Eagles-Bengals snap counts: Nolan Smith is producing while being trusted to play more often

Playing time analysis.

The official snap counts from the Philadelphia Eagles’ Week 8 win over the Cincinnati Bengals are in! Let’s take a look and run through some analysis.

OFFENSE

• Grant Calcaterra played the highest snap count percentage of his career. His 58 receiving yards were his second-most from any game, just behind the 67 he had against the Cleveland Browns a couple weeks ago. Calcaterra is up to 186 yards in seven games this season after only having 120 in his first 30 career games played.
• Offensive line notes: Fred Johnson played the entire game at left tackle and did a great job of holding up against Trey Hendrickson. Cam Jurgens also played the entire game. Landon Dickerson, Tyler Steen, and Lane Johnson were pulled for rest late in the game. Darian Kinnard came in at left guard, Nick Gates came in at right guard, and Jack Driscoll came in at right tackle. Driscoll also logged a snap when Johnson had a brief injury scare earlier in the game.
• DeVonta Smith’s production bounced back after having negative two receiving yards in Week 7. Smitty led the Birds in targets (7), receptions (6), yards (85), and touchdowns (1).
• A.J. Brown had his lowest receiving total of any game this season. He only managed to catch five of his six targets for 84 yards and three first downs. What a bum.
• Saquon Barkley logged his second-highest snap count percentage this season. He had his third-most touches with 23 total. Seven of them came on the Eagles’ penultimate drive as they were aiming to run clock on a long scoring drive.
• Good amount of 12 personnel in this game with Jack Stoll logging 57% of the snaps as the second tight end. That was his third-highest snap count percentage this season. Stoll’s six-yard reception brought him up to two catches for 10 yards in 2024.
• Jahan Dotson played his third-lowest snap count percentage this season. He did not log a target in this game. Dotson’s been targeted once for zero catches in his last two games. He has six grabs for 35 yards in seven games thus far.
• Kenny Gainwell played his second-lowest snap count percentage. He had his second-most touches, though, with five. Gainwell took over for Barkley on the Eagles’ final drive. But he had to come out due to a cleat issue.
• Ainias Smith played eight snaps in his NFL debut. Some of that was garbage time action but not all of it. He did not play any special teams snaps. The Eagles didn’t force a punt, so, it’s unclear if he would’ve been returning punt instead of Cooper DeJean. The feeling here is that the Eagles should not have Smith return since he regularly struggled to catch punts cleanly during offseason practices.
• Smith played more than fellow rookie receiver Johnny Wilson.
• Ben VanSumeren saw more snaps as a fullback late in the game.
• Will Shipley...