DeVonta Smith only played 44 snaps on Sunday, which was fewer than Jalen Reagor and Quez Watkins. He was third in snaps among the four receivers that saw the field, with J.J. Arcega-Whiteside getting 14 plays.

What gives?

Nick Sirianni on that:

We were in 13-personnel and we were running some good things out of 13-personnel and we were having some success in the run game and in the play-action game. And with who we wanted in there on 13-personnel with what we were asking them to do in 13-personnel, that was Reagor. That’s where Reagor got a lot of those snaps.

And so that’s just the way it went. Not going to apologize; we didn’t punt until the last series of the game and so that’s just the way it went and that’s the flow sometimes. That’s kind of why it went that way, though.

Alright, fair enough.

For some context here, Smith has played 728 snaps, which amounts to 86% total on the season. But 44 snaps Sunday equates to 62%, which is the lowest number he’s posted this year, lower than the Detroit game, when the Eagles were running roughshod over the Lions. Smith logged 67% of the snaps in that game.

To get the full story here, we’d have to watch the game again. I pulled up the condensed highlights on Gamepass, and wrote down some  notes:

  1. the first play of the game, the broken play, that was in 13 personnel
  2. on some of the 12 personnel looks, they used Watkins and Reagor as the receivers
  3. they did a lot of running out of 13 personnel, so it doesn’t matter who the receiver was out there anyway
  4. there were a couple of looks where they got Dallas Goedert and Tyree Jackson lined up as if they were receivers; it wasn’t just tight stuff off the tackles
  5. obviously they ran more at the end to ice the game

That’s about it, no conspiracy theory or anything. They ran a lot of 13 personnel where the grouping looked like this, with Goedert, Jackson, Jack Stoll, and Reagor joining either Miles Sanders or Kenneth Gainwell:

Hopefully more DeVonta Smith involvement after the bye, but if you’re winning and running well, it is what it is.