With the season opener for the Eagles drawing closer, there’s still one question that has yet to be answered. The answer is probably a wholesome one to begin with and an upsetting one by season’s end. The Zach Ertz drama never really found a conclusion. No one knows what the relationship between him and Howie is like. After a year of endless rumors and trade whispers, he rolled up to camp with a new hairstyle and proceeded coach up young players and build a rapport with Jalen Hurts. But what does this mean in the long run?
Whether Dallas Goedert likes it or not, he could well be the main man soon. He’s considered as someone who could soon be a top-5 Tight End in the league. Goedert has shown flashes of brilliance but his availability has fluctuated in his first three seasons in the league due to nagging injuries.
Goedert has never started more than 10 games for the Eagles but has only played less than 15 games in a season once, which just so happen to be last season. He played 54% of the offensive snaps while Ertz played 56% of them in the 11 games that he was able to play in.
It’s been reported the Goedert has become one of Jalen Hurts’s favorite targets during training camp, but interestingly, both players are listed at the TE1 spot on the unofficial depth chart, signifying that there’s still some unfinished business. Who has the upper hand in an offense guided by a Head Coach who has historically featured 1-TE sets in his Indy offenses?
In the 4 games that Dallas played with Jalen, he was targeted 24 times and hauled in 16 of those passes with none of them going for a touchdown. During that same span, Zach Ertz was targeted 27 times and caught 12 of them while recording zero touchdowns as well.
With Sirianni historically favouring versatile backfields and that trend looking to continue, it begs the question whether or not both tight ends can feature heavily while keeping the best weapons on the field for the offense? One would think that Coach Sirianni would prefer to go with a three-receiver set to take advantage of the speed and catch abilities of the young receivers instead of limiting their growth to make both tight ends happy.
All in all, this is a good problem to have if you’re the Eagles head coach, but with a contract extension looming, Dallas Goedert needs to make sure he proves he’s worth the price to pay.
Photo by Andy Lewis/Icon Sportswire
