For the sake our mental health, let’s reach deep into the football abyss and pull out a positive Eagles abyss.

<rummaging around in the nether>

Ah, here we go, it’s a linebacker story! Can you believe it? The silver lining takeaway from the past two weeks is that it looks like the Eagles may have stumbled upon a guy who can play the position, and his name is Alex Singleton.

Over the past two games, the 26-year-old Montana State product has logged 28 tackles, a sack, a fumble recovery, and two stuffs. He’s now up to 359 defensive snaps on the season, which is about 50%, and leads the Eagles special teams unit with 77% , which is 17 more snaps than the next player on the list.

Singleton, who went undrafted in 2015, was brought in from the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders and is now drawing praise from Doug Pederson, Jim Schwartz, and Dave Fipp, who were all asked about him this week:

Pederson: “I think Alex has been a big bright spot for us. He’s played a ton of snaps obviously on defense. He’s a core teams player, great leader, great energy giver, just somebody that has really embraced his role.”

Schwartz: “He’s always been a good football player. He’s still learning. I’m going to quote Bill Parcells, ‘let’s not put him in the Hall of Fame just yet.’ And I say that with a lot of respect for Alex. He plays tough and really brings some things to our defense. But he’s not 100 percent clean in his game. He’d probably be the first person to tell you that and there’s still things that he’s developing through and he’s still working at. But just knowing him and his character, he’s going to work at it to get it right. 

I really like Alex’s mentality that way. Makes mistakes like a lot of young players do or players that are playing for the first time. Gets them corrected and moves on. I think that he’s definitely earning his wings, so to speak, but he’s still a work in progress and he’s still a guy that needs to grind through and iron some things out. But I like where he’s trending, and I think it’s a nice plus for our defense right now.”

Fipp: “He’s done a great job for us. He’s been a four-core player for us this year. He did the same last year for us when he’s been up. I know his role on defense has changed a little bit. Those guys roles have fluctuated throughout the year and in the beginning of the year he wasn’t playing as much, Nate Gerry was playing more. Obviously, there’s been some injury at that position. I think there’s been some adjustment in some of those guys’ roles at that position, also. But no, we’re happy with his performance for us, certainly, and we’re going to try to use him as much as we can.”

In this past game, Singleton logged more snaps than any other Eagle, playing 100% of the 67 available defensive snaps and 90% of the special teams snaps, amounting to 26. He’s been very easily eclipsing Duke Riley and T.J. Edwards in Nate Gerry’s absence.

So it’s a good story. A rare positive for the Eagles and for the linebackers. Tomorrow we’ll get back to the 100% negativity, which is justified.