Inside The Eagles: 'Evaluate The Rep Before You Evaluate The Player'

Tanner McKee earned some extra second-team reps with a solid preseason performance in New England.

Eagles QB Tanner McKee at practice on Aug. 18, 2024 / John McMullen/Eagles on SI

PHILADELPHIA - All reps aren’t created equal in the NFL.

That’s a sentiment that one veteran personnel executive expressed to Eagles on SI after Philadelphia’s 14-13 preseason win over New England last week that ignited a mini-backup quarterback controversy among the fan base between the actual QB2 Kenny Pickett and emerging second-year developmental option Tanner McKee.

To most fans, they saw two quarterbacks in the same game and one played poorly while the other excelled.

The context of that is Pickett, playing with the Eagles’ second-team offense, squared off against a host of Patriots defensive starters while McKee and the third-teamers excelled against their peers from New England late in the game.

“You’ve got to evaluate the rep before you evaluate the player,” the exec told Eagles on SI.

In a universal sense, second- and third-team reps around the NFL tend to be sloppy.

The easiest explanation for that is that the defensive line is typically a rotational position around the league while the offensive line is static, meaning most teams have better depth when it comes to defensive front players versus the O-Line, tilting the dynamic from the get-go.

Other factors can come into play as well.

The best recent example in Philadelphia was 2023 training camp when then-backup quarterback Marcus Mariota was taking heat for his ineffective play with the second-team offense.

To those paying attention, Mariota was often playing shortstop before he even got to his day job while trying to handle shotgun snaps of Brett Toth.

A versatile offensive lineman who can play all five positions in a pinch, center is the last one Toth has tried to master, and his 2023 struggles when snapping the football were something he revisited this week.

“It’s pretty simple. I tried snapping the way Jason Kelce did,” Toth explained. “The same thing for how great of player [Kelce]  was and just for the city, he embodies all of it, you can’t try to fit your game after one of the all-time greats.

“... I felt that last year because if anyone saw the way Jason Kelce snaps, there’s a lot of heat on it. I tried changing it last year.”

The results were not good and too many reps were being affected to properly evaluate the unit as a whole forcing the Eagles to bring in veteran center Josh Andrews to settle down the issue.

Toth has gone back to his default setting this summer with snaps and has been solid during his center reps.

“It didn’t work out and [I] went back to the way I used to do and haven’t had any problems,” Toth said.

The good news for McKee is that his solid performance against the Pats generated two opportunities with the second-team offense during Sunday’s scrimmage practice.

Replicating Pickett’s daily workload did not go well for the second-year Stanford product.

McKee’s first set of reps started with consecutive PBUs by rookie linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr., one in coverage and another a bat down at the line of scrimmage, before facing down a barreling Brandon Graham pass rush that forced an incompletion.

The lone positive was a connection to Britain Covey before edge rusher Julian Okwara got his hands on another batted ball that resulted in a Ben VanSumeren interception.

McKee’s second-team mulligan ended with red zone work where the young QB broke the Cardinal – pun intended – rule of staring down Covey in tight quarters.

Veteran cornerback Parry Nickerson was champing at the bit and baited McKee into the throw before snaring it and racing up the left sideline for a 90-plus yard touchdown that ignited the defensive sideline.

Eagles on SI asked Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni about the sliding scale of weighing reps with players.

“Everything is evaluated from what they do in practice to what they do in the game,” Sirianni said. “Obviously the talent level, everybody is good when you get to this point. But I hear you. You take everything into account. 

“Obviously we take [the value reps] into account as well.”

MORE NFL: Eagles Nakobe Dean Puts Injury In Past: "I'm Not Back, I'm Better"