Chip Kelly, Eagles, Versatility or Something Like That

On Monday morning, I made an offer. The first person to chip in $100 for the Eagles Almanac kickstarter got to name his or her post here on the IgglesBlog. 

Twitter-er @Thunder_Lips -- who probably isn't actually Hulk Hogan -- is your winner. And since he's such a nice guy, despite not really knowing what he wanted me to write about and in the face of a number of truly ludicrous suggestions, he actually picked the headline you see there at the top.

Which is nice, because it's kind of something I've been thinking about anyway. To the post ...

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Let’s get this out of the way first – all coaches want players who are versatile. Why settle for tight ends who can only block or linebackers who can only plug gaps if the other option is 22 players who can do it all?

The answer, obviously, is that you’ll never have a perfect roster. Even good teams have holes. You just hope the greatness of Brian Dawkins can help cover up some of the limitations of Chris Gocong.

So when we say “Chip Kelly wants versatile players,” we’re not really saying anything about him that isn’t true for every other coach in the league.

Having said all that, I think there’s still something to this idea that Andy Reid and Chip Kelly come at versatility in different ways.

You could either describe Andy Reid by saying he liked having a wide range of weapons with which to attack a defense or you could criticize him by saying he wasted too many draft picks and roster spots on a bunch of one-dimensional cat toys. It’s pretty much the same thing.

At the individual level, the challenge with many of these guys is that they weren’t versatile. When MacJax get hurt, third-down specialist Jason Avant has been basically useless outside. Speedy little Ryan Moats combined Danny Watkin’s blitz awareness with DeSean’s physicality. Human sledgehammer Tony Hunt … ah, forget it.

You could even make the case that something similar happened on the other side of the ball. Asante was a ball-hawking machine, just don’t ask him to tackle anyone. Jason Babin rushed the passer secure in the knowledge that every apparent handoff was actually a well-disguised play action pass.

On the other hand, if we elevate the level of analysis from individual to team, this weird collection of misfit toys actually does start to look versatile. All these different players could – if put in the right positions – make plays. Fast guys did their jobs, big guys did theirs, and as long as our coaches stayed one step ahead of the other side’s, the results could look pretty good.

At the roster level, what we see here is a form of additive versatility. You have a base offense, onto which can be added new “fastballs” that provide additional capabilities and new types of plays.

So that’s Andy.

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This is the point where we have to paste in the boilerplate about how we don’t really know anything about what Chip’s going to do this year since we haven’t seen even a sliver of training camp, much less a game. However, the guy’s been an object of fascination among the smarter football commentariat for years, we have hours of Oregon game film to sift through online, and as much as he hates giving anything away during his sessions with the media, I still believe in the virtues of close textual analysis. So.

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Chip seems like he has a different approach to Andy’s. And it’s one that springs logically from everything else he does. So let’s talk about that first.

It goes too far to suggest Kelly’s approach to football is primal. He coaches violence, builds his offense around a power running attack, and recruits/drafts for size and physicality, but there’s also a mathematical elegance to what he tries to do. He needs the size and violence so that his six guys can beat the crap out of your six guys – but it’s the math that gets him to six on six rather than six on ohshityourbackjustgotcreamed.

What’s weird, too, is that on a surface level his schemes look gadget-y. You’ve got option football, running quarterbacks, wide receivers taking handoffs, and on and on. But all of those things are just window dressing. The basic, underlying plays are simple and straightforward.

And that starts to get into the differences between the old coach and the new one. Andy Reid wanted you to bring that safety down and heck, go ahead and blitz, because if you do that, you might get us once or twice, but otherwise we’re going to block up and light your ass up on the back end.

Chip Kelly would rather see those safeties stay back all day. Go ahead, take away the deep ball, because if you do that, he’s going to split out three receivers, make you play with six in the box, and repeatedly pound the ball at you.

Hey, that’s great that you took away the sideline route. Good job!

Here’s another inside run to chew on. Thunk.

When Reid’s offense didn’t work, it was usually for one of two reasons. Either the pressure was overwhelming his offensive line – giving the QB no time to hit those big plays – or the defense was playing sound, “contain-y” football and his guys just couldn’t execute the short/mid-range game consistently enough to sustain drives.

