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Pro Football Focus Says Eagles Have NFL’s Second-Best Linebacker Group
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You know the rules – Pro Football Focus data is pointless and makes no sense, unless it’s favorable to the Eagles.
In which case, we share this:
It’s still somewhat jarring to think that the Eagles have these incredible linebackers. Zack Baun, Jihaad Campbell, Trot Jr. currently, and then Nakobe Dean, 2022 T.J. Edwards, and Kyzir White in recent years. LB is a position of strength these days, and yet it doesn’t feel like the era of Duke Riley, LaRoy Reynolds, and Nathan “Whitesnake” Gerry was that long ago. Even that lost 2023 season featured Nicholas Morrow and Zach Cunningham running around out there, trying to tackle Deebo Samuel.
It was so bad around 2021 that we did a story in which we ranked every single linebacker to play for the Eagles since the 2017 Super Bowl victory, and the list looked like this:
- Nigel Bradham
- Jordan Hicks
- Alex Singleton
- Nate Gerry
- T.J. Edwards
- Kamu Grugier-Hill
- Eric Wilson
- Duke Riley
- Zach Brown
- Genard Avery
- Shaun Bradley
- Patrick Johnson
- Davion Taylor
- Rashad Smith
- LaRoy Reynolds
Some of these guys I don’t even remember. Rashad Smith? A quick Googling reveals he played two games for the Eagles, logged 3 sacks, and then cycled through the San Francisco, Chicago, and Atlanta practice squads. Then he won a 2023 USFL title with the Birmingham Stallions. Davion Taylor, who didn’t play football until the age of 18, was a third round bust. Avery flashed as a rookie in Cleveland, a hybrid type of guy, but didn’t do much of anything in Philadelphia.
If you redid this list, and added the guys from the Super Bowl teams, where would Nigel Bradham and Jordan Hicks end up? They might be pushed down to 4 and 5, maybe outside of the top 5? Maybe it would be Baun, Dean, then some mix of Edwards/White/Bradham/Hicks? Something like that. It’s just crazy to see some of these names pop up, guys they were throwing out there before Howie Roseman got serious about the linebacker position.
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