Eagles news: Haason Reddick, Slay on social media, and defensive line snap counts

The Philadelphia Eagles are 2-2 going into their bye week after a gutting loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 4. It’s going to be a long two weeks where all we can think about is how bad they looked the last time we saw them. 

We know some help is coming with A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Lane Johnson, but news about their availability isn’t going to come until later next week. That means we’re stuck with the stories about how the Eagles played on Sunday, how they reacted afterward, and wishful (yet unrealistic) trades. 

Eagles news: Defensive line snap counts 

These snap counts are going to be a thing to focus on all season because right now, 36-year-old Brandon Graham is the best player on the edge and possibly the best defender on the field at any given moment. 

His hot start has him thinking that this year might not be his farewell tour and that he might play another year. It’s only been four weeks, and with a very early bye week, it’s probably a little too soon for him to say that. Hopefully, it’s not, because he’s one of the most prolific players on this team, but there is still a whole lot of football left to be played so we’ll see. 

To be fair, the Buccaneers' offense wasn't unstoppable because of a terrible performance from the defensive line. They didn't really do much to help the secondary, but it didn't fall completely on them like it did in Week 2.

In Week 4, the defensive line’s snap counts looked like this (Per Next Gen Stats):

Hopefully, the reason Bryce Huff and Brandon Graham’s snap counts were the same was because they didn’t want B.G. to have an actual heat stroke on the field and not because they wanted to see more of Huff.

Stopping the run wasn’t as big of a deal against the Buccaneers because their run game wasn’t near as big of a threat compared to the Eagles' previous three opponents. Tampa Bay only ran the ball on 33.8 percent of their plays, which was the lowest percentage the defense has seen this year.

We had a shred of proof that the bad run defense has been due, in part, to Bryce Huff’s existence on the field. His inability to stop the run is very noticeable and he’s been targeted by offenses. In Week 3, Vic Fangio took Huff out of the game on early downs and the defensive line did better, limiting the Saints to 3.1 yards per rush.

In Week 4, Huff was back in there on early downs. He played 16-of-36 first downs and eight-of-24 second downs. The yards per rush jumped up to 4.4. Sure, there are a few other factors included in that, notably the heat and also that Jalen Carter wasn’t a game-wrecker, but still… the whole Huff thing is relatively telling. 

The broadcast said that it felt like 108 degrees on the field in Tampa Bay. The best way to think about Fahrenheit is that it’s ‘__ percent hot.’ If it’s 72 degrees then it’s 72 percent hot. The point is, you probably want to rotate your best defensive lineman more when it’s 108 percent hot, especially when he’s being ineffective. 

Also, Quinyon Mitchell played 100 percent of the defensive snaps in Week 4. He had a few farts here and there, but the heat didn’t cause him to miss any time and he played pretty well.

For the season, their snap counts look like this:

It’s pretty clear that Jalen Carter is the only staple on the defensive line. If you had said that was the case a month ago, pretty much everyone would have been cool with that. With the way he’s been performing in the majority of the games so far this season? Not so much. 

It’s kind of expected that he’s getting this much playing time because that’s what Vic Fangio does with his best defensive linemen. When he was with the Dolphins last year, Fangio had Christian Wilkins on the field for 80.9 percent of the defensive snaps and Zach Seiler for 77.5 percent. Carter is going to keep getting a lot of work, and he needs to be a consistent force if not the game-wrecker he was drafted to be.

Eagles news: Darius Slay on social media

This one is a doozy. C.J. GardnerJohnson is a loudmouth instigator and that’s awesome. It can be draining when the defense plays as poorly as they did against the Buccaneers, but after a win it’s different. Players get to talk trash because they won.

After the Eagles beat the Saints, Bridget Condon of the NFL Network reported that C.J.G.J. was in the locker room yelling, "They ain't no contenders they're pretenders. They have Derek Carr remember that."

Micah Parsons took umbrage with that, given the Saints had just demolished the Cowboys a week prior. He went on his podcast The Edge with Micah Parsons and had some words for C.J.G.J.

Saying something like, ‘I don’t know who you think you are,’ isn’t terrible, but C.J. runs hot and he didn’t like that. He went to Twitter and responded to Micah.

