There’s always one guy on a Philadelphia sports team. One guy who the fans seem to universally dislike.

It’s rare when a fan base appears to be in lockstep and on the same page instead of arguing with each other on Facebook and Twitter. Once in a blue moon we all rally together to rip one poor guy incessantly.

For the 2020 Eagles, linebacker Nate Gerry gets the unfortunate distinction of being said guy, and if you type his name into the Twitter search bar, you’ll see what I mean.

Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz was asked about his starting LB today and answered like this:

Q. We’ve talked before about the disconnect between how you guys view LB Nate Gerry and maybe how the fan base does. With that in mind, how do you think he’s played so far this year and what has he done to earn the amount of snaps he’s gotten so far? (Dave Zangaro)

JIM SCHWARTZ: You know me, I’m not a big tell you how a guy is — tell you how a guy’s playing, but Nate has been a very solid player for us, and has helped us win a lot of games.

And I would just caution this: There’s probably a lot of plays that people outside of our building think might be his fault; that he just happens to be the closest guy when someone else made a mistake, and I think they end up blaming him a lot of times. He’s sort of the closest guy just from plays, and I mean that’s just sort of the way the ball bounces. We just need to be more efficient overall, and more consistent overall and he just plays his part in it.

So I think that any time that you have people outside the building that grade players, you can get things like that. I tend to try to keep our evaluations in-house and just work on improving in our own building.

He has a point about always being the “closest guy.” Sometimes somebody else misses a gap or blows a coverage and then the middle linebacker just happens to be chasing an opponent down to salvage a nine-yard gain or something like that. Obviously we’re not privy to the Eagles’ grading system and don’t know what they’ve asked of Gerry, though one can assume it would be to make tackles and cover tight ends and running backs coming out of the backfield, among other standard linebacker duties. Mack Hollins apparently graded well internally, so keep that in mind.

Disclaimer established, there are some advanced stats that don’t paint a great picture:

Keep in mind Gerry was a 5th round draft pick who converted to safety halfway through his Nebraska career. He’s always sort of been a ‘tweener, which you’d think might make him a little better in coverage, but not necessarily, as plays like this suggest:

QB outside the pocket, he finds Tyler Boyd trickling off the line and then just doesn’t really have the chops to stay with him. Has to reach an arm out to slow him down and try to keep up.

It is what it is. It’s about even really about Jim Schwartz or Nate Gerry himself, who played 180 special teams snaps on the Super Bowl team. He was only on the field for 20 defensive snaps (1.94%) because he was a rookie coverage guy and depth linebacker sitting behind bona fide NFL pros like Nigel Bradham, Mychal Kendricks, and Jordan Hicks. That’s probably what he should continue to be.

It’s about Howie Roseman, who put together a roster where the only available linebackers would be special teamers on any other NFL squad.