Eagles’ dynamic duo of A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith both want the ball. That works

Ralph Vacchiano

NFC East Reporter

A.J. Brown was angry, the cameras caught him and the timing couldn’t have been worse. It was late in the Philadelphia Eagles‘ blowout win over the Giants in the playoffs last Saturday night. Everyone in Philadelphia should have been happy.

But Brown wanted the ball.

“If you throw the ball to me 100 times, I’m going to want it 101 times,” the Eagles receiver explained a few days later. “Me personally, I just feel like I can change the game at any moment.”

He’s right, of course. He can. He’s just not the only one.

Maybe that’s a problem at times, but it has been a great problem for the Eagles this season as they try to make sure their two game-changing receivers get the ball enough. The Eagles traded first- and third-round draft picks to get Brown from the Tennessee Titans last April, then gave him a $100 million deal. And they did that a year after they traded up in the draft to take DeVonta Smith out of Alabama with the 10th overall pick.

Brown and Smith would both be No. 1 receivers on most NFL teams. On the Eagles, they are 1 and 1A — and which one is which depends on the day.

“What makes them unique is it’s just hard to take one away,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni explained late in the season. “Not everybody has two (top) corners, or not everybody will say ‘I’m going to match this guy here’, or not everybody has in their scheme to roll. They’re just hard to take away because you can attempt to take a guy away, but when you have two of them, like ‘OK, you’re taking that guy away? You can work here.”

That has been a huge advantage for the Eagles all season long and might just be their biggest heading into the NFC Championship Game in Philadelphia on Sunday (3 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports App). The San Francisco 49ers have a suspect secondary as is, and now they will face an impossible choice. Do they focus their coverage on Brown, who had 88 catches for a franchise-record 1,496 yards and 11 touchdowns? Or do they lean toward Smith, who had 95 catches for 1,196 yards and seven touchdowns?

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AJ Brown wasn’t happy on the sideline after catching just three passes for 22 yards in the Eagles’ divisional playoff victory over the Giants.

Never mind that the Eagles also have tight end Dallas Goedert (55-702-3 in 12 games) and the NFL’s fifth-ranked rushing attack. That choice between the Eagles’ “Dynamic Duo” — as immortalized on a T-shirt Sirianni wore to his press conference on Wednesday — has been flummoxing opposing coaches all year long. There were three games this season where they both topped 100 yards, but more often than not, they seemed to alternate being the focus of the Philadelphia passing attack.

And that was obviously huge for quarterback Jalen Hurts, who threw for 3,701 yards (in 15 games) and is a finalist for the MVP award. Smith was terrific for Hurts as a rookie last year (64-916-5), but the addition of Brown brought a new dimension to Hurts and the Eagles’ pass game. It’s no coincidence the Brown-Smith duo accounted for 65.6% of Philadelphia’s passing yards.

By himself, Smith looked like a future No. 1 receiver last season. He certainly had the speed and playmaking ability. The only knock on him was that he wasn’t particularly good catching passes over the middle. He did most of his damage on the outside.

But the Eagles could see the 6-foot, 170-pound Smith had what Sirianni calls “an innate ability” to make defenders miss, and “a punt returner ability to him; a feeling, instinctual, where the lanes are” to get open and then through the soft spots in a defense. It has made him the playmaker the Eagles always knew he could be.

“He’s an elite receiver,” Eagles offensive coordinator Shane Steichen said recently. “He’s seeing it well — the coverages, how to adjust his route in certain coverages and find the dead spots and the holes. And then he’s making elite catches. He’s been very impressive.”

“What’s so amazing about it is he’s doing it in all these different ways,” Sirianni added. “He made some unbelievable catches, and he continues to do so throughout the year and throughout the last two years we’ve been there. And it’s not anything new because he was doing that at Alabama, as well.”

That’s why the Eagles traded a third-round pick to move up two spots in the 2021 NFL Draft to get Smith — notably, one spot ahead of the Giants, who were hoping to draft Smith, too. Eagles general manager Howie Roseman smartly recognized that if he was going to turn his team over to a then-23-year-old, second-year quarterback, he was going to need weapons around him.

Then, one year later, Roseman decided Hurts would need more help, which is why he made the blockbuster, draft-day deal for Brown. It gave the Eagles a one-two punch at receiver they believed would be as good as any in the league.

And they were right. There were only four games all season long when Smith and Brown didn’t combine for at least 100 receiving yards. Three came in the Eagles’ worst four-game stretch of the season — narrow wins over Houston and Green Bay and a loss to Washington between Weeks 9 and 12. The other came in the season finale when the coaches reined in the offense in the second half.

For most of the season, they worked together to stretch and confound opposing defenses — often with one of them taking the lead — and creating so many difficulties that their presence alone opened so much up for the Eagles’ run game. Together they were targeted on more than half of Hurts’ throws (239 of 460). There were only a few games where it seemed like one of them was a forgotten man.

But it did happen, including last week when Brown was only targeted six times against the Giants and caught just three passes for 22 yards. Smith, in that game, was targeted 10 times, catching six passes for 61 yards and a touchdown.

The fact that Smith was more of a focus wasn’t unusual. It was the ninth time in 18 games that Smith was targeted more than Brown — an even split that really should make everyone happy. But Brown was still visibly upset, despite the 38-7 victory, reminding everyone that a good problem to have can still be a problem at times.

“Of course, he’s always going to want the ball. He’s a really good player,” Sirianni said. “That’s what you want from your receivers — to want to have the football. Part of the reason why receivers are good is because they want and crave the football. They want the ball to change the game.”

“I’m a wide receiver,” Brown said. “Listen, of course, even when the ball goes somewhere else, I’m a receiver. I’m a dominant receiver who wants the ball. I feel like I can change the game at any moment.”

He can. And so can Smith. And they’ve both taken turns proving that this season. Sometimes by themselves, and sometimes together. And even if it can be a problem at times, it’s almost always more of a problem for the other team.

Ralph Vacchiano is the NFC East reporter for FOX Sports, covering the Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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