So I know that I haven't posted on here in years and there are a few reasons for it. The first being the fact that it hasn't been as important to me. Throughout my time on the internet, I have been making videos and doing a podcast and all of that was great at the time, but I feel like I have matured over the years and want to get back into writing, which is something I enjoy doing. The other reason I am not posting much in terms of video and audio content is during the last eight or so years, I have learned that the more I am mentally involved, the more it hurts not only my mental health, but also my real life. It feels like over the last ten years, no matter where you turn, there is always someone, somewhere rearing their heads to try to get a reaction out of people and usually it is a negative one. I know that negativity sells, but this won't be negativity. It will be completely honest, to the point and without any existential biases. I enjoy very much reviewing, previewing and analyzing thing, but one thing I am not too impressed with is rage baiting.
This post will be about essentially wrapping up the entire preseason in a nice neat bow, talking about what I liked, what I didn't like, what needs to be improved and my philosophy on the preseason. It'll include statistics and reviews about how my favorite football team played during the preseason. To begin with, my philosophy on the preseason is it is a way to see what you have. Some teams decide to play starters during the preseason at certain points and some teams don't. I feel like teams with young, more inexperienced quarterbacks definitely play with examples being Bryce Young of the Carolina Panthers or DeShaun Watson of the Cleveland Browns (obviously isn't inexperienced, but hasn't played well in years). The Philadelphia Eagles usually don't and the last time Jalen Hurts played in the preseason was around four years ago, it was one game and he never played during the preseason again. A very similar thing happened with Carson Wentz before the Eagles won the Super Bowl back in 2017. The point of the preseason in not to try to win as many games as humanly possible. In fact, the two teams that have lost zero games in a season both went 4-0 in the preseason.
To put things plainly, I do not think you need to win games in preseason to be considered a good or a bad team, especially because the team is mostly playing against backups and you are looking for who is going to make an impact or who you are willing to part ways with. Now one thing that I absolutely dislike that fans say is "the offense is playing bad because it is a vanilla offense, we aren't going to show what the team actually is going to do." While this might be true, if every team is running a vanilla offense and three quarters of the teams score over 20 points per game and the other quarter doesn't, what does that mean? It means not every team is running vanilla plays during preseason. In fact I think it is very few teams running vanilla plays because why would you run vanilla plays to evaluate your backup players? Also, the team ran a bunch of screens in one game and an end around. Were these concrete examples of a "vanilla" offense? Personally, I think not. The other thing that annoys me is when the team does well in preseason games, the fans go crazy and consider the team to be huge contenders, but if the team does poorly, the excuse is "well, it's just preseason". Now you are more than able to speak this way, but it doesn't change the fact that it is hypocritical when the same fans say it.
Okay, let me get to the specific preseason games. The game against the Ravens in week 1 was just plain ugly. There really was nothing offensively that could be gained from that game besides the fact that they couldn't get drives started and only scored on the final drive of the game thanks to a miraculous 6 yard touchdown by Cole Payton to Erik Ezukanma, who was a guy I had to look up because I do not expect him on the active roster.
Both Andy Dalton and Tanner McKee started these games, but were completely unable to net anything of any importance. They spent the majority of the game either getting sacked or throwing incomplete passes. This was kind of discerning because Tanner McKee had actually shown himself to be a relatively decent backup, coming into the game in reserve for Kenny Pickett and Jalen Hurts in a few occurrences. As for Andy Dalton, the guy is almost two years older than me and while he might have been doing well in practices, he arm just appeared to be shot. The defense was able to "bend but not break" during the 1st half where both teams had recorded zero points thanks to a missed field goal by Tyler Loop, an interception in the end zone by Kelee Ringo and a fumble recovery by Ambry Thomas that was forced by Shaun Wade against Ravens receiver Elijah Scott.
With this said, un-drafted rookie Joe Fagnano completely undressed the 3rd string Philadelphia Eagles defense on their road to a 24 - 7 win by the Ravens.
After witnessing probably the worst preseason game of my entire life, I had a few gut reactions of the game. The first being how horrific the offense looked. I understand the sentiment by Eagles fans who would claim "but it was a vanilla offense", but I think it is much worse than that. While it is definitely possible the offense was "vanilla", I remember fans saying this about the Kevin Patullo offense and the Brian Johnson offense and those offenses looked way better than this.
