Is it just me or were the rest of my fellow Eagles fans gasping when they were watching the game and seeing Julio Jones sprinting past Byron Maxwell on almost every pass play? My immediate thought was I hope we didn’t just sign another Nnamdi Asomugha.
As Eagles fans were like scorn lovers when it comes to cornerbacks as of late. After being spoiled for 2 decades with great corner play dating back to the 90’s with Eric Allen- Mark McMillian, followed by another great pairing in Bobby Taylor-Troy Vincent, then in the early 2000’s Lito Shepherd-Sheldon Brown, followed by Sheldon Brown-Asante Samuel duo. We have come to expect a lot out of the position as Eagle’s die hards.
But as of late we have had to watch Asomugha – Dominque Rodgers-Cromartie (who I don’t believe was that bad), Cary Williams – Bradley Fletcher (I think he just got beat for a TD while I type this) and now we have to evaluate Byron Maxwell and Eric Rowe combination. But the man under the microscope is Maxwell because of his huge salary and high expectations.
Considering we have elite talents in the NFC East such as Dez Bryant, Odell Beckham Jr., and Desean Jackson let’s just hope he had a bad game and he will improve. After observing the first game it looks like Maxwell is going to shadow every teams top receiver to earn his $10 million dollar yearly salary. Here are a couple of my concerns.
Maxwell was never known to have elite top end speed in the NFC East this is a problem because of the elite receivers we have to face 6 times yearly. He was a physical corner while in the Legion of Boom so keeping up with faster receivers has been a challenge. He also had great safety talent overtop to help him in Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas. Yes, we have Malcolm Jenkins and Walter Thurmond and Thurmond showed up to play on Sunday and had a big game but I still don’t believe our safeties are on that elite level or have the chemistry like they do in Seattle. Maxwell also was assigned to one side of the field in Seattle while Richard Sherman locked down the other. So some of his flaws may have been masked. Let’s hope this isn’t the case and it’s just one bad game.
I’m not going to overreact because it’s only one game but it’s something we as die hard fans need to keep an eye on. We know what it’s like to have cornerbacks getting track meets ran on them all game from the last few years with Nnamdi, Bradley Fletcher and to a lesser extent Cary Williams. The Eagles need to find a combination of corners that meets our standards were accustomed too in Philly. Hit me with some feedback and your thoughts.
