Taking the Next Step
DeVonta Smith has already accomplished plenty in his career as a Philadelphia Eagle, but this season he is expected to elevate his game even further.
The Eagles are running a completely new offense as they seek to return to the top tier of Super Bowl contenders in 2026. And for the first time since his rookie season, DeVonta Smith is expected to shoulder the load the Eagles initially projected for him, back when they traded up to 10th overall in the 2021 NFL Draft, to nab the Heisman Trophy winner from Alabama.
A 10th overall draft pick is supposed to be a focal point, a captain, a star. Smith hasn’t exactly been sitting around idle these past five seasons—he is the all-time franchise playoff receiving yards leader, with 665. Overall, he has 385 catches for 5,019 yards and 31 touchdowns, very good numbers. Smith has been dependable and steady, missing only five games in those five seasons, despite carrying only 170 pounds on a 6-foot frame.
But Smith has never been voted into the Pro Bowl. And when ESPN polled NFL personnel people on the league’s top 10 wide receivers this offseason, Smith’s name did not appear. Not even in the “honorable mention” group. He was in the third grouping, “also receiving votes.” Pro Football Focus ranked Smith’s 2025 season 28th among 81 qualified wideouts.
This status, most Eagles fans would agree, does not accurately reflect the performance and abilities of the player known as “The Slim Reaper.” It reflects at least two other things—the Eagles’ stale, misfiring offense in a disappointing 11-6 season in 2025, which ended in an upset wild card playoff loss to the 49ers, and the presence from 2022 until this offseason of top-tier superstar wideout A.J. Brown.
That home playoff loss, a year after the Eagles’ Super Bowl LIX victory, signaled huge change was inevitable for a struggling offensive attack. Too often, zone defenses seemed to shut down the Eagles’ passing game, and unlike 2024, the running game wasn’t potent enough to make up the difference.
“It is what it is,” Smith glumly told reporters in the moments after the team failed in its bid to get back to the Super Bowl. “It’s been the same thing—we go out there and we don’t execute, and then when we do something good, we shoot ourselves in the foot” with penalties.
Brown, even after the disappointing season, even after he forced a trade to the New England Patriots, still ranked 10th in the ESPN poll. He is just that physically dominant. There are a lot of really good wideouts in the NFL, but nobody can outmuscle a defender and rip down a key reception the way Brown can, when properly motivated.
It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that Smith became a No. 2 receiver when the Eagles traded for Brown in 2022, but he certainly took a step back in the offensive hierarchy. Then they both had to defer to Saquon Barkley during the 2,005-rushing-yard, Super Bowl-winning season in 2024, a situation Smith handled better than Brown.
Smith won’t ever be a chiseled 6-1, 226, as Brown is, but we can be pretty sure he will never conclude, as Brown did, that winning the Super Bowl isn’t all that great if you aren’t the focus of the offense.
This feels like a watershed year for Smith, who turns 28 in November. The Brown trade made him the only wide receiver of pedigree in the Eagles’ stable. On June 13, Smith married Mya Danielle, his girlfriend since middle school and the mother of his two daughters. They live in South Jersey.
The Eagle under the most pressure this season probably is quarterback Jalen Hurts, who in the system of new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion must embrace things he has not excelled at—like working under center and throwing over the middle. Second on that “pressure” list, though, might be Smith.
The Eagles tried to lessen Smith’s burden (and Hurts’) by drafting USC wide receiver Makai Lemon in the first round in April. But Lemon battled hamstring problems throughout the spring and summer. The Eagles drafted a second-round tight end, Eli Stowers, for his passing game potential, but Stowers also has battled injury and seems unlikely to be of much help right away. Smith—who also missed training camp time with a hamstring injury—seems even more critical to the offense’s success now than when training camp started.
Smith said during camp that he thinks the new, post-A.J. wideout room is experienced and versatile, having added veteran role players such as Dontayvion Wicks, Elijah Moore and Marquise “Hollywood” Brown.
“Everybody can do everything,” he said. “I think that’s the great thing about this group. [The focus is] just getting everybody up to speed. Everybody has their growing pains.”
Smith’s relationship with Hurts is a plus. The two have been close since they were teenagers at Alabama. Their personalities are similar—serious, workmanlike, quiet.
“It’s a blessing,” Smith said back on the night the Eagles drafted him. “Jalen, that’s my guy.”
As they prepared for this new venture, Hurts was asked how he viewed Smith’s development since Smith’s arrival, a year after the quarterback. Hurts noted that Smith, even in college, was often overshadowed, despite highlight-film exploits. He could have declared for the 2020 draft, but opted to stay at Alabama when fellow Crimson Tide stars left—the team placed seven players in the first two rounds that year, including wideouts Henry Ruggs III, 12th overall to the Raiders, and Jerry Jeudy, 15th overall to Denver. Smith has been a much better pro than Jeudy; Ruggs is in prison after being convicted of felony DUI causing death in 2021.
