Saquon Barkley is just one of the things to be most excited about with opening night almost here.
I understand why the NFL higher-ups want the Eagles and Packers to play their first game of the 2024 season in Brazil. I really do.
The NFL wants to be the NBA. They want to be a global league. They want to have Brazilian superstars and French superstars and German superstars and so on. They want to rake in the billions of dollars in foreign cash the NBA does, and utilizing the Eagles and Packers, two marquee franchises and Super Bowl contenders to promote the sport in a country like Brazil makes sense from a long-range financial standpoint.
But it stinks.
Starting off the season on a Friday night in a foreign country is just about the last way you’d want a team like the Eagles to kick things off in Week 1. This is a team whose schedule last year was all over the place, and with so much uncertainty about the roster and the coaching staff, with so many unanswered questions and coming off a historic collapse the season before, you’d like to start the 2024 season with a good ‘ol fashioned 1pm Sunday kickoff.
So while I am looking forward to seeing Jalen Hurts, Jalen Carter and the rest of the 2024 Eagles get the season started on Friday night, I am not looking forward to seeing them do it in Brazil, and I’m certainly not looking forward to seeing how it affects them in the weeks after making this ridiculous trans-continental trip to a city with a sky-high crime rate.
That being said, here are five things I am most looking forward to this season with kickoff just a few hours away!
Saquon Barkley’s Impact on the Offense
The Eagles have not had a true No. 1 running back since Shady McCoy, who led the Eagles in rushing from 2009-14. Over the last decade there has been a collection of RB-by-committee members — DeMarco Murray, Ryan Mathews, Jay Ajayi, LeGarrett Blount, Josh Adams (a team-leading 511 rushing yards in 2018!!!), Miles Sanders, D’Andre Swift, Kenny Gainwell to name a few — and I am ready to give my heart to one player once again.
Saquon Barkley is going to be “the guy” in the new Eagles offense. Head coach Nick Sirianni said this week the team was ready to fully unleash the former Giants star and Pro Bowler, saying “He can go for it here” after watching a Barkley run in practice Monday that made him do a double take.
I’m also fascinated to see if the Eagles can finally utilize a running back out of the backfield as a pass-catcher, and how much that will help Jalen Hurts. I’m excited to see what Barkley can do running behind a real quarterback in a real offense with real weapons that teams have to focus on other than him. In New York, all eyes were on him. In Philadelphia, he may be option No. 3 or 4 at times.
Some believe the offense will run through Barkley, but whether that’s true or not, I’m most excited about a potentially monstrous season from him.
Jalen Carter Dominating the NFL
With Rams star Aaron Donald now retired, Jalen Carter has a chance to replace him as the best pass-rushing defensive tackle in the NFL.
That’s not hyperbole. He has the potential to be an All-Pro defensive tackle, and all accounts from training camp are that he’s in better shape than a year ago and been utterly dominant. Carter played well at time last season, but wore down during the 17-game, 18-week marathon, hardly a surprise development for a player who didn’t play every snap in college in a highly rotational defense at Georgia.
The departure of Fletcher Cox from the defensive line rotation leaves a pretty big hole. Even in his final season, Cox was excellent, consistently performing every week while tallying five sacks. Carter would appear to be the heir apparent, and I’m excited to watch him take the next step forward in 2024.
Kellen Moore’s Offensive Design
By the end of last year, it became clear the Eagles’ offensive schemes needed more than just a makeover. They needed a renovation. And what do you do when you need to renovate something? You hire someone to come on board and strip things down to the studs and rebuild.
Enter former Cowboys and Chargers offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. His task is to freshen things up and insert new ideas into Nick Sirianni’s existing scheme. Almost certainly we’ll see more pre-snap motion after last year when Sirianni used it just 10.9% of the time, far and away the lowest percentage in the league.
But there will be more to it than just pre-snap motion. Perhaps we’ll see an offense that is able to not only be destroyed by blitzing, but actually exploit it. Perhaps we’ll see more designed passing to their new star running back. Perhaps we’ll see more of A.J. Brown or Devonta Smith in the slot. Perhaps we’ll see different designed runs for Hurts, new blocking schemes, and/or the utilization of Dallas Goedert more. The good news is Moore has so many weapons with diversified skill sets, the possibilities are literally endless.
He also has a quarterback that appears ready to match his MVP-caliber 2022 season. Jalen Hurts looks and sounds like a man on a mission, ready to put a distracted and disappointing ‘23 season behind him. If Hurts runs the ball with the same kind of effectiveness we saw two years ago, I just don’t know how anyone stops this offense, even without future Hall of Famer Jason Kelce at the center of the offensive line.
A.J. Brown & DeVonta Smith
Do you really need more than 30-40 words from me to talk about why I’m excited to see the best wide receiver duo the franchise has ever seen?
I didn’t think so.
Young Defenders
Here is my level of excitement order for each of the young defenders Vic Fangio will deploy this season.
- Jalen Carter
- Quinyon Mitchell
- Bryce Huff
- Nakobe Dean
- Jordan Davis
- Nolan Smith
- Cooper DeJean
- Jeremiah Trotter Jr.
- Kelee Ringo
- Jalyx Hunt
Mitchell is going to be on the field A LOT, both on the outside and in the slot. Unlike most of the guys on this list, Huff isn’t an Eagles draft pick, but he is a young, ascending player (we hope) who is earning big free agent dollars and whose development as an every down edge player is vital to helping replace the departed Haason Reddick. Dean’s ability to stay healthy and improve in all facts in the game could be the key to this defense actually working this year.
Expectations for Davis were high entering his first two seasons, but he hasn’t lived up to them yet. Nolan Smith was mostly invisible this summer, and they need him to step up, too. The rest of the guys will be role players this year, but important ones, and all have high upsides.
This is one of the youngest defenses we’ve seen in a long time, and it has the feel of a boom or bust unit. If it’s boom, this could be an incredibly fun defense to watch, and it’s one of the things I’m most excited about in 2024.
