A.J. Brown was Eagles’ missing piece — how does he fit offense?

Philadelphia Eagles

August 25

By Ralph Vacchiano

FOX Sports NFC East writer

Once the Philadelphia Eagles decided they needed another receiver — a true, No. 1 receiver — for their offense, GM Howie Roseman knew exactly the type of player to bring in.

And while he didn’t immediately focus on A.J. Brown, it didn’t take Roseman long to see him as a perfect fit.

Here’s how he knew for sure: Weeks before he pulled the trigger on the trade, Roseman sat down with coach Nick Sirianni to watch some of Brown’s film. They were only halfway through the first game, though, when Sirianni got up to leave.

“I’m good,” Roseman recalled Sirianni saying. “You guys need anything? I’m going to go get something to eat.”

“We finished watching the tape,” Sirianni recalled after the trade was made. “But it doesn’t take long when you put the tape on. It doesn’t take long to figure out what you’ve got there.”

Here’s what they got when they made the deal to acquire the 6-foot-1, 226-pound Brown from the Tennessee Titans on the first day of the NFL Draft: A strong, fast receiver with good size, great hands and elusive moves. Even better, he’s good friends with the Eagles’ still-developing starting quarterback, Jalen Hurts, and their chemistry this summer was obvious from the start.

But what really made him a perfect fit — and why the Eagles traded their first- (18th overall) and third-round (101st) picks for him and gave Brown a four-year, $100 million contract extension — is what he does on the field and where he does it. He not only can stretch the field for big plays and out-jump and out-muscle cornerbacks for the ball, but he’s also an expert at going over the middle, making the physical, inside catches and turning them into big plays.

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That’s something that was clearly missing from the Eagles’ offense last season. In fact, Hurts threw over the middle (between the hash marks) on only about 10% of his pass attempts. Halfway through the campaign, that number was actually around 3%.

One defensive coordinator who faced him last season said it was such an obvious hole in the Eagles’ offense that his team wasn’t afraid to focus all its coverage on the edges and sidelines because they knew Hurts wasn’t likely to try to throw inside — which also helped the defense when he escaped the pocket and tried to run.

There were two strange things about that trend. One is that the Eagles had the No. 1 rushing offense in the NFL, averaging 159.7 yards per game on the ground. Just the threat of running the ball behind their powerful offensive line should’ve been enough to draw in the linebackers and even the safeties, creating open space over the middle for Hurts to throw the ball.

The other is that, according to scouts who saw Hurts at Alabama, he was at his best throwing into the middle of the field — so much so that some wondered about his arm strength, especially since his accuracy to the outside (and deep) wasn’t always great. But at Alabama, he also had receivers who were often bigger, stronger and tougher than their opponents, so it was easier for him to look inside then.

That’s probably a big part of why the middle of the field was such a hole last season. The Eagles’ best receiver in 2021 was rookie DeVonta Smith, Hurts’ old Alabama teammate, who at 6 feet and 170 pounds isn’t really built to take an NFL pounding inside. Smith, who caught 64 passes for 916 yards and five touchdowns last season, can be a weapon there because he’s so elusive, but those plays can take time to develop.

And Hurts often displayed impatience in the pocket. If something didn’t develop right away, he was too often on the run.

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Besides his tight ends — Dallas Goedert and, for a few games before he was traded, Zach Ertz — Hurts didn’t really have any reliable receivers last season. Quez Watkins (43-647-1) was only a little bigger (6-foot, 193), but the sixth-round pick was still finding his way in his second season. And Jalen Reagor (33-299-2) has the same size issues (5-foot-11, 197 pounds) and has been a disappointment, considering he was the 21st overall pick in the 2020 draft.

Reagor and Smith are still just 23 years old, and Watkins is 24. But there was no waiting or wondering with the 25-year-old Brown. He has two 1,000-yard seasons in his three-year career, and he would’ve made it three-for-three if he hadn’t missed four games due to a chest injury last year. He has shown his ability as a playmaker, as a red-zone threat and as a dangerous receiver in the part of the field where the Eagles need him to be.

“There’s no projection there,” Sirianni said. “It’s [not] like, ‘Well, this is what he’s going to be in the NFL.’ No. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen it for three years now.”

What Brown is, according to Sirianni, is a perfect complement to what the Eagles already have.

“He’s a bigger guy with a lot of play strength,” he said. “This is one of the stronger receivers in the NFL. There’s a lot of different things [we can do] because of his skill set, because of that play strength, because of that body quickness that he has.

“And then the biggest asset that he has — this guy catches everything. We can see him on a lot of different routes that fit our offense, that uses that play strength, that uses that quickness. You want guys that can win one-on-one matchups, and this guy has shown in the NFL that he will win one-on-one matchups.”

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That’s huge for a young quarterback such as Hurts — having a receiver he’s confident will come down with the ball, no matter where he throws it. And best of all, Hurts has seen that up close, and not just at Alabama. The Eagles first tried to trade for Calvin Ridley before he was suspended for the 2022 season for gambling on football and then made a free-agent offer to Christian Kirk before he signed with the Jaguars. But Brown was always at the top of Hurts’ list.

In fact, just a week before the trade, Hurts was visiting Brown and attended the birthday party for his 2-year-old daughter. While they were together, they managed to sneak in a throwing session, which of course ended up creating a buzz on social media. Hurts, apparently, was already pestering Roseman to go after Brown, though he didn’t know at the time how close that pursuit was to becoming a reality.

Their chemistry and their faith in each other have been clear. Hurts and Brown have forged a strong connection at practices during training camp, where some observers have called Brown the best player on the field. He is clearly the No. 1 receiver in the Eagles’ offense, and they have worked hard to fill that gaping hole in the middle of the field.

That could mean a lot for Hurts, whose passing numbers were mediocre last season (he completed 61.3% of his passes for 3,144 yards, 16 touchdowns and seven interceptions in 15 games). And it could mean even more for the Eagles. They were mostly a one-dimensional offense, with the top-ranked rushing attack but a passing attack that ranked only 25th.

In fact, they were dead last in passes attempted (29 per game, which was only 45.8% of the time). Yes, some of that was because of how successful they were running the ball, and some of it was because Hurts broke the pocket a lot, rushing 139 times for 784 yards and 10 touchdowns.

But it was also because the passing game just wasn’t effective enough, especially when defenses knew roughly where on the field the ball was going to go. Brown should change that calculation. And he should make things a lot easier for Smith and open up even more room for the Eagles’ powerful running game.

If Brown stays healthy, and it all works the way Sirianni envisions, the Eagles could end up as a legitimate Super Bowl threat. But that’s only if Sirianni was right about what he sees for this offense and Brown.

“Coach has a vision for what we’re going to look like offensively,” Roseman said. “This guy was just a good fit for us.”

Ralph Vacchiano is the NFC East reporter for FOX Sports, covering the Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and the Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, he spent 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. A Long Island, N.Y., native and graduate of Syracuse University, he can be found on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.