“Smooth. He’s always been very polished. I take a flashback into my time at Alabama, when all those guys declared for the draft. He didn’t. So he was kind of always the one who’s taken a back seat a little bit,” Hurts said. “But I know he’s always had that hunger. His resume, what he’s been able to accomplish ... speaks for itself. Being a Heisman Trophy winner. Being a champion at every level. Knowing what it takes to win. Those are things that I cherish and value.
“I also know that he’s been very diligent in his work, throughout this whole journey, ever since I’ve known him, since I was 17. He’s worked really hard. He’s been intentional.”
Eagles coach Nick Sirianni has said he is confident in the potential for continued growth from Smith, even as he enters his sixth season. “You continue to see him on the rise,” Sirianni said.
Even if Brown and Barkley have been the featured players over the past few seasons, Smith has put his mark on the field. Is there a more iconic moment from Super Bowl LIX than “the dagger,” the 46-yard bomb from Hurts to Smith that gave the Eagles a 34-0 third-quarter lead over the Kansas City Chiefs?
Smith lobbied on the sideline for that play to be called, even though he’d been bothered all week by a hamstring pull. Smith was playing in the New Orleans Superdome, in front of friends and family from his hometown of Amite, a little more than an hour’s drive away. They’d seen him lose a high school championship game on that field. He wanted to provide a better memory.
“I just kind of came out of the tunnel and it kind of hit me. I guess it was just the feeling of being back home,” Smith later reflected. “My grandfather doesn’t come up [to Philadelphia] for games, so him being able to see me in the NFL, the biggest game there is, and him just being him there, think that kind of set in with me. … That hit me harder than winning it overall, just doing it in front of my family.”
The Eagles got the ball after a fourth-down stop, two minutes, 47 seconds remaining in the third quarter. In audio later released by the NFL, Sirianni told then-offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, “If we score, it’s over. Just call it.”
Sirianni was correct. There have been some great Super Bowl comebacks, but none from 34-0 in the final minutes of the third quarter.
When the Eagles’ 40-22 victory was complete, Smith celebrated amidst the piles of confetti with his wife and elder daughter.
Earlier this year, he spoke with The Athletic about his pride in being a “girl dad” and being content he does not have a son. He said being the son of a famous athlete is “a blueprint that you have to follow, and I didn’t want him to have all that pressure.”
Smith’s daughters will have a different upbringing than the one DeVonta experienced in Amite. His mom, Christine Smith-Sylve, was a social worker who was often called upon to remove children from troubled situations. His dad, Kelvin Dickerson, was and is involved in DeVonta’s life, but he did not live with the family.
DeVonta has said that seeing the dysfunction his mother dealt with in her work made him want to stay away from trouble growing up, to not cause her any further angst. His daughters have a dad who prioritizes getting to the practice facility early so he can get his work done and be home in the evening, to focus on his family.
“I don’t have all the answers to being a father, but I think I do a pretty good job of being one,” Smith told The Athletic. “I’m doing things the right way.”
If Hurts and Smith do things the right way in the new offense, and they and the offensive line stay healthy, there would seem to be little reason why the Eagles can’t realistically challenge for their fourth Super Bowl berth in a decade.
Vic Fangio’s defense seems loaded, though the top offseason acquisition, edge rusher Jonathan Greenard, missed training camp with a pec strain. But Jalyx Hunt, the 2024 third-round pick who started to emerge as a force last year, seems ready to dominate. And the defensive tackle position is so strong and deep, the edge might not have to be extraordinary. The bottom line there is that since Fangio arrived two seasons ago, the Eagles are giving up 21.4 points per game—the NFL’s fifth-best figure during that time frame.
It sure seems that the question marks are Hurts in the new offense, and Smith as his No. 1 passing game weapon. Smith is being asked to emerge from Brown’s shadow, and that shapes up as a formidable task. When the Eagles held joint practices with the Patriots, and Smith returned to practice after his hamstring injury, one of the questions he was asked was what it was like for him to watch Brown work against the Eagles defense. The units worked on separate fields, the Pats offense and Eagles defense on one, Eagles offense and Pats defense on the other.
“I didn’t see none of it,” Smith said. “I was on the offensive field.”
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Published and copyrighted in South Jersey Magazine, Volume 23, Issue 6 (September 2026)
Published and copyrighted in South Jersey Magazine, Volume 23, Issue 6 (September 2026)
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