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The Eagles’ Best Offensive Player was the Guy Who Took a Pay Cut to Stick Around
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It’s time to hand out awards, and the Eagles’ offensive MVP goes to Dallas Goedert, who caught four of his seven targets for 33 yards and a touchdown on Sunday evening. He also ran for a score on a goal line end-around, which was the most creative thing Kevin Patullo called all night.
Goedert was one of maybe three or four offensive players who had a good season.
Funny enough, he was the subject of trade rumors in the summer and only wound up staying after he took a pay cut, agreeing to a reworked contract at $10 million, down from$14 million. Goedert told the media he wanted to stick around for the chance to win another Super Bowl, then went on to have a career year.
He caught a career-high 60 passes on 82 targets, going for 591 yards and a career-high 11 touchdowns. That set the franchise record for single-season receiving touchdowns by an Eagles tight end, surpassing the 10 scores Pete Retzlaff had back in 1965. Goedert started a career-high 15 games and avoided the injury problems that have hampered him in the past, hauling in 73.2% of passes thrown his way while accounting for 34 first downs and making himself the primary red zone weapon in an offense that was struggling without the tush push. His success percentage of 59.8 was tops among all Eagles skill players and he scored 23.9% of the team’s 46 regular-season touchdowns.
There really are no other candidates for offensive MVP.
DeVonta Smith had a typically-good season. He always shows up and always plays hard and always sticks around at his locker to face the media, unlike A.J. Brown, who moped all season long, dropped a bunch of passes in the playoff game, and then ducked out.
Saquon Barkley was less effective this season running behind an injured offensive line that didn’t look half as good as it was last season. Jalen Hurts was mostly steady, but he can be much better. We’ve seen better from QB1.
That’s about it when you go down the list. Who else is there? Jahan Dotson? Tank Bigsby? It was a year to forget for the Eagles’ offense, but Dallas Goedert definitely showed up.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com