Eagles notebook: No ceremonial parade for Brandon Graham

Eagles notebook: No ceremonial parade for Brandon Graham originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Brandon Graham has said plenty of times that this season will be his final in the NFL.

He always wanted to make it to Year 15 and now he has.

But Graham isn’t collecting a paycheck for hanging around. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio plans to play him a lot.

“Yeah, Brandon is still a good player and I’ve told him several times, he’s not on any ceremonial last-year retirement parade,” Fangio said. “He’s going to play. He’s still playing good.”

In Week 1, the 36-year-old Graham played 32 snaps against the Packers. That was the second-highest amount among the Eagles’ edge rushers behind just Josh Sweat. That put him at 48% of the Eagles’ defensive snaps in Week 1 after he played just 34% in the 2023 season.

Graham played more snaps in Week 1 this year than he did in all but two games last year. But his usage wasn’t a complete surprise.

“Vic had said that and now I believe him,” Graham said with a laugh.

As he has gotten older, Graham has learned to take better care of his body. And now that he knows he’s going to be playing a lot in 2024, that will continue.

“Just making sure that I’m staying in the weight room, staying strong, doing my regimen,” Graham said. “When you’re playing a lot, you can’t cheat it. You have to go out and do your process.”

Can’t make ‘unwise’ decisions 

Nick Sirianni this week pointed out that the Eagles are the only team of 11 to lose the turnover battle and win their game in Week 1. He brought that up to the Eagles and told his team that it’s not sustainable:

Broncos: -1 (L)
Colts: -1 (L)
Jaguars: -1 (L)
Panthers: -2 (L)
Bengals: -2 (L)
Browns: -2 (L)
Jets: -2 (L)
Titans: -2 (L)
Eagles: -2 (W)
Falcons: -3 (L)
Raiders: -3 (L)

Jalen Hurts was responsible for two interceptions in that game. After throwing 15 in 2023, that’s not a good sign. But Hurts didn’t put the ball in harm’s way much in training camp and has showed accountability for his mistakes in the opener.

“I think I just made two unwise decisions,” Hurts said on Thursday. “Those are things that I own. Those are things that I’ve got to be better with and manage those situations. Just taking what they give me.”

Slipping and sliding

The Eagles tried to not make excuses after a sloppy Week 1 win and that’s a good thing. You don’t want a team full of guys who just complain about field conditions when both teams had to play on it.

But it’s impossible to ignore that field conditions in the opener in Brazil were tough. A lot of players were slipping and sliding around that field. Beyond excuses, the Eagles have to use that game tape in their evaluations and it won’t be easy.

“I’ll say it this way, and it’s not this extreme, but I remember when we first got to Indy,” Sirianni said. “Indy had played a game at Buffalo, and there was four feet of snow. It was insane. In 2017. Whatever the score was, but we were watching that game, and we were like, ‘Maybe we should watch another game to evaluate the players, maybe take this one out.’ I see a picture of — I always watch that one of Shady (McCoy), the game that he had here against Detroit. What an unbelievable — some unbelievable runs that he had in that snow-covered field.

“Again, we are not in the business of blaming anything. We are about accountability — that’s the only way you get better. Let’s talk about missed tackles. Did some of the missed tackles happen? Did some of them happen because a guy slipped? Yeah, the result of the guy slipping, that happened, but there’s also a way that you approach the running back. That’s what needs to be fixed, you can’t do anything about the field. It’s the same thing as a wide receiver. When a wide receiver slips in a break, well, you know that the field is a little bit sloppy, so you have to play with better fundamentals to go through that way.

“Yeah, you still can evaluate it, and I gave you two sides. I gave you one where we didn’t do it at all, I gave you one where Shady was making all these unbelievable plays. But we have to evaluate the approach to it, like the approach to the ball carrier. That’s why we might have missed a tackle or slipped in a route or whatever it might be. We still use that. We’re evaluating hard off that tape.”

Breaking tendencies

Back in the summer, Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore said something that really explained his view on coaching offensive football. He said that it’s important to create tendencies in order to break them in crucial moments.

Makes sense.

Being unpredictable is important for any offense. And after the Eagles’ offense got so stale toward the end of 2023, hearing this perspective from a new offensive coordinator was very refreshing. That explanation from Moore had been rattling around in my head for a few weeks so I finally followed up toward the end of his press conference on Thursday.

When you decide to break those tendencies, is it data-driven or based on feel?

“No, there’s a huge data aspect of this thing, just understanding who you are,” Moore answered. “We study the film aspect of it, but there’s a numbers aspect of it, as well, because play callers are going to call things based on the numbers. Those are usually high indicators that you’ve got to trust the numbers in some circumstances, so we’ve got to be aware of those numbers.

“If you’re really good at something, there are going to be tendencies that happen, so you’ve just got to have awareness of it and understand that at some point you’re going to have to make adjustments according to that.”

We’re just one game into the 2024 season but the early returns on Moore’s offense are very positive.

Lost in the Woods

When the Eagles signed defensive back A.J. Woods to their practice squad earlier this week, I had to do a double take. Wasn’t he already on the practice squad?

Nope.

That’s actually defensive back JT Woods. So now the Eagles have A.J. Woods and JT Woods, both defensive backs, on their 17-man practice squad. Not only that, but the Eagles have put their lockers next to each other at the NovaCare Complex.

Confusing, right? But here’s a handy guide to help you (and me) remember who is who:

Manning the position

The Eagles took the field for the first kickoff of their 2024 season at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo last Friday night and … surprise!

It was Braden Mann out there kicking off instead of Jake Elliott.

With the new kickoff rules, the Eagles had been tryout out both during training camp practices but when the season began, it was Mann.

“Yeah, I think having two guys that have the ability to do kickoffs, it just helps out, keeps the other team guessing who they’re going to put out there,” Eagles special teams coordinator Michael Clay said. “They both have two unique skill sets, but I thought Braden did a great job of neutralizing a great returner in Keisean Nixon. We were playing a little bit higher elevation, so that ball was traveling, and things could change, depending on what we were talking about throughout the week. But, we decided to go with Braden that week, and it may change this week as we move forward and keep looking at Atlanta.

“But, I thought Braden did an excellent job being a kickoff guy, neutralizing them. I thought the kickoff team never took the foot off the gas because you never know when he’s going to return it, and you saw it — 27 seconds left, eight deep, he catches it and he wants to return it, we’ve got to make sure we give our defense that long field, and they did a really good job of corralling a really dangerous returner.”

What did Week 1 tell us about the new dynamic kickoff?

While teams had to show their hand a little bit in Week 1, Clay thinks most teams are still holding some of their cards close as it pertains to strategy. So the Eagles still have to be ready for almost anything in 2024.

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