Things seem to be going great with the Philadelphia Eagles.
On the one hand, the Eagles are again atop the NFC, thanks to Monday night’s win over the Green Bay Packers. That 10-7 victory moved Philadelphia to 7-2 on the season, putting them back in the driver’s seat for the No. 1 seed in the NFC. If the NFL playoffs began this weekend, the road to Super Bowl LX out of the conference would run through Lincoln Financial Field.
A.J. Brown was targeted just three times in that game — including a fourth-down play late in the contest where Jalen Hurts targeted him on a go ball along the left sideline, a play that led to some head scratching around the league — and caught two of those passes for 13 yards. Brown has just two 100-yard games this year, and has scored three receiving touchdowns.
And if you have him on your fantasy team, you might want to drop him. That’s not coming from me, but from Brown himself:
His Madden stats, however, are a little better it seems:
With these comments lighting up social media in the hours ahead of Nick Sirianni’s weekly press conference, the Eagles head coach was asked about Brown repeatedly on Wednesday.
Asked if the comments were a “distraction,” Sirianni insisted they were not.
“No, I don’t think so,” Sirianni said. “You can only go from your interactions with everybody and the way they go about their work on a daily basis that you guys aren’t able to see. No, it’s business as usual.”
The head coach then, speaking to Brown’s production, outlined how sometimes the box score does not tell the whole story.
“Again, if you look at the game and how the game went, there’s a lot of plays in that game that are going to him that for different reasons don’t,” Sirianni said. “For instance, [DeVonta Smith’s] touchdown. That play is going to A.J. They took it away and he threw it over the top. You can’t look at stats and just say this is what’s happening. You can’t paint the picture that way. I know that is sometimes all the information that you guys may have but you can’t look at it that way and say, ‘Here’s how the game is playing out.’ There are reasons and different things.
“A.J. Brown is one of the best wide receivers in the NFL so of course we’re trying to get him involved in the game every single time. Sometimes it goes like it did in the Rams game or the Vikings game and sometimes it goes like it did in that game.”
However, as the questions about Brown continued, Sirianni moved to change the topic.
“I’m close to being done answering these questions with this,” Sirianni said. “He’s working hard and he is a big part of this game plan and will be a big part of the game plan going forward. He’s working like crazy when he’s here and I’m excited to have him.”
Remember … this team is 7-2 and coming off a Super Bowl win.
