As many of you may know, I am an avid fan of the twitter account that goes by the name “NFL Honest”. According to his bio, he was a former NFL scout who appears to have had organizational ties to the Eagles during the Andy Reid and Doug Peterson eras. Something Honest has advocated in past offseasons is for the Eagles to acquire a legitimate receiving threat at their second tight end spot. This offseason is no different.
While I think there might be more pressing needs for Philadelphia, Honest makes a great case. Even though the Eagles from 12 personnel had a higher EPA per play than the Chiefs entire offense, Honest clearly believes there room for improvement: “the world deserves to see the potential of Jeff Stoutland 12P run designs”.
And when asked about whether or not they can improve beyond the incredible EPA mark, Honest answered “absolutely, without a shadow of doubt. They left a lot on the table in 12P. They weren’t confident enough to use it when they truly needed to make plays. They relied on 11P almost exclusively in those situations.”
As far as the current TE2 situation goes, Honest said that “DCs currently don’t give much of a shit about Stoll or Calcaterra, and both of them are limited in some form so the advantage an all around TE would give you in the numbers, geometry, and field space isn’t there”.
Honest makes some great points of how having 5 threats from 12 personnel would bolster the already elite Eagles offense into new territory. He believes Jeff Stoutland run designs would improve even further and that the overall goal of offense in the form of creating numbers, angles, and spacing would get better as well.
What he did not mention, however, was having a TE2 who can fill into the number 1 spot if anything were to happen to Godert. If he were to get injured, for example, having a legitimate tight end step into a starting role won’t lead to the same regression it did for the Eagles offense when Godert missed 5 games in 2022. And if for some reason, Godert’s play declines significantly in his late 20s, you have a player that can fill in for the lack of production. It’s important to remember that Zach Ertz was the same age (28) as Godert is now, when Godert was drafted.