My personal opinion is that fans really don't know what "vanilla" offense means and are just using it as a place holder to not take responsibility for what happened on the field. Sean Mannion has brought a new scheme to the Eagles, one the franchise has never seen in history and it just became worrisome because I haven't noticed other teams struggling this much on the scheme. I also understand that it was their first game against another team, but it was kind of frustrating that the Eagles young players and backups weren't getting it, but the young and completely inexperienced players on the Ravens were. The Eagles offense just seemed to not play with any heart and by the time the 2nd half rolled around, the Eagles backup defense was just completely gassed. It was also completely nuts that the Eagles hadn't converted one third down all game and actually converted more 4th downs than they did 3rd downs.
Week 2 of the preseason saw the team going against the New England Patriots in joint practice and then they would play their preseason game later on in the week. This joint practice was highly talked about because it would be a practice where the Eagles would be going against their formerly disgruntled receiver, Arthur Juan Brown, who once he was traded the the Patriots acted like he was a bat out of hell. And while this was a very hyperbolic way of describing the city of Philadelphia and the Eagles, the team still had to go against him in practice. From what I could notice, there were times in which A.J. burned Quinyon Mitchell and other times in which Quinyonamo Bay got the best of the former Eagles receiver. A lot was discussed in terms of "we won the practice" or "we lost the practice", but I have always held onto the feeling that winning and losing in practice is so stupid and only propagated by radio show talking heads and hot take artists like Eliot Shorr Parks, who I am not even sure how he still has a platform after he called DeSean Jackson a gangster and never apologized. If you would like to know more about my feeling about that man, he does what he does for rage bait purposes. If ESP told me that the sky was blue, I would immediately disagree with him. You essentially take what he says and believe the complete opposite. He is the backwards Midas touch, whatever he touches immediately turns into crap.
In all honesty, "joint practice" is just practice. I have said that years ago when the Eagles would always "win" practices and I am saying it now. It is all completely ridiculous. It is like saying a corner or a defensive back sucks because they get burned by a receiver on a 1 v 1 drill. The receiver is supposed to win those like 90% of the time and the only time in which they lose is if the defender guesses right or the receiver drops the ball. After said receiver drops the ball, the corner pretends they did something, even though they didn't.
To juxtapose from the first preseason game, the second preseason game against the Patriots was night and day better. The reason being was because the Eagles offense actually did something and it seemed like it had to do so because there were more rushing lanes and because the Eagles utilized the flats on passing plays to get yards after the catch, which for some reason the Patriots refused to cover. Like in the previous game, the Eagles started off with Andy Dalton, who went on to complete 3 out of his 10 passes for 44 yards and a scoring drive at the beginning of the 2nd quarter where Eagles running back, Will Shipley was able to slice up the Patriots defense en route to a rushing touchdown.
After this, Andy Dalton was removed from the game and replaced by Tanner McKee, who played quarterback until the final offensive drive of the game. Tanner McKee completed 16 out of his 22 passes for 173 yards and 2 touchdowns. One of which came late in the 4th quarter to Eagles receiver and punt returner, Britain Covey and the other one came to the skill player of the game on offense, Carson Steele. And my gosh, this guy absolutely beasted out with his 6 receptions for 84 yards and a touchdown at the beginning of the 3rd quarter.
Eagles fans were also excited to see the backup center, Willie Lampkin, who was acquired after the Rams forgot that other teams can claim players off of injury waivers right before the 2025 NFL season and tall offensive tackle, Markel Bell, who the Eagles drafted in the 3rd round of the 2026 draft. Eagles fans were kind of worried about him because of his 6'9" frame that might make him to tall to play offensive tackle. However, both of these guys did a good job according to the fans and while they might not play immediately in the 2026 season, they could be players told to "go" if players start getting injured.
As for the defense, there was a lot of up and down, especially from the secondary. However, Eagles defensive lineman, Ty Robinson was able to record 2 sacks of Patriots quarterbacks and once again, Shaun Wade was able to force another fumble in the 4th quarter that was recovered by Brandon George to help the Eagles go on a scoring drive.
However, this was another situation in which the Eagles allowed Patriots quarterbacks to chalk them up. Tommy DeVito completed 8 passes for 15 for 151 yards and a touchdown to Kyle Williams where Ambry Thomas completely got out run and then Behron Morton, who had 13 completions for 17 attempts and a touchdown to Nick DeGennaro where Eagles cornerback Isaiah Bolden completely blew a coverage for an easy touchdown. Ultimately it was a much more competitive game where the Eagles probably could have scored more points if they hadn't completely whiffed on two 4th down conversion attempts, but at the time I thought that the Patriots were probably one possession better than the Eagles overall.
