Forget About Three Downs, Eagles Need To Tap Into Bryce Huff's One Trick

Edge rusher Bryce Huff had struggled during his first three games with the team. The Eagles are preaching patience.

Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Bryce Huff (0) against the Atlanta Falcons at Lincoln Financial Field. / Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

PHILADELPHIA - Aware that Haason Reddick wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of playing out the final year of his contract and wanted to be paid at the top of the edge-rushing market, the Eagles went a different route by signing the younger Bryce Huff to a three-year, $51 million contract before then dealing the proven Reddick to Huff's former team, the New York Jets, for a 2026 conditional third-round pick.

The Howie Roseman sleight of want wasn't an actual trade with former padawan Joe Douglas However, it essentially worked out that way on paper and neither side has seen any production, albeit for different reasons.

Huff, who seems like a poor fit over a small sample size for Vic Fangio's scheme, has offered virtually no production as his playing time continues to sink while Reddick is showing the courage of his convictions and simply hasn't shown up for the Jets.

Huff has played 80 defensive snaps for the Eagles -- 26.7 per game -- and recorded 1 tackle. Things are also trending downward. In the Eagles' Week 3 win in New Orleans, Huff was relegated to situational pass-rushing work over 18 snaps.

ESPN's Rich Cimini, who covers the Jets, dropped a bit of a bombshell via his "Flight Deck" podcast on Sept. 25. claiming "a little birdie told me that Reddick I don't think would be opposed to something like [being traded back to the Eagles]. "

That was the chum for the aggregators who swam off in the same direction to amplify what even Cimini said was a "farfetched" rewind scenario.

What hooked me was Cimini's thoughts on a player who he saw produce with the Jets, albeit in a limited role.

"Bryce Huff, probably one of the more disappointing free agents in the NFL right now, and get this, 77 snaps (the actual number is 80) right now on defense, only 1 tackle, 0 pressures, 0 quarterback hits, 0 sacks. So essentially, he's done in (80) snaps what Haason Reddick has done with no snaps, which is nothing.

"I don't think that's an indictment on Huff. I mean, we know he's a good player, and so I do believe the Jets made a mistake by letting him go. It's just that he's not a good fit in the Eagles' system. And clearly Vic Fangio, their defensive coordinator has not embraced Huff. And so that's on the Eagles. They screwed up that signing. They've taken a good player and they're misusing him."

There's some truth to those sentiments, albeit not all the blame can go to the Eagles and the player himself has to own some of it.

Much of the Eagles' evaluation of Huff had to do with projection and the hope of tapping into a player early in his trajectory from a one-trick pony to a well-rounded, three-down player.

The early returns with run support and setting the edge haven't been good for Huff and that's why he had slipped behind Brandon Graham and even Nolan Smith when it comes to playing time, especially against the Saints when Fangio unleashed a game plan to stop Alvin Kamara and the New Orleans stretch run game at all costs.

The problem in the stunted development of Huff's run-support growth in a more read-and-reactionary scheme vs. the one Huff excelled in with the Jets has also derailed the one trick Huff had already proved he could do at the NFL level.

For now, the Eagles are preaching patience behind the scenes with a common narrative being that even a proven commodity like Reddick would often look non-descript in practice when dueling with All-Pro right tackle Lane Johnson before the iron-sharpening the sack specialist began showing up on game days.

Fangio also employs the counterintuitive notion of throwing a lot at his players early and then scaling back to what they do best.

The time has come to scale it back on Huff and accentuate the one trick while masking his deficiencies in run support with Graham carrying that load.

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