Chip will have his own challenges to solve – number one being that no one’s going to give him a six-man box to whale away at for more than a couple of plays before they change things up. (At the NFL level, every team has enough speed to do more than sit back and hope.)

It’s this realization, I believe, that’s driving Chip’s desire for versatility. He doesn’t need guys who can add “bonus plays” to his regular offense – he needs guys who can force the defense to let him run his regular offense, even when that’s the last thing the defense wants to do.

So that’s the beauty of a guy like (Rice alum) James Casey (who went to Rice). When you have someone who can play all over the field (as he did at Rice), you can put the defense in a bind. If they stay big – by keeping three or four linebackers on the field – spread ‘em out and run the quick passing / WR screen game. If they go small to take that away, just run over them.

Note also that what Chip really wants – as far as we can tell – is for the defense to go small and spread out. That’s why H-backs are better than tight ends and fullbacks are pointless. Don’t block the box!

Shifting gears, I also think this same philosophy helps to explain Chip’s preferences on defense, as well.

[Standard boilerplate again.]

What we do know, however, is that Chip’s expressed preference is for a 3-4. He said it had something to do with special teams performance – a point examined and debunked by Jimmy Kempski – but I think the truth is that he just prefers the versatility. When you present a balanced front, you’re not leaning one way when the defense wants to go the other. And exchanging that fourth bigger/slower guy for a fourth almost-as-big/faster guy makes it easier to counter any of the crazy stuff the offense might be planning.

The same ability on offense to make you commit and then do the opposite is exactly what he wants to avoid with his balanced, versatile defense. 

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A few more quick topics, since I’m only 90 minutes into a five-hour flight and I no longer have to worry about saving some stuff for tomorrow.

Number one: The Eagles needed Lane Johnson and they need a great offensive line. This entire offense seems to be about having enough guys to block all their guys (Chip’s job) and then your guys actually blocking all their guys (their job). The offensive line has to be the best unit on the field if that’s going to work.

Furthermore, the Eagles last year were absolutely horrendous against the blitz. I don’t have the stats handy (airplane), but there were entire quarters if not games where the offense simply crumbled under all the pressure applied to Vick and Foles.

Things are not going to change on the defensive side this season. Our opponents can’t sit back and die a death of a thousand cuts, nor can they passively show us eight-man run fronts and watch as Vick goes bombs away over their heads.

They’re gonna come – a lot – and if our guys can’t stop them, it will be like last year all over again, just with different guys getting crushed in the backfield. Chip can take some pressure off everyone with a quick passing game that gets the ball outside before the rush arrives, but even there, it’s not like we have ideal, tackle-breaking receivers to pull that off.

Pray for good health for the big dudes.

Number two: Don’t sleep on DeSean. Assuming the line can stem the blitz tide, someone’s going to need to make everyone pay for overloading to stop the run.

If DeSean can be DeSean when everyone on the defense knows that job number one is taking him away and living with everything else, then I’m pretty much expecting him to be DESEAN once the imperative shifts to defending the run.

We also know that it’s going to be tough for the Eagles to use the QB to hold a defender out of the run game the way Chip so often did at Oregon. There will certainly be some forms or run/pass option trickery (imagine Foles starting the handoff, seeing the end crash down the line, and then yanking the ball back to chuck it outside), but by far the easiest way to deal with that extra defender in the box is to force him out of there before the play even begins.

DeSean is key.

Number three: We’re finally back to a coherent scheme. The last couple seasons the Eagles have been running Frankenstein-ian schemes on both sides of the ball. Two years ago they ditched Juan Castillo’s offensive line techniques to graft on Howard Mudd’s zone scheme (and boy are we glad they did given that we’re now implementing … Kelly’s zone scheme). On defense, they foisted the wide nine on a group of coaches who had never dealt with it before, then tried to bolt on some coverage competence in the form of Todd Bowles.

What we experienced with both those systems is that when they worked, they really worked. You can see why other people ran them elsewhere.

But when they didn’t work, our coaches were surprised, confused and struggled to catch up. In the red zone in particular we became exactly the kind of “play offense” Kelly warned against in one of his famous coaching clinics.

We may not know everything about Kelly’s system, but one thing we do know is that it’s going to fit together. He knows his moves, he knows your countermoves, and he knows the counters to your counters. He also knows exactly how to teach the techniques needed to run it.

