Eagles preseason takeaways: A QB2 battle, snaps for former 1sts, and DeJean's debut

The preseason should absolutely be taken lightly. Whether it’s how often a player is on the field or if a team wins or loses, it means next to nothing. In 2022, the Las Vegas Raiders played Josh Jacobs in the Hall of Fame game and he went on to be the leading rusher in the NFL that season. In 2008, the Detroit Lions won all four of their preseason games and went on to go 0-16 in the regular season. These games don’t matter.

That being said, the preseason can be valuable for individual players, and for the Philadelphia Eagles, we learned a few things about who players are and what could make them work (or not work, like, at all).

Eagles preseason: Pickett v. McKee, clash of the titans

Kenny Pickett was the king of the preseason for his two years with the Pittsburgh Steelers. In those six games combined, he went 42-of-51 for 460 yards and 5 touchdowns. If there was a time for him to win over the hearts of Eagles fans, it would have been during the preseason.

He didn’t even come close. He played how he plays during regular season games, which is not what you want. He only completed one pass that was over 10 yards (in three games), he held onto the ball for too long, and he looked like he didn’t understand that defenses were legally allowed to blitz.

His competitor was Tanner McKee, the second-year QB out of Stanford. He looked good for most of the preseason, except for a chunk of the third game against the Minnesota Vikings. He was accurate, he didn’t get shook, and when he threw the ball you always thought, ‘Man, that guy can sling it.’ Those are all good things for a QB2. 

Regardless of what everyone saw, Nick Sirianni was adamant that Pickett was going to be QB2 over McKee, but it might not be that plain and simple. 

If Jalen Hurts goes down in a game, it would make the most sense for Pickett to come in as relief. Relative to McKee, Pickett’s playstyle is much closer to Hurts’. That means the team would be able to keep the same game plan and they would be able to run a lot of the same plays. 

Now, if Jalen goes down for a prolonged period, that’s where McKee should come in. The team would be able to game plan for him and run an offense that caters to his play style.

The bottom line is that McKee is a better QB2 than Pickett but if a replacement is needed in a pinch, a quarterback with starting experience like Pickett is a smarter move. If a quarterback is needed for more than just a handful of plays, McKee is the smarter move. 

Eagles preseason: A new chapter in the Nolan Smith story

After being drafted with the 30th overall pick in the 2023 draft, Nolan Smith proceeded to play a total of 188 snaps during the regular season. That’s just 16 percent of the total snaps. In comparison to other players at his position, Haason Reddick played 74 percent, Josh Sweat played 71 percent, and Brandon Graham played 34 percent. 

For the second half of that season, the Eagles defensive line had less than laughable production. This is to say, that Nolan Smith’s lack of snaps was not because the people playing over him were dominant. In 2022, linebackers Kyzir White and TJ Edwards played out of their minds, so Nakobe Dean never saw the field. That’s not the case with Nolan.

The coaches must have seen something in Nolan where they weren’t comfortable with having him on the field … or they were just really really dumb. We’re talking about Matt Patricia, so there’s a pretty good chance they were just being dumb.

During the third preseason game, Nolan Smith played for a very long time. You don’t want to see prolonged playing time from non-rookies in that game specifically. 

Smith played 19 snaps and logged a single tackle before his day ended at halftime. In a perfect world, he’s only playing a drive or he’s not playing at all. Instead, he played four drives and didn’t do much; the vibes are just not good around his situation.

As you can imagine, after the game he was asked about his playing time and he said, “You know, I'm still the same person who I am and I love playing ball. You ain't got to beg me to play or ask me to play. So that's what I wanted to do for the training.”

We know Nolan loves ball and wants to be on the field as much as possible, but other players are like that too, right? Jalen Hurts, Jalen Carter, and Josh Sweat probably want to be on the field, but the powers that be told them no because they are valuable pieces of the team. 

If Nolan says, ‘Hey, I want to play in the preseason game because football is awesome and I like to do awesome things,’ and Vic Fangio responds, ‘Sure, knock yourself out,’ then it’s not good because that means the team doesn’t see him as a valuable piece right now.

This whole thing is clearly telling of how the team feels about Nolan. It always sucks when a hyped-up player can’t find the field.

We all know that Brandon Graham was considered a bust for the first chunk of his career and then he ended up making the most impactful play in franchise history when he strip-sacked Tom Brady in Super Bowl LII. There’s a chance Nolan Smith follows that same trajectory, but who knows?

Eagles preseason: Cooper DeJean might be a lot of fun

The Eagles drafted cornerback Quinyon Mitchell with the 22nd pick of the 2024 draft. Everything about him seems great. He’s been healthy all preseason and he’s been competitive with A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith during camp. We feel good about Quinyon.

That’s not the same with defensive back Cooper DeJean who drafted with the 40th overall pick in the 2024 draft. At some point, DeJean hurt his hamstring when “he was caught in an awkward position during offseason training.”

Aside from that being the most bizarre and underlying sexual way to describe how someone got hurt, it meant we never saw DeJean at all during the Summer.

He made his debut during the third preseason game and he played a lot; 47 snaps in total. Expectations weren’t super high for him, given that this was his first playing time since he broke his leg last November. 

What we saw wasn’t good or bad, it was just fine. You could tell he was rusty, but he was able to move around. One very promising thing about him is his physicality. They say the human body craves contact, but Cooper is addicted to it.

On the Vikings’ first drive, safety Tristin McCollum intercepted a ball thrown by Jaren Hall. It ended up being overturned because of an illegal contact called on Cooper DeJean. 

DeJean very clearly slammed his shoulder into a wide receiver about seven yards past the line of scrimmage. It was a really dumb thing for him to do, but you love to see it since it was a meaningless game from a guy who is a roster lock.

Throughout the game, he played downhill and he was brought in on a few blitzes as well. Brian Dawkins left us jonesing for a DB who can be an absolute weapon, and since Sydney Brown is still recovering from a torn ACL, DeJean looks like he might be able to fit the bill.

One thing that made Cooper a cool prospect was his versatility and that besides being a DB, he could also return punts. He had a chance to do that this game, and after a seven-yard return, he came up with a little bit of a limp when he walked toward the sideline.

All in all, the Eagles preseason was okay. We saw a skeleton of a new offense and blitzes from linebackers and defensive backs. It would’ve been cool to see Jalen, Saquon, DeVonta, and A.J. get at least A snap, but at least there were no brutal season-ending injuries like last year, so that’s nice. It was a good summer, but now it’s over and real football is here.