Eagles news: Starting faster on offense, Sydney Brown is back, Darius Slay apologizes

It’s the bye week for the Philadelphia Eagles and it seems like everyone is laying low. Vic Fangio and Kellen Moore gave us a tiny little bit of cryptic insight into what they’re recalibrating, while Darius Slay is trying to put out a fire that he started.

So in other words: it’s just kind of like a normal week except there’s no game to get mad at on Sunday. Let’s take a look into what’s going on.

Eagles News: Darius Slay apologized, but only kind of

It’s nice when a player does something that you don’t like and then a couple of days later says they’re sorry for it. It’s good to squash beef before it spirals out of control.

Since Sunday, Darius Slay tweeted some of his career accolades to defend himself from criticism, went on a podcast hosted by a star player from a rival team, kind of made fun of his teammate a little bit on that podcast, and then apologized for some of it. That’s a full week for most people, but he did all of that by Tuesday.

He went on his own show, Big Play Slay, and started by saying, “Man, it’s been nothing but drama all weekend.” (starts at 0:49 in the video below)

Agreed. Also, you kind of brought it on yourself. You’ve played for this team, been in this city, and been on the internet long enough to know what was going to happen.

Slay continued, “...A lot of Eagles fans are very, very upset about me on the podcast with Micah Parsons. To be honest, I’ve been knowing Micah way before he became a Dallas Cowboy. We trained together when he was coming out as a young guy. We grew a great relationship. When we played the Dallas Cowboys either here or home, we both use each other’s tickets. His family sits by my family. My family sits by his family... We have a great, great relationship. But I do understand the conflict with the Eagles and the Cowboys… It’s real, real beef. And I’m not like a real controversial type of person. I’m kind of cool with everybody. You know? I know y’all don’t like that, I know ya’ll don’t like that because that’s not the Philly style. But how I was raised is, I treat people how I want to be treated. So I just treat people with respect.”

That’s a good response. He went on his friends’ show and you can’t really blame him that his friend plays for the Cowboys.

He then went on to talk about his comments on C.J. Gardner-Johnson, “Chauncey is my dude. He’s a great player, great everything. I don’t know why people just took the first 10 seconds of me just smiling and giggling. If he took it personally, I would have told him, ‘Hey, I apologize if I smiled and laughed and you felt any type of offended way about it.’ I would have apologized to him as a man… all I was saying is, ‘Chauncey is a guy that’s with the energy, he gonna swag, he gonna talk all the trash to you, he gonna do this and do that. And he’s going to bring the energy to the team.”

This is mostly respectable. It’s good that he has that kind of relationship with his teammates, especially if that teammate is a bonafide psychopath like C.J.G.J. Every team needs a good psycho and he fulfills that need perfectly. It’d just be preferable if he didn’t poke the bear the day after the bear had a terrible game.

The part that Slay is leaving out in his explanation is that he didn’t just say, “Chauncey is a guy that’s with the energy, he gonna swag, he gonna talk all the trash to you, he gonna do this and do that.” What he actually said was, “...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…”

Slay made it seem like all he did was say positive things about C.J., when in reality the, “but you gonna talk, you gotta back it up at some point in time,” part is the inflammatory part. He left out the whole thing where he said C.J. is all bark but no bite. That’s the part that made everyone unhappy.

But hey, if Slay is telling the truth about his and C.J.’s relationship, and that saying this kind of stuff is fine, then cool. Hopefully we all learn from this and grow from it.

Then he made a real apology for the most disgusting thing he did, when he tweeted some cherry-picked stats from his career, deleted the tweet, and made his account private.

“One thing I will take accountability for posting my stats like that. I should not have did that. But y'all got under my skin a little bit. I’m not going to lie. Y’all got under my skin for the first time. That was kind of big for me right there, man… So I apologize, Eagles fans. From the bottom of my heart, that won’t happen again. I do take accountability for my wrongs. That was wrong for me doing that. That was a kind of selfish act a little bit because I never been like that. That wasn’t it. That’s not my character.”

Apology accepted. But also, a better apology would be by playing better and not being put in a situation where you feel you need to stunt on everyone. There’s a rookie on the other side of the field from you, and he’s crushing it and keeping quiet.

Eagles News: Defensive help is coming

Sydney Brown tore his ACL on January 7, 2024, and entered the season on the IR which meant he had to miss the first four weeks of the season. As soon as those four weeks were up, defensive coordinator Vic Fangio was asked about the safety’s return.

Vic said,“...We’re excited to get him coming back. You know, we all have to have some patience, which I know isn’t a big virtue amongst any of us this time of the year. The guy hasn’t played any football since his injury… his OTAs and his training camp are going to have to be squished together fast. Which he is ready to do mentally and emotionally, but we have to be careful, ourselves, to not overdo it with him.” (4:46 in the video below).

