Ad Disclosure
I’m Old Enough to Remember the Last Time We Got All Bent Out of Shape Over A.J. Brown Targets
Published:
A.J. Brown was only targeted once on Thursday night, a 4th quarter catch for eight yards that helped the Eagles close out the game.
For starters, it must be noted that he only recently came back from a hamstring injury and didn’t get the needed reps under a new offensive coordinator over the summer. You could start and end the story right there, take the W over division rival Dallas, and move on to Kansas City.
Nevertheless, two takeaways:
1) There is not a single person on the planet who cares that you had A.J. Brown on your fantasy team.*
2) We all have pitifully-short memories.
Expanding on the latter, you may or may not recall the Carolina game from last season. Birds riding an eight-game winning streak after a really nice road win down in Baltimore. But they slogged through the home return against the Panthers and Jalen Hurts only threw for 108 yards. They couldn’t get much going in the intermediate and downfield passing game, while running the ball 31 times for 209 yards between Hurts, Saquon Barkley, and Kenny Gainwell. A.J. finished with 4 receptions on 4 targets for 43 yards and that was it.
It resulted in this big frustration with the offense, concurrent with the “game manager” talk that had risen to the top of the Hurts discourse. Brown talked postgame about the passing game needing to improve. Then Brandon Graham went on WIP and said a whole lot about the Hurts/Brown relationship and it opened up a big can of worms that dominated the news cycle for that week.
That entire thing disappeared almost as fast as it started, and in somewhat comical fashion, because in the very next game the Eagles throttled a 10-win Steelers team while throwing for 290 yards and two touchdowns. Brown had eight receptions for 110 yards and a touchdown, DeVonta Smith added 109 and a score, and three players caught passes of more than 20 yards. “So that’s what y’all wanted to see, huh?” In the following game, Hurts targeted Brown with his first two passing attempts before leaving injured, and Kenny Pickett came in and targeted Brown 13 more times for a season high of 15. A.J. then started the playoffs at less than full health, was pedestrian against Green Bay and LA, and then exploded for six catches for 96 yards and a touchdown in the NFC Championship Game. He caught three passes for 43 yards and a score in the Super Bowl.
The Eagles went on to win it all, largely leaning on the run-first identity carved out during the regular-season winning streak.
So the lesson is that we’ve been here before. We were here less than 10 months ago and it worked out totally fine. There are myriad instances of A.J. Brown having quiet games and not receiving a lot of targets, and it always seems to correct itself in the end. There’s just no point in wasting time with the Brown topic right now because we’ve seen it before.
Editor’s note: As you know, Crossing Broad is Philadelphia’s premier outlet for sports blogging excellence. Help us stay at the top by making CB a preferred news source in your Google search. Thank you, and go Birds.
*play the song! –
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