November 04, 2026
Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports
Philadelphia Eagles general manager Howie Roseman (L) and head coach Nick Sirianni (R) speak with the media at training camp at NovaCare Complex.
The reports came Wednesday afternoon that the Eagles were benching Tanner McKee in favor of Joe Milton, and your first reaction is, finally, the Birds have fully bought into a tank.
Except they haven't.
Oh, trust me, they know they stink. They also know Milton's supreme athleticism might not even improve their chance of winning Sunday against the Giants and beyond than if McKee were still QB1.
But the move to Milton is not an unofficial, unsaid declaration of a tank. That's already happening, whether they want it or not.
The switch to Milton is more simply a grasping at straws, a desperate stab at trying to move the chains on offense just a little better so they can maybe get some kind of understanding of Sean Mannion's ability to call a game, rookie tackle Markel Bell's ability to block, and to hopefully offer an answer for their dormant run game and some relief for a defense that's wilted under the weight of trying to carry the team for eight weeks.
Make no mistake, the Eagles aren't going to suddenly be even a decent team because they're moving on to Milton. That top-10 draft pick, and maybe top 5, isn't going anywhere.
This is all about Milton's ability to make something from nothing with his legs, to attempt to put some stress on defenses that have licked their lips to crowd the line of scrimmage, and then to see if that alone can help open their conventional run game and allow them to better evaluate the play calling and possibly develop some younger talent.
The way things have been going, there was no shot any of that could happen. Not with McKee leading the offense and getting swarmed relentlessly on almost every other dropback.
And that's really not McKee's fault. It's just the sad reality of an Eagles offense that, by any metric, is the worst version of itself in decades.
There's also the harsh reality that all those reasons for going to Milton that can seem rational and valid on the surface actually amount to just another terrible, aimless decision by an organization that's made more than a few of those this season.
Milton hasn't even been an Eagle long enough to tell you where to find a good cheesesteak, let alone understand the playbook better than McKee does.
But, hey, what do the Eagles have to lose at this point?
Their season ended when Jalen Hurts landed on IR – and even before that, they were headed in the wrong direction.
At 6-foot-5, 236 pounds, with a Howitzer right arm and plus speed for his frame, Milton is body beautiful, but that's about the extent of his upside. He spent six seasons in college – at Michigan and Tennessee – before getting picked in the sixth round, 193rd overall, by the Patriots in 2024, then getting traded to Dallas the next season.
He was on Dallas' practice squad to start this season before the Eagles, down Hurts and unable to convince Andy Dalton to return, did the only thing left they could do. They poached Milton from their division rivals one week before they were scheduled to play Dallas on Sunday night.
That they are now about-facing to him after Nick Sirianni directly said Monday that McKee "is our guy" is the perfect example of the rudderless ship the Eagles are riding.
Oh, wait, maybe that was one of those organizational "competitive advantages" the Eagles were hoping to maintain.
What also flies under the radar is that Milton had already been promoted last week to QB2, ahead of rookie fifth-round "quarterback" Cole Payton, who has been with the team since April while Milton has barely had time to take a stroll down Broad Street.
It's a pretty glaring example of how far Payton is from being a pro quarterback – if he ever will be – that he's been usurped by another developmental project who has attempted a grand total of 53 NFL passes.
But the Eagles can't do any worse as an offense, so maybe a few electrifying scampers from Milton and maybe a 70-yard bomb here and there make defenses a little more tentative.
And maybe in this hallucination of a vision the Eagles can run the ball a little more honestly and create some manageable down-and-distance scenarios to see if rookies like Makai Lemon and Eli Stowers can add to the passing game, and to see if the offense can actually execute any of the plays Mannion has drawn up.
It's a shot in the dark, for sure.
But hey, what was the alternative?
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