Handing out Eagles awards for the 2020 season
It's time to look back and hand out awards from the Eagles' 2020 season. By Dave Zangaro
That season didn’t go according to plan.
The Eagles sputtered their way to a 4-11-1 record in 2020 and ended up with the No. 6 pick in the 2021 draft.
There’s no sugarcoating it: That was a terrible season. The Eagles finished in last place of a historically bad division. Their only wins came over Nick Mullens, Daniel Jones, Ben DiNucci and Tayson Hill.
Let’s get to some awards:
Sure, Graham’s sack pace slowed down in the second half of the season but he still ended up with 8 sacks, 46 tackles, 16 QB hits, 2 forced fumbles and a fumble recovery. He started all 16 games and finally made his first Pro Bowl in Year 11. It’s also hard to overstate how much his leadership and positivity meant to the Eagles during a very trying season.
There were a few bad snaps throughout the season. No one’s perfect. But Kelce, who turned 33 during the season, still played at an extremely high level. Despite an elbow injury that had him in a giant brace for half the season, Kelce missed just four snaps all year. On an offensive line that was constantly in chaos because of mounting injuries, Kelce was the glue that held it all together. It’s hard to think about how bad the Eagles would have been without him.
Ho hum, another dominant season from one of the greatest Eagles ever. Cox earned his sixth straight Pro Bowl nod with 6 1/2 sacks, 41 tackles, 9 TFL and 10 QB hits. If you ever needed an example of how important he is to the Eagles’ defense, we all saw what happened against the Cowboys in Week 16, when he left the game with a neck injury after just seven snaps. He’s key to the entire defense.
Singleton made the jump from the CFL last year and worked his way to the active roster. This year, he began the season on the 53, but didn’t become a starter until Oct. 18. Singleton ended up starting the final 11 games of the season and led the Eagles in tackles by a wide margin with 120. He was a tackling machine and also had 2 sacks, 5 TFLs and a pick-6. The Eagles might have found something in Singleton.
Even if you weren’t a Wentz fan before 2020, you wouldn’t have said he was a bad quarterback. He didn’t live up to his 2017 level the last two years but he was still very good. To see him collapse the way he did this season was hard to watch and it probably goes beyond disappointing.
Hurts started the last four games of the season and had his ups and downs but showed off some of the qualities that could make him a special player. In four games as a starter, he threw five touchdowns and three interceptions but also ran for 272 yards and three more scores. If we project his stats in those four games over a full season, Hurts would have thrown for 3,676 yards and rushed for 1,088. But he also completed just 52% of his passes and clearly needs work. Still, he did enough in four games to win this award over first-round pick Jalen Reagor.
Wallace played the most of the defensive rookies. Shaun Bradley was in the mix but Wallace was on the field more than him and even made three starts this year. Wallace got thrown into the fire early in the season facing George Kittle and the 49ers but he played fairly well the last quarter of the season.
This guy didn’t know what American football was a few years ago and now most people are projecting him to be the Week 1 starter in 2021 at left tackle. Mailata ended up starting 10 games and played at a very high level, which is a testament to the work put in by Jeff Stoutland and by Mailata himself. Remember, the Eagles scrambled to move Jason Peters to left tackle before the season and Mailata ended up being much, much better.
Hurts wasn’t perfect in this game but he gave a spark and the Eagles took down a really good team, even if Hill was the starting quarterback. The Eagles won the game 24-21 but were up 24-14 before a late touchdown from the Saints. The Eagles put up 413 yards of offense in that game and it looked like they were turning things around in time to go on a little run.
There were plenty to choose from during the season but losing 37-17 to your biggest rival in a game where you know if you win you’ll control your own destiny is a gut-punch. The Eagles went into that game decimated by injuries and it showed. They gave up over 500 yards of offense and managed just 17 points. There were other games in the running but this loss really put an exclamation point on a miserable season.