It also helps that Kelly hasn’t been running the same thing for 13 straight years against the same opponents six to eight times a season. Have to figure just being goofy-footed is going to be worth at least one win this year.

Of our 10.

 

No, You Build *Around* Brandon Graham

As we move into free agency and the draft, a lot of assumptions are being made about the kind of scheme the Eagles are going to run on defense next year.  Assumptions that aren't really supportable if we go back and look at Chip Kelly's introductory press conference:

That's one of the things about Billy's background is his versatility because he's coached in both. What direction we end up ultimately heading in, I like the 3-4 better...

One of the things that really attracted me to Billy was his versatility and being able to coach in both systems...  And that's what I wanted in a coordinator, is a coordinator with versatility. Then it's our job as coaches to figure out what is the best scheme for the guys we have in place.

Everybody has a wish list of how they want to do things and what they want to do. But everything we do offensively, defensively, and special teams wise will be driven by personnel.

...

We won't have a really good understanding of our guys until we get to that first camp in April ... So we've got time, and I think we've got versatility in our coaching staff, and I think we have some versatility in our roster.

...

What we're going to do is put our guys in the best position for them to make plays. I don't know if that's being a 3-4 team, a 4-3 team, a 5-2, a 6-1 team...

We're also not caught up in that. It's about making sure we play sound defense on first, second and third down. We could look drastically different on first and second downs than third downs. And that's going to be entirely personnel driven for us. Could it be a 4-3 under defense? Yeah, or it could be a 3-4 under defense.

I'm not caught up with labels...

The message here seems pretty clear:

• In the long run, Chip Kelly would prefer to run a 3-4 (for a number of reasons, including an interesting point about improved special teams from carrying more linebackers and fewer linemen).
• In the short run, he's going to structure the defense to fit the personnel, not the other way around.
• One of the reasons he hired Billy Davis is because he's comfortable coaching a mix of 3-4 / 4-3 / hybrid-whatever, so he can help carry everyone through this transition period.

I could make an argument that Chip Kelly's background as a college coach is driving his thought process here.  When you're in an environment where you're losing six to eight starters every year and aren't recruiting at an Alabama level, you're going to have to be flexible with adapting what you do to the players you have.

On the other hand, Bill Belichick never coached at the college level and this is also what he does.  There's more than one path.

So let's talk about Brandon Graham.

There's been a fair amount of Graham talk lately.  Does he fit as a 3-4 OLB? Would it make sense to move him for someone who might fit better?  Why do we even care about Graham anyway since he's a bust and we should have taken JPP?

All of these things are wrong.*  Let's work backwards.

On a per-snap basis, Brandon Graham was strikingly productive in 2012.  Pro Football Focus offers a "signature stat" it calls "pass-rushing productivity" that mashes together sacks, hits and hurries -- with a weighting factor for each piece -- and then controls for the number of attempts a player gets.^  I don't actually like the stat much, but it's hard to argue with it at least in directional terms.

Brandon Graham led the league in PFR in 2012.

Obviously there are ways to argue with that stat.  He was a part-time player who didn't become a starter until late in the year.  Maybe he was only effective because he got the bulk of his chances when he was fresh and everyone else was tired. 

Nope:

You can slice those stats by use periods (little early, some in the middle, lots late) or pre/post-departure of Babin.  The numbers are, allowing for small sample sizes, consistent.

You get similar results looking at his rush defense stats.  He had tackles on 12.7 percent of run plays as a backup and 12.5 percent as a starter (again, PFF stats).  Overall, Graham was in the top three in tackles, tackles+sacks, and stops per snap among all defensive ends.  

Let's flip sites as a sanity check and head to AdvancedNFLStats.  Trent Cole got 75 percent more snaps than Graham, but the two came out almost even in terms of EPA+, WPA+ and EPA+/game.  

Sort that table by EPA/game and look at the top of that table.  Then consider this per-pass rush comparison:

No, I'm not saying that.  But there's something going on here.

There are plenty of coaches -- even some good ones -- who would look at Brandon Graham and see a square peg that won't fit a round hole.

Chip Kelly's gonna re-cut that damn hole. 

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*Maybe not the part about how we should have taken JPP.  

^Actual formula is sacks + hits * 0.75 + pressures * 0.75.

