Bowen: Eagles have no interest in receiving help

THE EAGLES break their pregame huddle each week with the band-of-brothers chant: "We all we got!"

That just might be the case when it comes to their beleaguered wide receiving corps. Doug Pederson, who usually deflects questions about personnel moves to de facto general manager Howie Roseman, said Wednesday that "there's no legitimacy" to reports that the team is looking to trade for a wide receiver before Tuesday's NFL trade deadline.

"I think every team is trying to upgrade every position if you could, but not at this time, no," Pederson said, when asked to clarify. He also said he was "thrilled with the guys we have."

Those guys' lack of production has led to the fan base fervently investing in such speculation. All of them said Wednesday they were unfazed by trade talk, which is what players are taught to say .

It's a question of talent, mainly, but there are other factors - the wideouts, especially late arrivals Dorial Green-Beckham and Bryce Treggs, haven't worked a ton with Carson Wentz yet. The offensive line, especially now that rookie Halapoulivaati Vaitai is starting at right tackle in place of suspended Lane Johnson, doesn't always give Wentz enough time to look deep.

The Eagles' top wideout, Jordan Matthews, ranks 42nd in NFL receiving yards, with 354 of them, on 25 catches. There are five NFL tight ends with more yards than Matthews, and he is the only Birds' WR in the receiving yards top 100.

Remember DeMarco Murray, the stiff-jointed running back the Birds traded to Tennessee? He has more catches for more yards (27 for 192) than Nelson Agholor (18 for 191), the wide receiver who was the Eagles' 2015 first-round pick, and is their second-most productive wideout this season.

"It motivates you, especially if you're still around," Agholor said Wednesday, when asked how trade talk affects him. "Or if you get sent somewhere else, you understand that you gotta wake up. You gotta wake up and you gotta make plays."

This sounded appropriately urgent, but Agholor, an obliging fellow, gives such answers virtually every week. Then he goes out and manages something like last Sunday's two catches for 10 yards, on six targets.

Agholor is well aware of having had the same conversation with reporters more than once. He said he wants to be able to bounce back from rare, inevitable drops or miscommunications so productively that his ability to make plays is unquestioned, that "I don't have to sit here and tell - if every time, y'all are asking me that, it must be that y'all don't see that."

Wentz tried a deep shot to Agholor early in the second quarter Sunday, down the right sideline, on third-and-15. It sailed well over the receiver, which caused Wentz to shake his head as the offense left the field in favor of punter Donnie Jones.

Agholor got jammed a bit at the line, but he said Wednesday the bigger problem was that midroute, he saw a safety moving down and thought the ball might be coming, so he looked back far too early, and slowed, just as Wentz launched toward the spot where Agholor would have been had he been sprinting all-out.

"I peeked to soon . . . rather than digging, digging digging, then locating," said Agholor, who said that in film review, wideouts coach Greg Lewis told him that the route wasn't designed for the ball to arrive at the point where Agholor started looking back, so, safety movement or not, don't look for it there, keep running.

Pederson mentioned Agholor and Josh Huff, when asked who can stretch the field, from his current group. He also mentioned Treggs, who has not yet been active for a game, after having been claimed on waivers from the 49ers just before the season started.

"As a competitor, you want to be out there making a difference," said Treggs, a rookie from Cal who ran a 4.39 40 preparing for the draft this spring. "It's all on me to give the coaches trust in me to put me out there. I'm not going to make excuses for myself - 'Oh, they're not giving me a shot' - It's all on me. Have to give them trust to put me on the field."

Huff absolutely has lid-lifting speed. He showed that on the 98-yard kickoff return for a touchdown that gave the Eagles the lead Sunday. Huff was named NFC special teams player of the week.

But Huff, converted from running back to wideout at Oregon, is better at weaving through the defense with the ball in his hands than he is at running long, precise routes and then catching it. The Eagles never even try to throw long to Huff; they are much more likely to hand him the ball on a jet sweep.

Pederson noted that Huff, with a season-high-tying four catches for 39 yards against the Vikings, got the red zone and "bubble-slant combinations" he usually gets, "and that's kind of who Josh is."

"Obviously, would I want to get the ball downfield? Yes," Huff said. He has 12 catches for just 63 yards three runs for 10 more. "Has it (gone) that way? No. But my job is to continue getting better, each and every day, and once my number's called, I'll be ready to make that play."

Huff agrees with coaches that, "I'm dynamic with the ball in my hands . . . If they don't think I'm good down the field, then so be it."

Green-Beckham (13 catches for 139 yards this season) said the Eagles never thought they were going to do a lot of business deep against a stout Vikings defense, but that doesn't mean they won't ever be able to go long.

Matthews said defenses can really sit on the run and on underneath routes if they know you can't hit a longball. He also said Wentz is cognizant of that.

"Carson, he's not gun-shy," Matthews said. "He'll go to the sideline and say, 'Hey, let's run a double-go.' . . . We actually had a long play dialed up, a shot dialed up, on one of the snaps he ended up scrambling out (after a botched snap) and getting to (Darren) Sproles . . . He has that mindset still, and we do, too. We just gotta go do it."

"When we take our chances, which we have here and there, we've gotta execute," Wentz said. "We've gotta execute at a higher level."

@LesBowen

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