Eagles podcast: Picks, grades and analysis after the 2020 NFL draft

Listen to The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane, Les Bown and Paul Domowitch recap the 2020 NFL draft and analyze the Eagles’ picks on the Birds’ Eye View podcast (available on iTunes and SoundCloud).

Here is an abbreviated transcript from this week’s episode:

Jeff McLane: Before we get to the controversial pick in the second round of Jalen Hurts, let’s go in order. Let’s start with the first-round pick Jalen Reagor. Wide receiver from TCU. I think we all would agree that this is a guy that we thought could be on their radar. I’m not sure if we saw that at No. 21 though. Domo, I’ll start with you this time. … What do you think?

Paul Domowitch: I think it’s a bad pick.

They had a no-brainer here. Justin Jefferson was on the board and they didn’t take him. They thought this one too much, they got into analytics with all of their picks, particularly their wide receivers. I don’t agree with Howie [Roseman] on this one, but clearly somebody in that organization told him that this kid could only play the slot and that Reagor was a better pick. You can do gadget stuff with him and you can’t do it with Jefferson. But I mean you had the best route-runner in the draft. You had a guy that caught 111 passes last year. Doesn’t drop passes. I don’t understand it.

Jeff McLane: Alright, Les. What do you think?

Les Bowen: I’m a little more upbeat than that.

I would have probably taken Jefferson, but I like Reagor. I think he’s got a very high ceiling. I think he also has a pretty low floor. So it’s a bit of a gamble.

But Domo touched on something there that I think is a very important point. When we talked to Howie about all of this stuff, he kept harping on the speed thing and they were evaluating everything in terms of speed. I can understand wanting to make make your team faster, but you don’t just grab a trade and start drafting people off of that trade, which almost sounds like what they were doing. ‘We had to have the speediest receiver available.’ I mean no, you have to have the best receiver available. And you sort of try to add speed organically. You don’t just draft a bunch of fast guys and say, ‘OK, now we have speed.’ That would be my biggest qualm. … I kind of wish they traded up for Ceedee Lamb. That would have made a lot of sense to me, especially the way they ended up spending the second-round pick. But I’m OK with Reagor.