DT Beau Allen will be making his first start of the season on Sunday against the Vikings. It is Allen’s third overall start in three years as an Eagle. Photo by Kyle Nagle / contrastphotography.com

In addition to suffering their second consecutive loss of the still-young season to the Washington Redskins last week, the Eagles most likely lost starting defensive tackle Bennie Logan fore at least one game.

Logan has not practice this week and it looks more and more like third-year tackle Beau Allen will tapped by Pederson to start this week when the Birds (3-2) take on Sam Bradford and the undefeated Minnesota Vikings at the Linc (FOX 1 p.m. 94.1 FM WIP).

At his locker earlier this week, Allen was asked about starting this week and his reaction was that it was no big deal.

“I’ve started games for this team,” Allen said. “So it’s nothing really new. It’s my first start of the season, but not my first start in the NFL, I’m ready.”

Allen started two games in 2015. He has 53 total career tackles and half a sack. Allen was asked the obligatory question: Is he doing anything different to prepare?

“I really, honestly don’t think it changes anything a whole lot,” said Allen, who has seven tackles in five games this season. “Because of the way I prepare on a week-to-week basis. I’ve prepared for this role. I’ve played with all the starters, taken so many reps over the course of camps, preseason and during the season that there’s really nothing new.”

While the defensive tackle situation is important, the elephant in the living room is the return of Bradford.

In case you are just getting back from a mission to Mars, you already know Bradford was enjoying perhaps his best offseason and was preparing to start for an Eagles team that was not hiding the fact it was serious about making a run this season with Bradford.

The Eagles of course had a guy named Carson Wentz sitting on the bench waiting to show why the Eagles went to great lengths to move up in the draft to take the North Dakota State quarterback with the No. 2 overall pick.

You also may remember that the Vikings starting quarterback Teddy Bridgewater. The emerging signal-caller was believed to have the chops to lead a deep, talented team to the playoffs.

Then just as the regular season was coming into view, Bridgewater dislocated his knee in addition to tearing an ACL in a practice drill.

When Bridgewater would be able to return wasn’t measured in months, but years possibly.
Vikings brass was dealt with the challenge of trying to deal with a season it did not want to lose.

So, just eight days before the start of the regular season, Minnesota offered the Eagles first and fourth round picks for Bradford in the hopes of saving their Super Bowl aspirations.

So far so good. Despite also losing their three top offensive tackles and their Hall of Fame running back, Adrian Peterson, for the season, Bradford and an elite defense have helped the Viking carve out a 5-0 record. Bradford the second highest rated quarterback in the NFL and has not thrown an interception.

It was almost too obvious to ask any Eagles defensive player, let alone Allen, what it will be like to square off against

“We’re pretty familiar with this quarterback, I’d say,” Allen said with a Cheshire cat smile. “Obviously he’s playing at a very high level. He’s been really accurate, he’s been really smart with the football, not a lot of turnovers so our goal as a defensive line, as a defense, obviously we want to disrupt that as much as possible.”

Bradford is very familiar with the Eagles defense and conversely the Eagles defensive players have seen Bradford’s tendencies up close and personal.

Allen said they won’t fall into the trap of thinking they know what Bradford will do Sunday.

“There are tendencies every week with every team,” Allen said. “We know him; we know his strengths and weaknesses, obviously from being here. We’re going to attack them (weaknesses).”

Allen said the Eagles locker room has surrendered to the Bradford-Wentz angle that headlines the NFL schedule. You know it’s big when Troy Aikman is working the game for FOX.

“It’s the big story-line for this week, everyone knows it, there’s no point in not addressing it,” Allen said. “He was here, he played against this defense in camp…we’re familiar with him, he’s familiar with us. Obviously there things we can so to combat that, I don’t want to get too far into that but yeah, it’s safe to say we know each other.”

Pederson sounded like he had not worries about Allen’s increased role this week.

“I’ll tell you, Beau honestly was one of the bright spots last week [with] his ability to come off the ball,” Pederson said on Friday. “He’s a bigger body guy that takes up some good space up front and draws a lot of double teams; he and Fletcher [Cox] both in there. He’s a high-energy guy, a high-motor guy that doesn’t seem to tire and wear down. If Bennie can’t go, then obviously his workload will increase extensively in the next few games.”

Allen did address that the Eagles rush defense against Washington was awful. The Birds surrendered 230 yards on the ground from a team that had been ranked near the bottom in rushing.

“Our run defense, obviously there was a lot of problems,” Allen said. “You can say we over pursued and didn’t have good discipline whether you are on the front side on the backside, knowing where the ball was going to be cut back, thinks like that. Those are things we’re going to work on this week in anticipation of the game.”

The defensive line also did not do a good job against Kirk Cousins last week. Cousins went 18 for 34 for 263 yards and two touchdown passes to go with his one interception.

“We didn’t have any sacks last week,” Allen said. “This week we are going to do everything in our power to put as much pressure on the quarterback get him off his spot, disrupt his timing throws and get after him.”

Prediction: The Eagles defense, led by Fletcher Cox, rebounds and Birds send Vikings packing with a 27-24 win.