that seems like a really odd decision to play him less after two first two weeks.

trust me, you just echoed an entire city/fanbase’s sentiments right there. anyone can see that Jackson has a special ability to take ANY CB in the league deep, has good hands, runs diciplined routes and isn’t afraid to get hit. he is easily the most physically gifted WR we have. Curtis is more polished/professional, but Jackson is far more gifted. if you examine the Steelers, Skins, and Bears games, we had no deep threat because Jackson spent too much time on the sideline. this allowed the teams to play tighter and more underneath on us and severly limited out passing attack. Jackson made his re-emergence against the Niners, our deep game was back, and the underneath opened again (part of the reason Buckhalter had an awesome day).

historically, Andy Reid has an extremely reserved view of rookie WRs. given the speed and talent differential that rookies face when coming to the NFL coupled with the extremely complex offense we run, his view is that it’s better for the rookie WRs to play sparingly and learn the offense the right way. also, it must be noted that given our history with WRs, Andy approaches that position with kid gloves (see: Pinkston, Todd; Mitchell, Freddie; and Owens, Terrell); two first rounder picks that turned to dust, and of course T.O.. Andy needs to realize that this is a different player and that he can handle it.

the other issue that emerges is due to the offensive design. our offense operates of the premise of package substitutions for most of the game. in reality, our #1 and #2 WRs are only there on paper, and depending on what the defense is giving us, Andy calls plays that he believes will be effective, and these plays have specific WR packages associated with them. Andy may need to step outside of his comfort zone here and specifically leave Jackson on the field more. he is our second most explosive weapon behind westbrook and can’t get the ball while he’s on the bench.

are they still using him on punt returns? Personally, I don;t like teams using top WR prospects for anything but receiving. why risk burning out their legs on punt returns when you get so much more value on O.

yes, he’s still our PR, and i’m fine with it for now. I have a few takes on this for you to consider. first, you have to understand the history of our ST and specifically PRs. untl this year, we hadn’t had ANY type of kick return for a TD since 2003. additionally, we lost two games in the first month of last year’s season because we couldn’t CATCH punts. we muffed 4 punts in two weeks. so that’s kind of a sore spot for us and this addresses that. second, it’s kind of hard to justify taking him off the field for PRs when it’s highly likely that he can break a return for 30+ yards, or even a TD, until a suitable replacement is found. my exhibit #3 is that westbrook returned a majority of our punts earlier in his career while handling the RB duties and it seemed to work out okay for him. also, DeSean did play his entire college career as a WR and PR, so it’s not an additonal workload that he is not used to. however, I would make it a draft priority for next year so that we can simply make him a full time WR.

We really appreciate your comments/discussion on the matter. the truth of it is, it’s hard to say, not really an apples to apples thing, but that makes the discussion more interesting.

no problem. Contrary to popular belief, alot of Eagles fans are actually quite intelligent and football savvy and enjoy talking to fans of other teams, although I will say that we are very strong willed and discussions can get heated. yes we do have the winners that get out of hand, but you’ll have that. feel free to drop by any time at BGN. and yes, it’s a difficult comparison without having any proper means to normalize data, but we do our best!

have a good one!