July 05, 2019
John David Mercer/USA TODAY Sports
Alshon Jeffery led the Eagles with five drops, which really isn't all that bad.
In 2015 and 2016, one of the biggest issues for the Philadelphia Eagles' lack of success was the play of the wide receivers, specifically, their penchant for dropping catchable passes. They corrected that issue somewhat in the Super Bowl season in 2017, but they still had plenty of room for improvement.
For some reason, as heavily as the NFL is covered from a statistical metric standpoint, there are no reliable sources for drops. While drops are subjective to some degree, the following is a representation of the number of drops by each Eagles player in 2018.
We'll order them by number of drops, but the column to the far right shows the total drop percentage of what we'll refer to as "reasonably catchable passes," or drops divided by (drops plus catches). To be clear, that's not total targets, which I believe are a bad measure of drop percentage, seeing as the receiver often has no chance of catching some of those targets. Got it? No? Yes? Well whatever, here's what I came up with (regular season only):
| Player | Drops | Catches | Drop % of catchable passes |
| Alshon Jeffery | 5 | 65 | 7.1% |
| Zach Ertz | 4 | 116 | 3.3% |
| Nelson Agholor | 3 | 64 | 4.5% |
| Josh Perkins | 3 | 5 | 37.5% |
| Josh Adams | 3 | 7 | 30.0% |
| Wendell Smallwood | 3 | 28 | 9.7% |
| Golden Tate | 3 | 30 | 9.1% |
| Darren Sproles | 2 | 15 | 11.8% |
| Jordan Matthews | 1 | 20 | 4.8% |
| Corey Clement | 1 | 22 | 4.3% |
| Dallas Goedert | 1 | 33 | 2.9% |
| Others with no drops | 0 | 17 | 0.0% |
| TOTAL | 29 | 422 | 6.4% |
The following players with at least one reception had no drops:
The Eagles' drop rate of 6.2 percent in 2018 was a nice improvement over 2017. Here's how 2018 compared with the last two seasons:
| Year | Drops | Catches | Drop % of catchable passes |
| 2016 | 43 | 380 | 10.2% |
| 2017 | 32 | 341 | 8.6% |
| 2018 | 29 | 422 | 6.4% |
The biggest offender, from a total number of drops standpoint, was Alshon Jeffery, with five. Jeffery, of course, playing through broken ribs, also dropped a pass that effectively put the final nail in the coffin on the Eagles' season.
(That drop is not counted in his total tally.)
Still, Jeffery's drop rate of 7.1%, while not ideal, is far from awful. The Eagles' biggest drop rate offenders in previous seasons had far worse drop rates, as noted below (minimum 35 catches):
| Player | Drops | Catches | Drop % of catchable passes |
| Dorial Green-Beckham (2016) | 12 | 36 | 25.0% |
| Torrey Smith (2017) | 7 | 36 | 16.3% |
| Nelson Agholor (2016) | 6 | 36 | 14.3% |
| Nelson Agholor (2017) | 7 | 62 | 10.1% |
| Jordan Matthews (2016) | 8 | 73 | 9.9% |
| Trey Burton (2016) | 4 | 37 | 9.8% |
The players deserving of praise for catching the football in 2018 are Zach Ertz, Dallas Goedert, and Nelson Agholor.
On the negative side, Corey Clement and Jay Ajayi excluded, the Eagles' running backs did a terrible job of catching the football, with Wendell Smallwood's third down drop in the red zone against the Vikings serving as the most costly. Jordan Howard and Miles Sanders have a low bar to clear in improving the Eagles' passing attack from the running back position.
Overall, a drop rate of 6.4 percent is good (though still not great), and their trend of improving in that area bodes well for 2019.
*We updated a previous version of this story that said Goedert had no drops. He did have one that we missed initially.
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