PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Bonus: Cole Payton & The Winners and Losers from the Eagles’ Preseason Opener

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

The Eagles opened the preseason with a mostly forgettable loss to the Baltimore Ravens, but the QBs were in focus, from Cole Payton’s spiciness to the uglier stints from Andy Dalton and Tanner McKee. Fran Duffy and Bo Wulf run through three winners and three losers from the evening. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Eagles open their preseason for the 24 to 7 loss. No big deal. Bo Wolf and Fran Duffy here to tell you who were the players you need to know about from their performances in this game. Let's go three up, three down. Fran, I will let you go first. Let's do the ups. You start.

First player you think made a tangible movement on whether it's their chances to play more, to make the roster, whatever it is. Who's your first up? You know, I was going to let you take this player. But since I'm going first, we have to start the conversation with Cole Payton. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the guy that you have to talk about from the offense, the rookie quarterback, day three from North Dakota State, only a one-year starter at a lower level of competition. So it's been a volatile summer. We've seen some highs. We've seen some lows from him, which is to be expected.

But this is a traetcy player, highly athletic with a pretty good arm, good size. And I think he showed some escapeability. He showed a little bit of a playmaking dimension as both a runner-ins and passer in this game. I thought we saw some good things from the rookie from NDSU. I thought so too, obviously. And listen, you get to see the athleticism at play. That final touchdown drive was pretty nice. I mean, he accounted for, I think, 79 yards of offense. And that doesn't even include 20 yards scrambling that were called back for penalties.

The touchdown throw was nice. He had sort of baited the defense into coming to expect his legs and then, you know, pulls the, you know, chair out from under them and throws the touchdown packs to Eric, as Okanma, he's, yeah, he's going to put the ball in harm's way a little bit right now. But if you're talking about a player who you drafted to be a developmental third quarterback, he's got the extra athleticism ability for a quarterback that you want to bring along. And I think, you know, he threw a couple good balls tonight. I think it was a good night for Colpagin after what we've seen this summer.

I'll go next with a player who, I think, you know, had a not great rookie here, a bit of a disappointment and started camp slow. And I think we were wondering if he was truly on the roster bubble or not. And that is Ty Robinson, the defensive tackle last year's fourth round pick out of Nebraska, had a sack in this game on a pretty nifty pass rush move against Emery Jones, I believe, who was a third round pick of the Ravens last year. I had a couple other really nice pass rush reps that he put together. Maybe got a little bit tired as the game went on and they had to play a bunch of snaps,

but he's not going to be expected to play a bunch of snaps if he makes this Eagles roster. If you're talking about someone, you know, can he spell you with six to ten pass rush reps a game? Just, you know, so Jalen Carter doesn't have to play 85% of the snaps. Can he be a part of that rotation? Ty Robinson has been slowly improving by my eyes over the course of the summer. It was nice to see him really flash on this stage early in the game

playing against, you know, the top level of the Ravens playing in this game. Yeah, I thought that that was. It was really good to be able to see some signs of life from Ty Robinson after, you know, a very quiet rookie season and a quiet start to camp. But even over the last couple of practices, you're starting to see, you know, him pop up in our notebooks a little bit more often, a little bit more frequently. So I think it's definitely been an arrow up situation for him over the last week and change here in Eaglesland. I'm going to stay at that position with my second pick here, an undrafted rookie free agent, Zion Wilson. Now who is that? Well, here's the thing. Zion Wilson began his career three years at ECU as an offensive lineman was a backup.

Never, or as a, as an offensive line backup never played athletic kid. They said, you know what, let's try and make you make a move over to the defensive line. He made it halfway through the season a couple of years ago. So only played as a starter last year for the first time at ECU and was productive. It was an all AAC performer there for the pirates. He was like, you know what, I'm going to go back for another year of eligibility, take advantage. here, go back and he transferred, went to Virginia Tech. He's like, yep, I'm going to play here in 2026 for Virginia Tech, but his eligibility waiver

was denied by the NCAA. And so he had to then enter the NFL. It was after the draft. So the Eagles signed him. It was in like mid-June, late June, you know, going into July. And so, you know, this is a guy that was a late arrival, but he's looking, they don't really have a lot of defensive tackles built his way. He's a little, he's short arm.