Howie's Master Plan

To our lasting regret, no one ever wrote the book on Andy Reid.  

It's not that no one ever tried to write a book about the Andy Reid Eagles. I'm sure it was pitched dozens of times.  Clearly, no one ever got a yes.

We can only guess as to why, but I'll always blame it on the Super Bowl.* A book on Reid would have given a fuller picture of the man beneath the moustache, under the hat, behind the podium.  That would have been problematic for Reid, because at some point in the book, we'd have seen him happy.  And happy was one thing the fans never wanted to see Andy be.

Not without a Super Bowl.

From where we stand right now, it looks like the story of the Andy Reid Eagles just ended.  And I guess it did.  But we're starting to get some hints that maybe the new story:  a) didn't start with Chip Kelly and b) quietly began at least a couple seasons ago.

I confess that I don't quite know what to make of Howie Roseman.  Joe Banner was easy to figure out in comparison.  A strange and complex blend, for sure, but the components weren't too hard to suss out.

Howie's a little trickier, especially because the longest and most in-depth pieces we've read about him have been almost entirely based on anonymous third-party assessments from people who have a vested interest in making him look bad -- either in general terms or because the knife Howie used to stab them in the back is preserved in amber and hanging on a wall in an office near the lovely campus of Baldwin Wallace.  

That's a lot of noise to wade through in search of a signal.  But I keep getting this tingly sense that there's a lot more going on with Howie than we really understand.  

Today's tingle comes from the pair of stories about Tom Gamble's long road back to Philly (Inky version, DN version, and yay no more MFN games from the Eagles' FO).  Gamble was a big hire for the Eagles.  Not, you know, the biggest of 2013, but a really big deal nonetheless.  He fills a major hole in the organization and even if he doesn't bring any positive acquisitions to the table, he'll save us years of grief just by waving us off deadweight like Demetress Bell, Nnamdi Asomugha and OJ's Atogwe's opportunity cost.

The big news in the story is that Howie tried to hire Gamble a year ago.^ Think about that for a moment.  A year ago Howie wasn't in charge.  It was still Reid's team.  The owner put everyone on notice:  one more losing season and big changes are in store.

And yet Howie was out there recruiting a guy who -- on paper -- is much more qualified to be an NFL GM than he is.  

In practice, Gamble should be Howie's Mornhinweg.  A guy who's so good at his job his boss can go off and worry about everything else, knowing he's got that part covered.

In effect, though, it's a lot more like Head Coach Marty Mornhinweg hiring Offensive Coordinator Andy Reid.

I'm still skeptical about Howie in some ways.  I think he's gotten taken in some recent negotiations.  I have a hard time writing off the 2010-2011 drafts as Not His Fault At All.  And boy, has he made some enemies.  

But I think the new consigliere might just be one of the most interesting people in the NFL right now.

Sure would be nice if someone would write that book.

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* We can add this to the list of things lost that night in Jacksonville, along with Donovan ever getting the career credit he deserves and maybe even Dawk's Canton chances.

^ Which explains a lot and should go a long way in assuaging fears about why the 49ers let him go right now.

Why Vick Makes Sense

This is a really fun time to be an Eagles fan, if only because after years of run-pass ratio, red zone performance and we're-really-hiring-whom? all the current arguments are New! and Fresh! and Exciting!

Official IgglesBlog beat writer (it's a lifetime award) Les Bowen gave his take on the Vick vs. Foles debate this morning.  Read it if you haven't, but suffice it to say, he's ready to move on.

In truth, I'm ready to move on, too.  I respect the hell out of Vick as a player -- he's one guy you'll never see give up on the football field, unlike so many of his recent teammates -- but he's old and busted and I'm ready for the new hotness.

The problem is that there's no obvious new hotness available.  And boy does that suck.  After years of a crumbling marriage that's finally -- finally! -- over, we're the still-plenty-good-looking woman who walks into a singles bar ready to take advantage of her newfound freedom only to run smack dab into a motley assortment of bitter old retreads or skeevy-looking cougar hunters.

And now we'll run as far away from that analogy as possible.

Chip Kelly and Howie Roseman are facing two different optimization problems.  The first is right in front of them:  How to win games in 2013.  Big issue.  But maybe not as big as the other problem, which is how to win lots of games in 2014-?? and hopefully maybe even a trophy.

