One of the quirks from Sunday’s Eagles win was DeVonta Smith returning a Washington punt that originated from deep inside the Commie area. No fair catch. He returned that punt 12 yards to the Eagles’ 44 and then Britain Covey was back there for the rest of the afternoon.

Naturally, with Smith going for 169 yards and a TD through the air, the question is whether or not he even needs to be returning punts. Is it too risky? Nick Sirianni and Michael Clay were both asked a version of that question.

Sirianni:

As far as DeVonta goes, we’ve been talking about that. How many different times can we get the football in DeVonta’s hands? He’s really sure-handed back there. He was really good at returning punts at Alabama the times that he did do it. We have faith in him based off of our practice reps that he can go back there and do it.

We wanted a little spark. We threw him back there. I think Britain did a good job, too. He put the one on the ground, but I think he did a good job, too. It wasn’t a slight by any means on Britain, we just wanted to get the ball in DeVonta’s hands when they were backed up. He did a nice job of getting some yardage off of that.

Again, how do we get guys that can make plays the ball in their hands? We thought that was the opportunity to do that with DeVonta.

Clay:

We always have these conversations. We have these conversations before the season started because you obviously want to get your best players touches, the best players the ball right there. It all comes down to situational type things.

What’s the weather like, who we’re facing, anything like that. It’s just one of those things where we’ve had deep conversations just in terms of, ‘Hey, how do we get our best players on the field and the ball in their hands?’

Shane Steichen was asked for his thoughts on having Smith return punts and said “that’s not my area.”


It would seem on the surface that Smith getting 12 targets in this game and catching eight balls is more than enough in terms of involvement, but the idea of putting the ball in your best players’ hands is hard to argue with. I just don’t know how you calculate net positive or net negative when factoring in the possibility of DeVonta getting crunched by a gunner in the punt return game. The Eagles could definitely use a spark on special teams, but Smith is not lacking for touches and the offense is putting up points, so the risk/reward might not be worth it here.

What say you?