could tell me that he baited Dillon Gabriel into that throw, and I’d believe you. Regardless, he sniped through an incredibly poorly spaced route combination from Blake Lockheart and Dionte Johnson for an interception and ripped off a 75-yard pick-six. 

Two drives later, the Browns botched a handoff that turned into a fumble, and Mukuba ended up recovering it. Luck is a much bigger factor in recovering a fumble than in getting an interception, but still: You have to be in the right position to take advantage of that luck, and Mukuba was there. 

As much as you love a guy like Brown, who will try to put his entire body through someone else’s sternum, you have to love turnovers even more. 

Vic Fangio needs to trust his players before he lets them start. Last season, Cooper DeJean didn’t get the starting nickel job until Week 6 because he had an injury that made him miss a whole lot of training camp. While it’s not nearly as much time as DeJean missed, Mukuba has missed a good chunk of this training camp because of a shoulder injury. 

Maybe Brown will start the season in the lineup because Fangio doesn’t feel like Mukuba understands the scheme and hasn’t had enough reps just yet. But Mukuba has shown (both in college and his very limited time in the NFL) that he can be a playmaker. Unless Brown shows that he can offer the same ability, Mukuba should be able to nab that starting spot sooner rather than later. 

Jakorian Bennett might be a guy

To be very clear, Jakorian Bennett might be a guy, not the guy. There’s a big difference between the two. Morpheus was a guy, but Neo was the guy. Cyclops was a guy, but Wolverine was the guy. Quinyon Mitchell is very clearly the guy, but Jakorian Bennet might be solid. 

His situation isn’t all that different from Mukuba’s: Yeah, Bennett is an NFL veteran, but he’s brand spanking new to Vic Fangio’s defense. That being said, of all of the cornerbacks who have seen playing time in these preseason games, Bennett has been the only one to actually (relatively) flash. 

At the beginning of training camp, the CB2 battle was between Kelee Ringo and Adoree’ Jackson. Well, both of them have been having a pretty lackluster couple of weeks, and they've both been more or less turding it up during the preseason games. We've seen Ringo having boneheaded positioning and Jackson making arm tackles that starting-caliber wide receivers would break out of.

When the Eagles traded for Bennett, Nick Sirianni said it was for cornerback depth. Then, on Saturday, we saw the new acquisition show some pretty good stuff.

He was sticky, showed good speed and he actually made a play. That’s better than what you can say about what Ringo and Jackson have shown in games … and he’s only been with the team for less than two weeks. That’s objectively solid. 

Now, there are a couple of other things that go into this. The first is that this was against the Browns, and for the most part, the Browns' depth wide receivers. Those guys stink.

Second, the big knock against Mukuba is his ability to tackle. A good way to take the temperature on a trade is by seeing what the fans of a traded player say about him. For Mukuba, Raiders fans were peeved about losing his ability to cover, but not his tackling. He had a 28.6% missed tackle rate, the worst of any cornerback with over 400 defensive snaps in 2024 (per PFF).

Late in the second quarter, he tried to punch the ball out on a play and took a pretty mean shot to the shoulder by both the Browns’ Kaden Davis and the Eagles’ Tristin McCollum. It shook him up a little bit, and it turns out, shoulder injuries have kind of been a thing for him.

“I guard that during games, knowing that my shoulder was going to pop out," he said afterward. "Like last season, my shoulder probably popped out like five times ‘cause I had a torn labrum. A lot of people don’t know that, but I was just thuggin' it out.” So … that’s not what you want to hear after seeing what we saw.

Hopefully, the shoulder is the reason for the missed tackles. If you’re thinking about your own health and guarding it, it kind of makes sense. Also, hopefully it’s actually healed and he can stay healthy. He’s been the only guy who’s really stood out so far in his very limited reps in preseason games.

Some offensive depth is not great

The offense on Saturday was wholly abysmal. We all wanted to see more Tanner McKee, but he didn’t play, which might’ve been a good thing because, as a whole, the Eagles' backup offensive line isn’t great.

The Eagles had one scoring drive, and it started on the Browns’ 31-yard line after the Mukuba fumble recovery. Other than that, everything was terrible.

Let’s combine two metaphors: Sisyphus, who Hades ordered to push a big boulder uphill in hell for eternity, and pulling teeth. The Eagles' offense was like being damned to pull shark teeth for eternity. It was wholly terrible, and it all started with the offensive line: They were constantly getting pushed while getting no push and offering no protection. The Eagles had 88 total yards (55 passing and 33 rushing).

The offensive line is the epitome of “the chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” and that’s mostly true. Yeah, bad guys get picked on, and it can ruin everything. But, by the same token, playing next to awesome guys can really elevate your game. 

Brett Toth is set to start at left guard if Landon Dickerson misses time because of his knee injury. He played a lot on Saturday, but he didn’t do great. It seems realistic to say that he’ll do better with Jordan Mailata and Cam Jurgens next to him rather than guys like Drew Kendall and Kendall Lamm. Still, it was hard to watch that game and have any faith in the individual pieces of the Eagles' depth offensive line.

You can probably say the same thing about the Eagles' depth at quarterback. We learned two things about the quarterbacks on Saturday: McKee is probably (definitely) not getting traded this season, and the Eagles aren’t going to gift the QB3 job to Kyle McCord.

McKee will get traded at some point; he’s simply too good to sit behind Jalen Hurts, and everyone knows that. You would hope that the Eagles would be treating their QB3 this season as a guy who could develop into a QB2. And McCord definitely has more upside as a QB2 than Dorian Thompson-Robinson, but during the game against the Browns, those two were rotating like they were actually competing for the QB3 spot.

On one hand, sure. The Super Bowl window is open, so it’s probably best to make sure the 53 guys on the roster are the best 53 guys you have. On the other hand, if either of these two guys is starting, everything is terrible and the season is over. They were worse than terrible on Saturday, and there’s no reason to think they could make this offense function even if they get to throw to A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith. 

It sure does seem like the best move is to turn the rookie (McCord) into a potential QB2 rather than the guy (Thompson-Robinson) who will have only one more year left on his rookie contract. But hey, I’m just an idiot with a computer and not a general manager who has rebuilt a team twice and won two Super Bowls.

Something is up with the depth wide receivers

On Sunday afternoon, the Eagles made a surprise trade: They sent tight end Harrison Bryant and a fifth-round pick to the Texans in exchange for wide receiver John Metchie and a sixth-round pick. When it comes to a trade, the first question you have to ask is, “Why?”

It makes sense for the Texans because they just lost one of their tight ends to an ACL tear and have a whole gang of wide receivers who range from "really good" to "pretty good." For the Eagles? It’s not so clear. 

Getting rid of Bryant is totally fine; they signed both him and Kylen Granson in free agency, and it looks like Granson won the TE3 job. The Eagles seem like they’re set at wide receiver, though; they have Johnny Wilson, Darius Cooper, Terrace Marshall Jr., and Ainais Smith. Based on what we’ve seen and what has been reported from training camp, those guys aren’t bad to have as deep backups.

It just seems funky, and there are only two ways this goes: Someone got hurt and we’re going to find out about it this week, or Sirianni and Kevin Patullo are going to give a bunch of non-answers for the sake of competitive advantage. There’s no in between, but something is a little bit stinky.