There are places on the roster where these two areas aren't in conflict, mostly regarding talented youngsters like Cox, Kendricks, etc.  Snce they'll be around for awhile, we plug them into hopefully good roles and then just keep developing them.

But there are lots of other areas where that isn't the case.  Defensive scheme, for example.  What's our long-term plan?  Are we trying to move to a pure 3-4 -- but we have all these expensive DEs for now so we need to figure out how to get some value from them even as we start phasing them out -- or are we comfortable running some sort of hybrid over the long-term where a guy like Brandon Graham could mostly play like a DE most of the time even if we call him something else?

And then the big one.  Quarterback.  There are lots of different ways to run a hurry-up spread offense.  It can look like RGIII or it can look like Tom Brady. Would Kelly be fine running the a pass-heavy, immobile QB version for the long-term?  Or is he committed to his read option running attack that requires a quarterback who can, at the very least, keep defenses honest.

Which brings us back to the short-term vs. long-term deal.  If he's somewhat scheme-agnostic -- just give him a QB and he'll figure out how to use him -- there could be a place for Nick Foles.  We know he played in an offense in college that did a lot of the things Kelly says he likes to do (spread everyone out, get the ball out quickly, for the love of God don't take sacks). On the other hand, Foles will never be able to "keep defenses honest" with his legs.

So, if Kelly isn't scheme-agnostic ... if he really believes in the run-based version of his offense, then it's probably the wrong choice to go back to Foles this year even if you believe he gives this team a better chance to win games in 2013.  You'd be spending an entire season NOT practicing the things you care about and NOT getting the rest of the offense ready for the long-term simply because you can't do the things with Foles that you want to do going forward.

If this is what Kelly's thinking, then Vick is the right move, as much as people may not be happy to see it.  Vick can do the run-spread.  He's a veteran, professional quarterback who can hold things together during what will be a learning experience for everyone, then you swap him out at some future point when you finally have the guy you're ready to commit to over the long-term.

(Especially if you can re-jigger his contract to pay him less money and get him entirely off the books when he's gone a year from now.)

Some thoughts on the Eagles franchise -- past, present and future

If the Eagles win a bunch of games next year, it's going to be by accident.

"I think to be really successful in this league, you've got to be able to have the freedom to make short-term plans, mid-term plans and long-term plans and if you feel like you're under the gun where you're going to be given two years ... you're not going to get the best coaching. So, when a coach comes to the Philadelphia Eagles ... he knows he's going to have the owner's support to both plan in the short run, plan in the midterm and have long-term strategy as well."

-- Jeff Lurie announcing Reid's departure

They're not bringing back Vick to see if his old legs can lead them on one more run.  They're not hiring Jon Gruden to wring very bit of talent out of this roster using all his quick fix tricks.  And they're not reaching for a guy like Geno Smith unless they're 100 percent certain he's their franchise quarterback.

They're starting over.

* * * 

I realize I'm going to sound like every ex-coach announcer ever when I say this, but too many of the Reid retrospectives I've read in the past few days have given short shrift to what he accomplished in the first half of his time here.

Andy Reid -- to his lasting dismay -- never won a Super Bowl.  But I would argue that what he accomplished was statistically indistinguishable from winning a Super Bowl.

The amount of enjoyment we got out of watching those teams was remarkable.  I've never been more crushed as a sports fan than I was after those games against Tampa Bay or Carolina, but I've also never been happier -- as a sports fan -- than I was during that era as a whole.

Reid has always had his detractors, but I think too many of his fans are hand-waving away the magic that was the run from 1999-2004, either out of defensiveness or bitterness regarding what we've seen since.

* * *

The alternate universe where Andy Reid took a year-long sabbatical after what happened at training camp and then the entire team "missed his leadership and strategic acumen so much that they crashed all the way to 4-12" is quite a thinker.

* * *

The historical revisionism surrounding Jim Johnson is getting annoying. Johnson was an incredible coach and won his share of games for this team, but so did Reid, McNabb, Dawkins, Westbrook, Trotter, Vincent/Taylor and all the rest.

Laying it all at the feet of Johnson repeats the same error Lurie talked about in his presser.  It takes an organization to raise a trophy.  You're never just one guy away.

