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The Philadelphia Eagles made a minor move on Monday by adding Joe Bachie to the active roster. The 6-foot-2, 231-pounder was a three-year starter at middle linebacker at Michigan State while racking up 285 tackles (27.5 for loss) for one of the nation’s top defenses.
The Eagles poached him off the New Orleans Saints practice squad. He spent 2020 training camp down there after going undrafted. Bachie was considered the heart of the Spartans’ defense, a two-time team captain and All Big-10 selection adept at stuffing the run. He should be a nice fill-in player for an Eagles linebackers unit that saw T.J. Edwards (hamstring) and Davion Taylor (knee) go down on Sunday.
Edwards is expected to be fine but Taylor will most likely miss the rest of the year. Bachie can immediately take over his special-teams role. Here was one scouting report on him, via Pro Football Focus:
Bachie can run stuff with the best of them, but he’s struggled to do much in coverage other than spot drop. He’s not really the profile NFL teams want at linebacker today.
Bachie slipped in the draft due to a suspension stemming from performance-enhancing drugs. He missed his final five games at Michigan State and “retreated from the public eye,” according to the Detroit Free Press. He didn’t want to be a distraction for his teammates. He resurfaced at the NFL Scouting Combine and got back on people’s radar as a future sixth-round pick.
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Heart of Spartans Defense at Michigan State
Bachie twice eclipsed the 100-tackle watermark at Michigan State (100 in 2017, 102 in 2018) and his five forced fumbles rank sixth in program history. He had 12 career games with double-digit tackles and earned first-team All-Big Ten honors as a junior. His coverage skills have been called into question, but never his nose for the football.
“He’s a very active player, he knows what’s going on and you gotta deal with him on a game-to-game basis,” Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio said of Bachie. “I mean, he’s always going to be at the point of attack. And he’s a very tireless worker, he works extremely hard at the mental part of the game as well in terms of understanding our defense and how it fits relative to who we play against.”
Secretive Move to Scout the Saints?
The timing of this move couldn’t be any better (read: planned). The Eagles might be able to get some insider information on their Week 14 opponent. Bachie has been down in New Orleans since training camp and joined their practice squad after being left off the initial 53-man roster.
He had flirted with three teams during the pre-draft process — Saints, Raiders, Rams — and Bachie told New Orleans reporters that he actually grew up cheering for Drew Brees. Now he might have a chance to knock the Saints quarterback to the ground, depending on Brees’ injury status. Taysom Hill might get another start.
“I was kind of always a Saints boy. I liked Drew Brees growing up as a kid,” Bachie said, via CBS Sports. “I checked them out first and it was a great fit for me. Everything they were telling me was the right thing to do … it was a pretty easy choice once we began looking at it.”
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