When you get a shiny new toy, don’t you use it right away?

You take the Porsche out to the highway and put the pedal to the metal, unless you’re driving Interstate 95 near Cottman Avenue, in which case you sit in construction traffic.

The Eagles drove once around the block then put Golden Tate back in the garage on Sunday night, using their newest receiver on only 29% of snaps in the seven-point loss to the Dallas Cowboys. He caught two passes on four targets for 19 yards and returned two punts for 11 yards.

Mind you, they sent a third-round draft pick to Detroit for Tate, who only had eight games remaining on his contract. Now he’s got seven before he comes an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year.

Doug Pederson and offensive coordinator Mike Groh were both asked about Tate’s usage this week, and here’s what Doug said on Monday:

“We had a nice, little plan for him going into this game. And it was all huddle calls. And, in fairness to Golden, the third series of the game I went straight up-tempo to try to generate some spark. It’s all code words and different things, and moving guys around a little bit. So in fairness, I didn’t want to put him in a situation where he felt uncomfortable. Going forward, as we go, that will increase for him. You’ll see him in there a little bit more.”

Understandable. Guy can’t just magically absorb the entire playbook into his brain.

Here’s what Groh had to say on Tuesday:

“We brought him here to play him a lot. You know how it is in the first week where he’s just building the foundation, and we had a healthy package of plays. But he was ready to run. He and the coaches worked really hard to prepare, to be ready to go in there. Like Coach mentioned, some of that may have been taken away a little bit when we got in some of the no-huddle stuff that we do and maybe limited his play count a little bit. But we had a healthy package of plays for him, and we’ll continue to build on that.”

Alshon Jeffery led Eagle receivers with 60 snaps on Sunday, which was 97% of the game. Nelson Agholor played 55 snaps and Jordan Matthews 37. Shelton Gibson got in for one play and Dallas Goedert was on the field for 18 snaps alongside fellow tight end Zach Ertz, who was out there for every single play.

Ertz, Jeffery, and Agholor were targeted on 31 of Carson Wentz’s 43 pass attempts, so even though the Eagles typically spread the ball around, that trio was thrown to on 72% of Carson’s efforts.

I guess all of this does make sense, though I thought the extra week of preparation would have allowed for Tate to see more usage in this game. Tate had 69 targets through seven games with Detroit, so Matt Stafford was looking for him 9.8 times per game on average this season.

We’ll see what happens in New Orleans on Sunday. The Eagles will likely be playing from behind very early, so expect to see them chucking the ball all over the field.