Give Johnson his due, but he didn't carry Reid.  All those guys picked each other up.

Now, none of them do.

* * *

Speaking of all those old guys, this old depth chart is work a look.

How many 2012 Eagles are starting on that team?  I'll give you Mathis and Celek on offense, and Cole and Ryans (sorry, Trot) on defense.  Cox could have played, but Johnson hated starting rookies.

There's some work to do here.

* * *

It's weird how much expectations matter, even after the fact.  The Iverson/Brown Sixers are perhaps my second-favorite team/era, and I have no regrets about their long climb to the Finals that ended just short of a trophy.  They "shouldn't" have won one more game than they did.

* * *

This does nothing to discourage my pet theory that the Eagles are laying the groundwork to shift to a 3-4 going forward.

* * *

I have less angst about Roseman now that we understand he won't be Joe Banner.  In fact, there will never be another Joe Banner, because Jeff Lurie has become Joe Banner on all the things we care about -- long-term vision, sticking to a plan, facilitating inefficiency exploiting strategies -- and has carved off for other people all the other things we don't care about.

I'm also reading Lurie to be saying, look, it wasn't just the 2012 draft. Roseman really hated Watkins and was completely overruled.  He may even have been the lone voice arguing against Vick.  Or when Castillo happened he begged Lurie to stop it and he should have listened.

We'll never really know what's happened, but Howie's had plenty of opportunities to oppose terrible decisions the past few years.

* * *

On what gives him confidence that general manager Howie Roseman is the right fit at general manager moving forward: "A lot of the analysis of what we have here has taken place over the last 12 months. It's not been reported properly because the information hasn't been communicated properly ... The mistakes that were made in the 2011 draft have little or nothing to do with Howie's evaluations and I think it was important for me to own up to the mistakes that were made and understand where they were coming from and it was awfully clear. So, an effort was made to streamline the entire operation and, as it turned out and it was nothing I could easily communicate to all of you ..."

Look, I've made my share of jokes here, but at the end of the day, PR people are at the mercy of senior decision makers.  The problems the Eagles have with communications have nothing to do with a taciturn head coach or tactical choices regarding the wording of official statements.  They need a mindset shift.

The Banner Plan, which granted MFN status to one key beat writer in an attempt at message control, blew up spectacularly this year when Joe left town, but continued feeding self-serving scuttlebutt to his old contact.

In his presser, Lurie seemed spectacularly displeased about that craven display of disloyalty those stories represented -- and really, the outcome where your divorce is only the second most contentious split of the year is truly mind-boggling -- but the most important point here isn't "Joe Banner is self-evidently a jerk no matter how many poor kids he helps."

The Eagles have the opportunity to push the reset button in a lot of ways the next couple months.  How they communicate through a) the media and b) their own channels is something to work on.

Juan Castillo, I Apologize

I never thought you were a good choice for the job of defensive coordinator.  I came back here just to talk about all the things I hated about your defense, last year's version and especially this year's, once they gave us the all-22 and we could actually see everything that was happening.

I said many, many unkind things about the adjustments your opponents made and the ones you didn't.  Offline and among friends, I may even have been less circumspect in calling you, say, an unqualified dolt.

I still don't think you were a particularly good defensive coordinator.

But holy $#@! were you better than Todd Bowles.

What Can Bowles Change?

Any prediction about the changes Todd Bowles might make to the Eagles' schemes needs to start with an honest assessment of the team's performance so far and some educated guesses about what Castillo had been trying to do.

As any number of people have pointed out, the Eagles' defense has actually been pretty good this year -- most of the time and in most situations. Looking back over the entirety of Juan's tenure, a non-exhaustive list of specific concerns would include:

1.  Missed assignments.  We haven't talked much about it this year, but this was a problem in 2011, both up front (gaps) and in the secondary (blown and freelanced coverages).  I'm including it here because it pertains to the later discussion.

2.  Nnamdi's vanishing wheels.  This town blows awfully hot and cold on Nnamdi these days.  He gives up a couple big completions and he's a bum; then he does a great job on Megatron (with lots and lots of help) and hey look, "he's figured it out again."  He is, in both cases, the same guy -- an exceptionally skilled cornerback without much catch-up speed left.

