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Eagles' Jordan Hicks needs to keep giving people reason to notice him | Mike Sielski

The middle linebacker is a footnote around the NFL for a big hit on Tony Romo. But he’s more than a footnote to a famous quarterback’s career.

Outside Philadelphia, Jordan Hicks is mostly just a footnote, the name buried in another dependent clause in another sentence in another story about the splashiest sports-broadcasting hire of the year. He's the guy who hit Tony Romo in Week 2 of the 2015 NFL season, and that hit broke Romo's collarbone, and that broken collarbone was the first of several injuries that Romo sustained over the 2015 and 2016 seasons, and those injuries limited him to just five games in those two years, and because he played just those five games, NFL teams were hesitant to trade for him. And so Romo retired, and now he's the No. 1 football color analyst at CBS, and, oh, look, there's someone on a sports network screaming about how Romo will be the worst football analyst in the history of either football or analysis, and the regular season doesn't begin for another five months.

Gee, thanks, Jordan.

"Obviously, everybody wants to connect me to Tony," Hicks said Tuesday at the NovaCare Complex, and though that connection may be the reason that people who follow the Eagles only from a distance might know Hicks' name, he spent last season giving them more. He led all NFL linebackers in interceptions, with five, and in passes defended, with 11, and on a defense that still lacks any trustworthy cornerbacks and could use a pass rusher and some depth at linebacker, no player combines promise and reliability as Hicks does. He's just 24. He is good and ought to get better, ought to earn more renown for something beyond a consequential tackle of a famous quarterback.

"With time, it'll come," he said. "I think there's a process to it. You have to get your name out there, and you have to have a good year. But at the end of the day, what my focus is on is the team and making sure we can be as good as we can possibly be."

There's an irony in Hicks' delivering the hit that started Romo's career descent. While he's forced turnovers at a terrific rate since joining the Eagles - 11, seven interceptions and four fumble recoveries, in 24 games - he's not regarded as a particularly fearsome middle linebacker. There is no NFL Films-compiled highlight video on the terror that Hicks inspires in wide receivers or running backs, no compilation of all those moments when he charged through an opening in the line and blindsided a quarterback. It's an everlasting stereotype - the middle linebacker as monster. Ray Lewis ended careers. Mike Singletary had those eyes. Bobby Wagner blows up plays. Hicks has a different rep so far, such as he has one: excellent in coverage, around the ball all the time, smart.

In this way, he would seem to fit the prototype of the kind of middle linebacker every defense needs in the modern NFL. Tight ends have become over time more dynamic, productive, and important to offenses, and to counter that trend, middle linebackers must have the size, speed, and footwork to cover them well. Hicks already has shown he can handle such assignments. In fact, in defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz's scheme, which doesn't ask linebackers to blitz all that often, those assignments are among his primary responsibilities. Those crushing hits and sacks? Hicks isn't put in the position to make such plays all that frequently.

It also didn't help that, after rupturing his left pectoral tendon midway through his rookie season, Hicks had to spend last summer rehabilitating the injury and regaining strength in his upper body. He is 6-foot-2 and was listed last season at 236 pounds, and he said Tuesday that he's roughly the same weight now but is stronger for having a healthy offseason.

"It's huge," he said. "As a linebacker, especially in this defense, it's all taking on blocks and getting off blocks to make a tackle. The defensive line is going to be disruptive, but you're going to have to take on blocks to get into the tackles."

That's the philosophy underpinning Schwartz's system: that the defensive line will cause so much chaos on every snap that there's no need to send Hicks or any other linebackers on seek-and-destroy missions. The plan worked at times last season, Schwartz's first here, and the Eagles will have to hope that Vinny Curry is more consistent, that Tim Jernigan is an upgrade over Bennie Logan at defensive tackle, that their cornerbacks - whoever they might be - are competent.

For all the melodrama surrounding Romo and his future, his retirement doesn't change the fact that the Cowboys will enter this season, rightly, as the presumptive favorite in the NFC East. If the Eagles are to overtake Dallas, their good players have to get better, and Carson Wentz isn't the only one among those players who counts. Hicks does, too. He has to keep making consequential plays, like the one he made in his second NFL game, when he drove Tony Romo into the ground and planted the seed for a sports talk story that never seems to end.

When he heard about Romo's retirement, did he think at all about the hit he had laid on him?

"No," Hicks said, "I didn't."

It was a pretty cold-blooded thing for him to say. It was the thing any good middle linebacker is supposed to say.

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski