Eagles beat writer Sheil Kapadia on the state of the team's tight end corps:

Brent Celek played 69 percent of the snaps last year and finished with 32 catches for 340 yards and a touchdown. Celek was very good as a run blocker, and it's no secret that Chip Kelly thinks the world of him.

Zach Ertz is one of the best receiving options on the team, having finished with 58 grabs for 702 yards. The feeling here is that he was underutilized (50 percent of the snaps) in 2014.

Celek is 30 years old and certainly does not provide the same threat as a receiver that he once did. But it's impossible to overstate how much Kelly loves him. This is still a run-based offense, and Celek is the best blocking tight end on the roster. He carries a $5 million cap hit, which doesn't seem unreasonable. In other words, I don't think he's going anywhere.

Many (including yours truly) thought Ertz would take a bigger chunk out of Celek's snaps last year. Ertz will have to continue to improve his run blocking to earn Kelly's trust. But his role should continue to expand in his third season.

Ertz's run blocking improved dramatically this year, per the grading of the analytics sites. Still, Kapadia's comments about Kelly's affection for Celek do not indicate that the team is ready to give Ertz significantly more playing time. Ertz finished as the #13 TE in standard formats even though he played just 50 percent of his team's snaps.

On Wednesday, head coach Chip Kelly was asked why TE Zach Ertz isn't seeing the same time he was when the season started.

"Brent Celek is doing a hell of a job," Kelly said. "It would be an injustice to tell Brent he has to sit because we want to put someone else in the game."

"He is an outstanding blocker," Kelly said of Celek. "He might be the best blocking tight end in the league. He is a sure handed receiver. You saw against Carolina he had over 100 yards receiving...It doesn't have to do with Zach, it has to do with how well Brent is playing."

Ertz has played 35 percent or fewer snaps in two of the last three weeks. He's the #15 TE on a per game basis, behind Heath Miller, Owen Daniels and Coby Fleener. This hasn't turned out to be the breakout season that most were expecting.

Eagles TE Zach Ertz has started to see his role in the offense slowly decrease each week. The tight end was targeted 10 times in the first two games of the season, and was targeted eight times in the team's loss to the Arizona Cardinals two weeks ago. Since that loss, Ertz has seen the ball come his way just five times in the past two weeks, a lack of action that has the tight end searching for answers.

"I asked them to put me on punt return, just so I could get out on the field," Ertz said. "I thought I did a good job with that."

One issue that could be keeping Ertz off the field is his blocking. His ability to hold his own on the offensive line was a major sticking point for coaches this past training camp. So far this season Ertz has been in on just 102 plays where he is asked to block.

"I don't know to be honest," Ertz said on if blocking was the issue. "I thought I blocked well tonight. I thought I played very well."

The story went on to say that, by comparison, veteran tight end Brent Celek — who caught five catches for 116 yards against Carolina — has been asked to block 266 times this season, meaning at this point, the team trusts Celek to block more than they do Ertz. With the Eagles line getting healthy, it's probably no coincidence Celek was more involved in the passing game in Week 10, something everyone thought would be said of Ertz. Right now, it seems like the team is going with the more versatile Celek who has always been able to block and catch. Whatever the issue is, Ertz seems bothered by it based on his comments in the story. It's going to be tough to trust him in fantasy lineups until we start to see more targets.

With the Eagles off on both Monday and Tuesday this week, Sanchez got together with rookie receiver Jordan Matthews and tight end Zach Ertz for some on-the-field work. The three spent close to an hour on Monday working on routes and getting their timing down.

"Mark texted me saying he was getting in some extra work," Ertz said. "With the injury to Nick, we wanted to get a rapport down (with Sanchez). I didn't play too many snaps against Houston, so I wanted to come back and get back into the rhythm.

For Ertz, getting his timing down with Sanchez is something that will need to be worked on, as the tight end has much more experience catching the ball from the injured Nick Foles.

While Matthews' snaps have been pretty consistent lately, Ertz is having trouble getting on the field and it's showing up in the box score. He played a season-low 29% of the snaps in Week 9 and it led to just two targets and just one catch for four yards.

What is holding Zach Ertz back right now is the same thing that holds back a lot of young tight ends: his blocking ability.

In the Eagles' first four games, Ertz played 64.5 percent of the offensive snaps. In the last two against the Rams and Giants, only 40.9 percent.

Ertz was just a part of the problem with the run game. A much bigger part was the three missing starters up front. But when your offensive line is struggling, other shortcomings become magnified.

Reducing Ertz' snaps wasn't an easy thing to do, given his ability as a pass-catcher. But Chip Kelly thought it was critical to do whatever it took to get McCoy going.

Ertz has a terrific series of matchups down the stretch, but his snaps have dropped from the 60-75% range to the 40-45% range. The Eagles do play up tempo, so there are a lot of snaps to go around. Ertz should stay in the low-end TE1 discussion, but he doesn't have major upside as a part-time player.