You don’t typically learn much from a Mike Groh press conference. The Eagles offensive coordinator keeps things close to the vest and is protective of the players in the same way Doug Pederson and Andy Reid are.

Tuesday’s availability was interesting, though, with some good questions posed by the media corps after another abysmal offensive outing.

Among the topics was Greg Ward, the former practice squad player who looked good in the preseason and snagged six balls for 40 yards on Sunday.

Asked Mike Sielski from the Inquirer:

Q. How many routes can Greg run? Is he doing one thing well that kept working? How does a guy who has been on the practice squad that long come in and be that productive relatively speaking? 

MIKE GROH: Greg knows our offense because he’s been here a long time. He’s been in a ton of meetings. He’s had the opportunity to practice in our system for a long time.

So from that standpoint, there is a lot of trust with him. We’ve seen him run a ton of routes. We know his body language really well.

So in terms of being able to be — the question (earlier) was being on the same page, well, he’s been around, so we’ve seen that, and he knows exactly where he’s supposed to be, when he’s supposed to be there. He knows the words to the song, so there is a lot of confidence in his ability to do that.

Does that answer your question?

Q. Yeah, no. If Greg did this in his debut, why couldn’t he have done this a week before and what kind of led — (Mike Sielski)

MIKE GROH: I can’t speculate on that, but I can just say that he did take advantage of his opportunity. Did a heck of a job. I think everybody in the locker room and certainly the coaching staff has confidence in him moving forward.

Greg Ward looked good out there. He looked good in the preseason, catching six passes for 87 yards and a touchdown. He had a 15 yard carry in the Jets game and took an underhand toss from a sweep for nine yards in this game:

That counts as a pass, so you can put an asterisk on his total yardage, but for context, Mack Hollins hasn’t had a 40 yard receiving game since September. Nelson Agholor hasn’t had a 40 yard game since the Vikings loss and J.J. Arcega-Whiteside has 86 receiving yards this entire season.

Ward can also run a simple five-yard out, which seems like a steep task for this group:

Low bar to clear, I know, but we’ll take it.

Speaking of JJAW, he came up as well on Tuesday:

Q. Why is WR J.J. Arcega-Whiteside having trouble running routes? (Jeff McLane)

MIKE GROH: What routes are you speaking of?

Q. Well, there were a couple former players that pointed out on social media that there were key plays that J.J. didn’t run good routes. (Jeff McLane)

MIKE GROH: J.J. is a young player, and I kind of just referenced it a little bit with Greg in the fact that he’s had the luxury of being around here for a number of years and heard exactly the way the plays are installed many, many times. Knows exactly how he wants to run the route and how we expect the route to look.

So he did a really nice job with that. I think if you look at the offense as a whole or receivers as a whole, there are things that we can correct on a lot of plays, and it’s certainly not just one guy.

But that’s part of the fundamental discipline and the details that we have to improve on to get where we want to go.

Safe answer. McLane is referencing the Twitter post from Bryce Treggs, who noted that Arcega-Whiteside was responsible for the missed 4th and 2 pass because he didn’t sit down in the correct area to receive the ball.

We had Treggs on Crossing Broadcast this week, and he talked about the sequence:

On that particular play, when J.J. is running his shallow cross, the landmark to sit down is two yards outside of the hash. No matter what, what’s landmark. And you see when he starts to sit down, as Carson is throwing the football, he takes one more hop. He drifts outside a little bit and that causes the errant throw. So there are a lot of things between the receiver and the quarterback that have to be on the same page for that play to hit, and sitting down two yards outside of the hash is one of those details.

Here’s the play in question, with the extra hop:

Assuming Alshon Jeffery and Nelson Agholor are good to go in Miami, I think I’m okay with Greg Ward playing WR3. Need more Greg Ward, need zero Mack Hollins, and let’s give JJAW some more snaps to see if he really has it or not.

Here’s the podcast with Treggs, who comes on around the five-minute mark: