PITTSBURGH — The Eagles won their first preseason game of 2016 over the Bucs last Thursday, but wins and losses don’t really matter in the preseason.
Sure, teams would rather win than lose, but the more important things are performances from individuals and units.
With that said, here are 10 players to watch Thursday night against the Steelers:
G Isaac Seumalo
The rookie had a rough start to his professional career against the Bucs. Working as the second-team left guard, Seumalo’s performance ranged somewhere between bad to completely lost. Now, it was just his first NFL football game, so there’s an obvious learning curve and that arcane NCAA/NFL rule prevented him from spending the spring with the Eagles, which put him back even further.
There’s no time for a redshirt year for Seumalo, though. With Lane Johnson’s impending suspension, the Eagles have moved Allen Barbre to right tackle and inserted Seumalo in Barbre’s place. He went from lost rookie to starter in a week.
QB Sam Bradford
We’ve heard all offseason about how much further ahead Bradford is this year than last when he was recovering from another ACL surgery. But we didn’t get a chance to see it last Thursday when he played just three snaps and threw one pass. Bradford and the first-team offense are expected to play all of the first quarter and into the second, so we’ll see plenty of him on Thursday.
QB Chase Daniel
You might not want to see anymore of Daniel after last week’s disaster, but with the injury to Carson Wentz, it’s even more important. Like it or not, Daniel is this team’s backup quarterback. So if — when? — Bradford goes down, Daniel will be on the field. It’s time to see if he’s better than his awful play last week.
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G/T Matt Tobin
Tobin has been working with the second team at left tackle throughout camp. He didn’t get moved to right tackle when the news of Johnson’s suspension arose. So he’s still Jason Peters’ backup on the left side, which is notable because Peters is 34 and didn’t hold up last year. At some point this season, we could see a line with Tobin and Barbre as the starting tackles.
WR Nelson Agholor
Agholor hasn’t done much in camp or in the first preseason game to garner much confidence from fans. The team just traded for Dorial Green-Beckham from Tennessee, but he won’t play this week. It’s not hard to figure out why the Eagles made the trade: without Jordan Matthews, this group of receivers leaves plenty to be desired. And it all starts with the first-round pick from a year ago. We keep expecting him to play better; it hasn’t happened yet.
RB Wendell Smallwood
The fifth-round running back missed the last preseason game with a quad injury but returned to practice this week. We’re not sure how much of a workload he’ll have in his first pro game, but we’ll be watching. He seems to have a skill set to eventually be a three-down back in the NFL. He can run and catch. The last thing he really needs to learn to earn playing time is pass protection. That’s the part of his game we’ll be watching against the Steelers.
LB Joe Walker
Walker was a seventh-round pick out of Oregon in April, so maybe there weren’t a ton of expectations for him. He certainly leaped over whatever little expectations there were last Thursday. Working as the backup MIKE linebacker behind Jordan Hicks, Walker made several impressive plays, including a big tackle for loss. What has made the quick study more impressive is that Walker is in a completely different system than he was in college. As Hicks’ backup, he could end up seeing the field this season.
DE Marcus Smith
Smith missed the first preseason game with a concussion and is now in danger of losing his roster spot to Steven Means, who continues to impress. At this point, if one of them were to make the team based on merit alone, it would be Means and it wouldn’t be close. So Smith has some catching up to do. This will be our first look at the former first-round pick in game action in this new aggressive defense.
G/T Allen Barbre
As we’ve mentioned, Barbre will be the team’s right tackle during the impending suspension to Johnson. It’s pretty clear the Eagles thought their best option with Johnson out was to just put their five best linemen on the field. They clearly think Barbre is one of them, and with seemingly more depth at interior guard, here we are.
CB C.J. Smith
Yeah, it’ll be tough for Smith to carve out a spot on the Eagles’ 53-man roster, but if he doesn’t, it’ll be a result of a numbers game, not an indictment of his play. Smith was very good last week, picking off a ball late in the game. If he doesn’t make the 53, and if another team doesn’t scoop him up, he should have a practice squad spot waiting for him.
