Eagles: Pre-Season Game One Gold Stars And Demerits
By Spike Eskin
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – It's just one game. In fact, it's just one PRE-SEASON game. There's no need to overreact to anything we saw in last night's game against the Steelers, but if we're going to watch it, we might as well talk about what we saw.
Gold Star #1 - Brandon Boykin
Boykin, the rookie cornerback taken by the Eagles in the fourth round of the draft this year, looks like he could be a real asset to the kick return game. After last season, it seems like anything could be an improvement, but Boykin looks like he might have something special.
Gold Star #2 - Nick Foles
There seems to be two schools of thought about rookie QB Nick Foles' performance last night; the first is that he's going to be great, and already deserves the backup spot instead of Mike Kafka. The second is that last night doesn't mean anything. The truth, as it is always, is somewhere in between. I'm not ready to anoint Foles anything, but he looked good, and that's something.
Gold Star #3 - Philip Hunt
There wasn't a ton to be happy about with the defense last night, but Philip Hunt looked great. The fourth year defensive end just looked like he couldn't be blocked. Remember that Jason Babin struggled for years before he had the opportunity to play in Jim Washburn's system. Maybe the same will happen with Hunt.
Demerits #1 - DeMeco Ryans
It's just one game, it's just one pre-season game, but DeMeco Ryans certainly wasn't impressive. Looked maybe a step slow and had trouble getting off of blocks. Definitely not sounding any alarms here, but not throwing any celebrations either.
Demerit #2 - The First Team Offense
It's hard to imagine a team with this many weapons on offense won't score points - a lot of them. But sheesh, if they're going to look that bad, please don't scare me with a Michael Vick injury again.
Demerit #3 - Jaiquawn Jarrett
When the Eagles filled the hole at middle linebacker with DeMeco Ryans, the only one left of note was the safety position. I'd read several positive reports about Jarrett at Lehigh, but I didn't see much of anything positive last night.
