PHILADELPHIA — Millions of kids grow up dreaming of playing in the NFL. None of those kids grow up dreaming of playing special teams in the NFL. But then, in his athletic career, Zech McPhearson already has gotten accustomed to adjusting.
When he enrolled in Penn State in 2016, he hoped to play cornerback on the football team and center field on the baseball team, having starred in both sports, at both positions, at Riverdale Baptist School in Upper Marlboro, Md. “That’s what I committed for,” he said. Only James Franklin, Penn State’s head coach, oh-so gently suggested that he tweak that plan.
“My first summer there, I was at practice,” McPhearson, who is one of the Eagles’ backup cornerbacks and who might be the best special-teams player in the NFL this season, said Thursday afternoon at the NovaCare Complex. “And Coach Franklin came up and was like, ‘Hey, we see a lot of talent in you. We think you should be focused on football. If you do this this year and maintain this grade-point average, we’ll let you play baseball the following year.’ You know how that goes.”
It went like this: McPhearson never did play an inning for the Nittany Lions’ baseball team, but he was a talented enough cornerback that — after two years at Penn State and two more at Texas Tech as a graduate transfer — the Eagles picked him in the fourth round of the 2021 draft. And that baseball background, he said, has helped make him the greatest strength of a unit that otherwise has been the greatest weakness of the NFL’s only unbeaten team.
Why? Because a multisport athlete is a versatile athlete, and few positions, if any, on a football team require a player to be as versatile as McPhearson has to be, and has been, as a gunner on special teams. He had to be tough enough last Thursday to fight through the Texans’ Tremon Smith, charge down the field to cover an Arryn Siposs punt, and take down returner Desmond King for a 2-yard loss.
“That was a heck of a play,” said Michael Clay, the Eagles’ special-teams coordinator.
Two weeks ago, against the Steelers, McPhearson had to have the peripheral awareness and the leaping ability to fling himself forward — without having his toes touch the goal line — to bat a Siposs punt out of the end zone and allow the Eagles to down it inside the 5-yard line. In the season opener in Detroit, he had to have soft enough hands to catch a Lions onside kick and assure the Eagles of a two-point victory.
Siposs has been inconsistent, and Britain Covey has been shaky and less-than-dynamic as a returner. So those plays by McPhearson are important to counteract those deficiencies, and they pile up, and they’re not easy to pull off. A good special-teams player has to be relentless without being reckless, mindful without being passive.
“It’s extremely hard,” McPhearson said. “A lot of people overlook that part of the game, but I would say us being athletes, that kind of sums it up. It is kind of vague, but some of that stuff, you really can’t explain. You’ve been doing it your whole life and you get out there, and it’s like you get on the field and you’ve got a feel for the game from doing it your whole life.
“Baseball is a lot of hand-eye coordination: hitting, catching the ball in the outfield. This is the same thing. When I was diving for that play in the end zone, I kept my eyes on the ball, didn’t move them one bit, tapped it in with two hands. I had a feeling that I was on the 1, and close to the goal line. I had to jump to get my feet there. It’s not that I saw it. I just knew. It’s very, very weird.”
That’s a good word for McPhearson’s, or any other player’s, excellence on special teams: weird.
Weird because McPhearson was just like all those other kids who grew up dreaming of playing in the NFL in that an excellent special-teams performer wasn’t something he’d ever aspired to be. He wanted to be a starting cornerback. Still does. But he had friends and acquaintances who already were in the league telling him, Special teams is a big part of the game, and if you want to stick around, you’ve really got to take it seriously. And when he arrived for training camp last year with the Eagles and saw that Darius Slay and Steven Nelson would be the starting corners, he knew he’d have to find another reason for the coaches to keep him on the roster.
So he gets in at cornerback when defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon needs him, which, this season, hasn’t been often. McPhearson has played 72 defensive snaps and 155 special-teams snaps this season. Is he living his dream? No. So?
“I don’t ever get down on myself about it,” he said. “I just try to think about the moment. When I’ve got to go out at corner, I’m going to execute to my fullest.”
It has been an adjustment. No biggie for Zech McPhearson. Besides, you still can get to the Pro Bowl from the place nobody really wants to be.