The final game of the preseason pitted the Eagles against the Bengals. I didn't watch any of this game, but from what I could see on the game cast on the ESPN app, both Tanner McKee and Andy Dalton played pretty poorly. McKee started and completed 12 out of 22 of his passes for 55 yards and an interception (we will get to this) and Andy Dalton completed 12 passes for 19 for 104 yards and a touchdown to Carson Steele. This makes me think that the offense has been very tough for the quarterbacks to learn this offense likely because it isn't in the style they are used to? It is just kind of weird that Tanner McKee had at least a modicum of success in the Kevin Patullo and Brian Johnson offenses in previous years, but he seems very stagnant here outside of the Patriots preseason game.
As for the defense, they were allowing the Bengals down the field at will, but at the beginning weren't allowing many touchdowns. Once again, the Eagles had a fumble recovery that I believe led to points. The defense just seems like the type of unit that will be allowing teams to get down the field, but will tighten up when it comes to the red zone, this is tough because the defense won't be shut down in any sense and will have to deal with just keeping teams out of the end zone. It has been positive that the team has been forcing fumbles, but once again we go through a preseason without many interceptions. I hope that guys like Quinyon Mitchell, Cooper DeJean and Riq Woolin will be able to get involved with getting interceptions, but I am not holding my breath.
The one thing that I know most Eagles fans have been looking at was 1st round receiver and Fred Biletnekoff winner Makai Lemon. Lemon has not been on the field that much during training camp and the preseason because of a hamstring injury. When it came to the team joint scrimmage at Lincoln Financial Field, Jalen Hurts hooked up with Lemon on a sneaky wheel route for an amazing play. However, in the Bengals game, Lemon was thrown to 5 times, caught 3 passes for 1 yard a piece. There was a ball that McKee threw a bit high to him but he probably should have come down with it. This is a bit disappointing because Makai Lemon was a 1st round draft pick and there are expectations that he would be able to immediately come in and be at least a slot guy, but the fact that he is struggling against backups is tough to watch.
Makai Lemon #9 Eagles 1st round draft pick.
So I want to discuss some of the positives and the negatives of preseason. The first part being Carson Steele who had 21 carries for 59 yards and 14 receptions 136 yards and 2 touchdowns including a nasty hurdle. I heard he was released by the team, so I don't think he will be back, but you never know. I know that wherever he goes he will be used very well (EDIT he made the practice squad). On defense, the guy was Shaun Wade, who forced 2 total fumbles in both the Ravens and Patriots games, which went back to the offense. Ty Robinson was also a player on the defensive line that stood out for 2 total sacks in the Patriots game. He was a guy who needed a really good preseason game and stepped up for the line.
As for the negatives, I would say the inconsistency of play by the quarterbacks. Like I said before, McKee and Dalton were inconsistent and didn't play well. Either because they are not mastering the system or because they don't work well in it, the fear is that the offense doesn't click until midseason. If this happens then it might be too late. I really wish the Eagles could have gotten a more experienced offensive coordinator and not someone who is just doing this for the first time. If the offense does work out and Nick Sirianni does have to step in to make changes then I fear that the offense might be worse than Kevin Patullo's offense. I really see the two minds working together in this situation as a bad thing. The reason is because Nick Sirianni runs a more spread out shotgun offense while Mannion has made it clear that he is running more of a Kyle Shanahan offense with a lot of motions and playactions, it just seems to me that the two offenses aren't meshing together and specifically the quarterbacks are falling into bad habits. I will tell you something, Mannion might be riding a high right now because he isn't Kevin Patullo, but that could turn really fast if the offense isn't being run in that high flying way it was back in 2024.
Now that I have essentially recapped the preseason and made some observations about the players that played, let me get into my expectations for the season and how they might differ from the expectations of Eagles fans. From what I could see about the backup offense in the preseason, it is very clear to me that the offense has been very difficult for the team to swallow. I would be lying if I were to say I wasn't a little bit worried. I am not going to come out and say that the offense performed poorly in camps, but they were likely way below usual output and there are a lot of questions that I have going into the season pertaining to how the offense will show out. If the offense comes out slow in week one, I would expect a long season. If they are able to put a lot of big drives out, then that will make things seem better going into midseason. I would expect a lot of improvement to the other teams in the NFC East so I don't expect the year to be a cake walk. With this said, I do not expect a strong season record-wise. I would expect a generic 9-8 or 8-9 season unless these offensive woes get cleared up. Many might be going on to say that I am a hater or I am chicken little, but I am merely being realistic here based on what I have seen and of course if I am wrong, I will always admit it.
