Life After A.J.

The long-anticipated trade of A.J. Brown has finally come to fruition, and the Philadelphia Eagles are now moving on with their current core of wideouts.

On the latest episode of “Inside The Birds,” Adam Caplan and Geoff Mosher discussed the current state of the wide receiver room.

GETTY IMAGES: Philadelphia Eagles WR DeVonta Smith takes over the top wideout role with the departure of A.J. Brown.

DeVonta Smith

Adam Caplan: “Smith will dominate targets. It’s going to be Smith and everybody else. It’s going to be a wide receiver group-by-committee. The two things that Smitty does better than A.J. are very clear: better route runner, better hands. You can line him up pretty much everywhere and he wins.”

Geoff Mosher: “He can win from any spot on the field, but for alignment purposes, he is not going to move into the A.J. Brown ‘X’ spot in the old offense and play outside and only run the three main routes Brown would run…Because of his size, you don’t want to have him getting pressed constantly.”

Dontayvion Wicks

Mosher: “He can play that ‘X’ and give you that size. He’s not A.J. Brown, but sometimes when you’re not in your reduced splits or bunch formations, you need an ‘X’ who can get down the field and get off that press coverage and has some body and strength to him. That’s where Wicks plays a role in this offense.”

Caplan: “He knows the West Coast system, (Sean) Mannion wanted him.”

Makai Lemon

Caplan: “Super strong, terrific hands, great route runner, tough as hell. If you line him up on the outside, because he doesn’t run all that well, he’s going to be negated. He’s going to play inside here.”

Hollywood Brown

Mosher: “He is as good as any Eagles No. 3 receiver in a decade.”

Caplan: “He’s going to be their shot play guy.”

– Benjamin Paul is a staff writer for InsideTheBirds.com.