First of all: Yes Vic, you are correct. We don’t have any patience nor should we have any patience. We just watched the defense miss upwards of 500 tackles the last time they were on the field. The lack of patience is warranted.

That being said, this makes sense. There’s clearly a big learning curve when it comes to Fangio’s scheme. Cooper DeJean missed all of training camp and four weeks in, he’s still not getting snaps over Avonte Maddox (more on that in a minute). 

When Sydney does come back it’ll be good. Vic hasn’t led us astray with any of his takes on the Eagles players so far. He said Bryce Huff wasn’t ready to play against the run and he was right. He said Zack Baun was going to be a good linebacker and he was right. He said Quinyon Mitchell was ready to start going into Week 1 and he was right. 

When he talked about Sydney Brown, Vic said, “I think he’s a good football player. He brings energy. I think he’s a good tackler,” Vic then took a hilariously huge three-second pause before he continued, “I’m excited to see him for the first time because I do think he’s a good football player.”

Say what you will about Vic’s defense, but his eye for talent shouldn’t be questioned. Sydney Brown is very fun to watch because all he wants to do is tackle people and send them 30 feet into the Earth’s crust. It’s awesome.

The problem is finding him playing time once he’s ready. Reed Blankenship can’t be taken off the field because he’s too valuable, and C.J.G.J. can’t get sent to the bench because he’s too much of a firecracker and he probably couldn’t handle that without making it weird for everyone. 

That means Brown would probably be the Eagles’ sixth defensive back when they go into a Dime package. It’s not great because they don’t use that package all too often, but maybe having a guy like Sydney would make Vic more comfortable with that defense.

The other player who’s coming is Cooper DeJean. He has to be ready to play come Week 6. Not just because that should be enough time for him to learn and become comfortable with the defense, but also because Avonte Maddox has been a liability when he’s on the field as the Eagles’ nickel corner.

You don’t want to set too high of expectations for a second-round draft pick the first time they’re getting regular, consistent, and meaningful snaps… but Cooper DeJean has all the making for an awesome football player. 

Eagles News: Kellen Moore and starting slow

The Eagles are the only team to have scored zero points in the first quarter of any game so far this season. That puts them behind the Bears, the Rams, the Panthers, and the Patriots (and everyone else). The Bears have a terrible offense and have scored three points. The Rams are playing with no offensive line or playmakers and have scored six points. The Panthers and the Patriots are both trainwrecks, but they’ve each scored seven points.

That’s not the company you want to be in, around, or behind. That’s especially true when you have a $50 million quarterback, a healthy offensive line, one of the best running backs in the league, and (up until week 4) a semi-healthy wide receiver room.

They’re failing and everyone knows it. During his Tuesday morning press conference, offensive coordinator Kellen Moore was asked about the slow starts and how the scripted plays aren’t working.

Moore said, “Obviously we haven’t started games the way we wanted to. Obviously, this week being a bye week, we’re just doing such a deep dive on so many things, so this is a really fun task for us to navigate and just find a way to get going sooner, get going quicker, because there are moments coming out of seconds halves were we have successful drives… but we obviously have to start faster and so that’s a big focus for us just to continue to evaluate that and find our way.” (starts at the beginning of the video below)

Obviously, that’s kind of a non-answer. Obviously, Kellen was never going to actually go into detail about what’s been going wrong. Obviously, the Eagles are going to check themselves when they have two weeks off… obviously.

The next question was about his philosophy on scripted plays. “... In general, it’s usually about identifying the defense and getting touches to your players. So those are really your main focuses there. Obviously, we gotta do a better job, I’ve gotta do a better job about finding that for us and allowing us to be successful.”

Obviously, they have to do a better job, obviously. At this point, the Eagles should probably switch their priorities because the whole identifying defenses thing isn’t working, and getting touches to playmakers isn’t working, obviously.

Through four games, Saquon Barkley has one single touch in the Eagles opening drives. One. That’s it. Just one touch. It was the very first play in Week 1 when he slipped in the backfield. 

Maybe, just maybe, if you’re looking to get the offense cooking early in a game, a good place to start is by literally handing the ball to the most dynamic, consistent, and explosive playmaker on the team.

If first down goes poorly and he only gets a couple of yards, then give it to him again on second down. He’ll end up getting you eight or nine yards and put you in a great spot on third down because that’s what he does when he gets the ball. This doesn’t have to be as hard as the Eagles are making it. 

Come Week 6, the Eagles will (hopefully) be fully loaded with all of their playmakers. A.J., DeVonta, and Saquon will all be on the field. Chances are, they’ll try to get A.J. and DeVonta going early. By no means is that a bad idea, but the steadiness of Saquon running behind the Eagles' offensive line shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to wanting to start a game on the dominant foot.

But then again, if Nick Sirianni is helping with the scripted plays, nothing will be easy… Obviously.