He's a little bit thicker. He's not necessarily like the same position, versatile type of. a player you think of like more ojimo you know that type of swing or you know game hall he's not quite that level of physical presence but uh i'll tell you what he popped in the game tonight so i'm excited to see what he continues to look like here the rest of the summer listen at 6 3 316 i don't think he's 6 3 but i agree with you Zion Wilson i thought i thought looked intriguing tonight i'll give another little quick shout to another undrafted player dionte lawson the linebacker from alabama i thought he looked good too but that's too many for three up three down

Let's move to the down. I will start, I just, I will, since you started with the quarterbacks, I will start with the other two quarterbacks as a package deal here. Tanner McKee, Andy Dalton, neither of them looked great. The offense, you know, I think they had like a combined one first down between the two of them. Dalton, three of six for 20 yards. Tanner McKee, six of 10 for 35 yards. They both missed a couple throws.

Dalton did have one pass dropped by Darius Cooper. But, you know, the operation was sloppy. they were pre-snap penalties going on. Neither guy looked super sharp. I don't think it really matters because the Eagles aren't going to evaluate Andy Dalton given, you know, the entire history of his NFL career.

He's around with the Eagles because of that depth and breadth of knowledge, but he didn't look great. And Tanner McKee, you know, it seems like his ascension has plateaued a little bit. He has not taken to our eyes, another little leap. And so if the Eagles were hoping that one of these two guys was going to grab this job

and be like, I am your backup quarterback, it just hasn't happened yet. We'll see what the next week brings. Yeah, I think everybody around this team would have liked to see a little bit more efficiency from this entire offense. Didn't get a first down until well into this football game. It was a host of three-in-outs to get things rolling here. So hopefully next week in New England after a couple of joint practices and you get into the game, you see a little bit more from the second and third team offense with both McKee and

Dalton at the helm. It'll be interesting to see who was able to get the most out of that group and it performs best with them instead. Now, for me, I want to position this is not a stock down, but it's more just like a hmm, Darius Cooper playing late into the game. It was interesting. Interesting. He did have a drop in the game as well.

So it's not like, oh, like he played well late in the game. Like, you know, he had a drop on third down, a ball he should have caught. mildly interesting just given the fact that he has had a pretty good summer for all intense purposes and you saw dontavian wicks inactive uh so it's like all right like you feel pretty good about what wicks has given you we probably would have put him in that same tier to the eagles not see him that way did he say like hey like i want to get as many reps as possible like i that that might be you know you could kind of explain away some of those things but uh i would find it interesting the fact that we saw dari's cooper so late into this football game i think so too um and then i will for the last down i'm going to once again go with a group and not just one person. And that is basically the entire backup secondary, which I think we thought of as kind of a strength. And one night does not disprove that. But, you know, when Joe Fagnano, the undrafted quarterback from Yukon,

goes 22 of 28 for 224 yards and a touchdown and also an interception, that's not great. And, you know, when you've got Michael Carter fighting for a starting job, at safety. He gets to start. You know, Keeley Ringo gets a start, had a rough night other than the interception. Mac McWilliams, got a lot of playing time starting a nickel and then playing on the outside, gave up a, you know, a handful of passes. I would have thought that that group, given the expectations, might have performed a little bit better. Now, you know, everybody in Baltimore is talking about what a camp Jacobi Lane has had, and he did look pretty good. They've also got

Elijah Sarat, who looks pretty good, although Sean Wade did make him fumble. I just thought that Eagle's secondary group, I know they're playing vanilla coverages. It's not the most important thing in the world, but I was a little bit underwhelmed with that group. Yeah, I honestly, I had that same group written down. So if we had gone inverse, I would have dropped them as the final one here. I think that you probably were hoping for a little bit more, especially given the fact that you're kind of playing, you know, high school versions of these coverages and just kind of, you know, trying to out-execute the opponent. But I'm not going to make too, too much of it. I'm interested to see the film and see what that looks like.

Yes, and worth noting that Marcus Epps, unlike Michael Carter, did not play in this game. Eagles holding him out, it seems like he's got a good shot to win that safety job next to Drew McCuba. All right, that's Fran Duffy. I'm Bo Wolf. We've got you covered always on the Eagles on PHOI along with EJ Smith. Let us know who you thought moved the needle one way or another after the Eagles preseason opener. They've got the New England Patriots on deck. Joint practices this week.

We've got you covered.