The first part of that seems relatively tame, but then he ended it with, “Won a lot more playoff games than you too my guy.” That’s tough. That’s a pretty good (and accurate) jab. Micah Parsons and the Cowboys have won a single playoff game while C.J.’s teams have won five playoff games. 

It's the end of it that's a kick in the nards. He called Micah, “my guy.” You don’t want to be My Guy’d. That’s up there with getting called bud, fella, pal, and boss. Saying, “my guy” is fighting words. 

Fast forward to Sunday: Before the game, C.J. was in the tunnel and found someone with a camera, and he started jawing.

He didn’t put his belt to anything all game and actually played pretty poorly. As a matter of fact, he got put on skates in the endzone and was in coverage when Mike Evans scored the first touchdown.

This is where Darius Slay comes in. After the game, he tweeted about all of his career accolades and how if you’re going to criticize how he played, you also have to call him great.

That has ‘bad vibes’ written all over it. You’re not allowed to get cooked in a game, get criticized, and then say, ‘Yeah, but I’ve been great. Pat me on the back.’ Dude, no one cares about what you did. We only care about what you’re currently doing. He ended up deleting that tweet, and making his account private (an account that already has 282.6 thousand followers), which is an objectively soft move.

Then, Slay went on the most recent episode of Micah Parsons’ podcast, and of course, C.J. came up (almost immediately, 3:45 into the conversation). 

Slay said, “One thing I know about 8, man. 8 gonna bring the noise, 8 gonna bring the energy, and 8 gonna bring all the trash-talking that half the teams not doing. So he fulfills that need for us… he’s a guy with a lot of energy. He’s gonna talk that trash, but you gonna talk, you gotta back it up at some point in time…”

Now, to be fair to Slay, he’s on another person’s podcast, so he’s got to be polite and actually bring something to the table… BUT, don’t do this with a guy that C.J. actively has beef with. 

From the outside, none of us know what Slay and C.J.’s relationship is like, and maybe this is totally fine between those two, but we also know that C.J.’ is volatile. Everything is personal to him and if you say something like that, he might keep receipts.

If the defense continues to play poorly, it’s absolutely going to put a strain on the locker room. If that happens, the last thing anyone wants is for the team’s firecracker to remember comments made during a podcast in September. This is just a bad look and it's only giving off more bad vibes.

Eagles news: Haason Reddick isn’t coming back this year

On April 1, 2024, the Eagles traded edge rusher Haason Reddick to the Jets for a conditional 2026 third-round pick. By doing that, they got rid of an elite talent in a player who was good against the run and was even better at getting to the quarterback. 

Luckily, the Eagles had already filled his role during free agency with Bryce Huff, who had played for the Jets for four years. Huff was coming off of a 2023 season where he had 10 sacks, so what could go wrong?

Everything. Everything went, is, and will continue to go wrong. No one is happy with how Bryce Huff has been playing this year and Reddick hasn’t even shown up to the Jets facility because he wants a contract. No one is remotely happy with how this whole thing went. 

So, the thought has been thrown around: Why don’t the Eagles just trade Huff to the Jets for Reddick? Let’s just act like none of this ever happened and we can all just go on our merry ways.

Well, that’s not going to happen because it’s against the rules for some reason. 

Ian Rapaport had very peculiar wording in this tweet. He said, “some wondered if NYJ could trade him back to the #Eagles.” It’s the usage of the word “some” because that means someone important wondered. 

Ian’s not going to acknowledge us pathetic low-brow morons who angrily tweet dream trades because that’s not his business. When he refers to people, he refers to people in front offices. 

What this tweet is telling us (probably) is that the Eagles’ general manager Howie Roseman or the Jets’ general manager Joe Douglas was just as curious about a potential trade as we are. 

It probably wasn’t Joe Douglas because he’s kind of a buffoon who has succumbed to his team being downtrodden and miserable while he waits to get fired. That means it was Howie Roseman, who is incredibly active in making swings to try to better his team.

So, unfortunately, the answer for the edge rusher position isn’t going to be coming from Haason this year. If he ever comes back, it won’t be until at least April 1, 2026, which is ironically the year the Eagles would be able to use the pick they received in the trade.