Eagles Top 25 Best Players Countdown: Pass Rusher Looking To Get Back On Track
PHILADELPHIA – He’s still here and now it is up to him how much longer he will stay.
There was some serious thought, and rightfully so, if Josh Sweat would have made it this far, to the brink of the Eagles reporting to training camp on July 23. He has, and despite a down season for him a year ago, the defensive end remains one of the team’s best players.
Sweat checks in at No. 13 on our top 25 list of best Eagles heading into the season.
The list has become an annual affair of SI.com Eagles writer Ed Kracz and John McMullen as the two reporters submit their top 25 lists at the same time so each would be unaffected by the others. No. 1 on the list is awarded 25 points and so on down the list with No. 25 receiving one point.
Sweat was No. 8 on this list last year, but a season in which he failed to improve his sack total for the first time since entering the league six years ago due to an eight-game drought without one, is a big reason why he slipped to 13.
Nevertheless, big things are being counted on from Sweat, with perhaps an even greater dependency for good things to happen than ever before, after it was determined that Sweat was the one the Eagles would bring back rather than Haason Reddick.
There was lots of talk early in the offseason about which one of the pass rushers would go. The Eagles weren’t going to bring back both. They opted to keep Sweat and trade Reddick – Sweat is younger (27) and relatively cheaper than Reddick.
Sweat doesn’t have four straight seasons of double-digit sacks, so the Eagles might be rolling the dice a bit. He had four straight years of rising sack totals going from zero in 2018 to 4.0 in 2019, 6.0 in 2020, 7.5 in 2021 to 11.0 in 2022.
Sweat stumbled to “just” 6.5 last year. Not a bad total, but they all came in the first half of the year. Then the drought hit.
The Eagles brought him back after renegotiating a three-year extension they had signed him to 2021, with the two parties agreeing to reduce his salary by $6 million this year while Sweat received $9.5M in guaranteed salary, including an $8.375M bonus.
It’s a deal that the Eagles could sweeten in terms of years if he shows he is more the 2022 version than the 2023 edition. They need him to be the 2002 version.
Kracz had Sweat ranked 12th; McMullen had him 15th for a total of 25 points.
The list so far:
No. 25: Kelee Ringo
No. 24 Cooper DeJean
No. 23: Isaiah Rodgers
No. 22: Avonte Maddox
No. 21: Brandon Graham
No. 20: Mekhi Becton
No. 19: Milton Williams
No. 18: Cam Jurgens
No. 17: Devin White
No. 16: Bryce Huff
No. 15: Reed Blankenship
No. 14: Jordan Davis
More NFL: Eagles Top 25 Best Players Countdown: Important and Underrated Defender Lands At No. 14
ED KRACZ
Ed Kracz has been covering the Eagles full-time for over a decade and has written about Philadelphia sports since 1996. He wrote about the Phillies in the 2008 and 2009 World Series, the Flyers in their 2010 Stanely Cup playoff run to the finals, and was in Minnesota when the Eagles secured their first-ever Super Bowl win in 2017. Ed has received multiple writing awards as a sports journalist, including several top-five finishes in the Associated Press Sports Editors awards.