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Sunday is the Super Bowl – have you heard? – as Philadelphia meets Kansas City in New Orleans. Here is a look at the Eagles’ offensive and defensive starters and how they ranked as prospects.
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OFFENSE
The Eagles have no five-stars on offense despite having one of the best quarterbacks, running backs and receivers in the NFL in Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley and A.J. Brown.
All three were four-stars and well inside the Rivals250 with Brown being the highest at No. 53 overall. Hurts was definitely not the package we see today as a high school quarterback and Barkley, who was once committed to Rutgers before flipping to Penn State, was a miss as he had a lot of tools in high school but finished as the No. 11 running back in the 2015 class.
The other four-star starters for Philadelphia are receiver Jahan Dotson, offensive lineman Mekhi Becton (who at 6-foot-7 and 340 pounds in high school was one of the biggest humans we’d seen up to that point), center Cam Jurgens and Landon Dickerson, who was excellent at the Rivals Camp Series and finished as the best offensive guard in the 2016 class.
There are some fascinating stories that make up the Eagles’ offense as well.
Jurgens, a four-star athlete from Beatrice, Neb., in the 2018 class, seemed deadset on being a tight end until he just grew out of it and then developed into an interior offensive lineman.
Tight end Dallas Goedert isn’t even in the Rivals database because he was a walk-on at South Dakota State. Another player not listed is offensive lineman Jordan Mailata, who was a professional ruby player from Australia and only joined the NFL through its International Player Pathway Program.
Stud offensive lineman Lane Johnson might have the best story of all though as he went to junior college and then to Oklahoma as a practice squad quarterback. Johnson then moved to tight end, then defensive end and only to the offensive line after two other players got injured before finding stardom there.
DEFENSE
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Philadelphia’s defense has two five-stars in linebackers Nolan Smith and Josh Sweat, who was a five-star in the 2015 class as a defensive end. Smith was just the Energizer Bunny who loved football, covered, hit, talked a whole lot and was super productive. On traits alone, Sweat was going to be a five-star.
There are four four-stars on among the Eagles’ starters with three of them – defensive lineman Jalen Carter, linebacker Nakobe Dean and defensive back CJ Gardner-Johnson – as one notch below five-star status. The biggest regret of not making a five-star was Carter, who finished No. 49 overall and was an early first-round selection.
Three three-stars in Zack Baun, Darius Slay and Cooper DeJean start for the Eagles along with three two-stars in Milton Williams (Louisiana Tech), Quinyon Mitchell (Toledo) and Reed Blankenship (Middle Tennessee State).
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