DeVonta Smith reaches 1,000 yards
While the Eagles rested a lot of starters in Week 18, DeVonta Smith got the start for Philadelphia. Forty-four yards away from a 1,000-yard season, Tanner McKee’s first four passes went to Smith, who reeled in three grabs for 52 yards to eclipse the mark.
Smith became the fifth player in Eagles history to record three 1,000+ yard receiving seasons.
“Sometimes it feels like, as him being the coach, he’d be wanting it more than us sometimes, so it’s great when you have a coach like that that’s backing you up to complete those milestones,” Smith said on Sirianni allowing him to decide if he wanted to play or not. “… When he sees guys close to things like that, he wants guys to go for it. For him to allow me the opportunity to do that, I’m grateful for it.”
Said Sirianni: “We were safe with him as far as what kind of routes we were running and what he was doing, and so that was something that we decided to do, and obviously you can’t rest everybody. There were guys that, as far as D-line reps, some of those guys played through the game. We tried to limit their reps a little bit and play them a little bit less than they normally do, but with a position like D-line, those are the circumstances that you have. But, decided to do that so he could go get a thousand, and he came out good.”