3.  Two rookies in prominent roles.  Boykin and Kendricks have boatloads of talent, but they're both inexperienced.  This has shown up most often when they're challenged in zone.

4.  Sub-par play from the WIL spot.  Not to pick on just one guy, but on an individual level there aren't too many weak links.

5.  Castillo's inexperience as a playcaller.  It's been reported a couple different places this week that Bowles has already had some involvement in the playcalling this year.  My standing theory since the first game has been that he's called the coverages while Castillo was making the calls up front. Such a system comes with inherent compromises.

Watching the Lions game one last time, I was struck by the contrast between their wide nine and our wide nine.  The base defenses are awfully similar up front, but Detroit showed far more variety and aggressiveness over the course of the game.

In fact, my initial plan for this post was to highlight some similar formations/plays from the two offenses, then to show how much more creative Detroit was in attacking them up front.  But as I was working on that, I got a pretty healthy reminder of the power of recency bias.  Looking back at games earlier in the season, Castillo actually had been more creative up front.  Unfortunately, some of that stuff didn't work and I think we can best understand the current (pre-Bowles) state of the defense as a reaction to that.

After the jump, less jabbering, more pictures.

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It -- Lions Non-Video Rewind

Todd Bowles in his first press conference as Eagles defensive coordinator:

On how he thinks CB Nnamdi Asomugha can best be utilized: "He’s a corner. He’s best utilized mixing man and zone coverages, as we have been doing. There aren’t too many things as a corner that you can or can’t do. You can’t go into a game and say, ‘We are going to lock him down the whole game.’ If you play 75 snaps of man coverage you’re going to get beat three. If you play all zone coverage, you’re going to get beat. We have to continue to mix it up and make sure that the game plan is conducive, not only for him, but also the other 10 guys."

Nnamdi Asomugha after the Eagles blew a fourth-quarter lead to the Lions:

"The fourth quarter was a lot of blitzing," Asomugha said. "So, the fourth quarter, they were able to find the matchups they wanted amidst the blitzing. You could say, 'You should blitz more,' but we did that and it didn't help us in the end..."

"We kind of just mixed it up," he said. "I was on him most of the game. I think when we got to the fourth quarter, there was a lot more trying to give him a different look. We talked about, 'Let's give him something else,' so that he doesn't get comfortable with the one guy or however it is. So we just wanted to give him a different look. So there were some times that Dominique, especially in the fourth quarter, would go to him. But it wasn't something in particular."

Nnamdi Asomugha an anonymous source talking to Bob Grotz after the Castillo firing:

Interim Eagles defensive coordinator Todd Bowles has been heavily involved in game plans and almost certainly was calling the coverages during games an NFL source said. 

The fourth quarter change in the Eagles' coverage of Lions receiver Calvin Johnson had someone else's fingerprints on it per the source.

The Eagles were doubling Johnson with cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha and a safety until varying the coverage with other defenders. While Asomugha was puzzled by the shift in tactics, head coach Andy Reid denied the coverage changed significantly.

Let's look at every passing play in the Lions game and see why those statements carry so much meaning.

We Don't Adjust. We Just Work Harder. Steelers Non-Video Rewind.

In the first half of last Sunday's game, the Steelers ran a wide open, shotgun-based passing attack.  In the second half, that changed dramatically:

The change of philosophy was evident on the very first series in the third quarter, when the Steelers came out in power, tight formations.  Here's the first play:

Why They Called What They Did

Today was Thursday aka coordinator press conference day aka defend last week's gameplan day.  To mark the occasion, let's talk more about playcalling.

And yes, there will be pictures.  But some blah blah first.

One of the things that drives me nuts is post facto analysis that doesn't consider what the coaches might have been thinking before their meticulously crafted game plan blew up all over their faces.  It's just X didn't work, so clearly NotX was the better choice.

There's a place for this sort of thing during the game -- RUN THE %$#@ING BALL ANDY -- but after we've had a couple days to sort through everything and take a more dispassionate look, it's time to dig a bit deeper.

Starting with the offense, one of the ways in which Marty and his critics* disagree is the definition of the word "work."  When we say, "Dude, whatever you were trying to do last game, that stuff didn't work at all," we mean "You scored six points."

That's not Marty's definition.  Marty watches the film and sees plays where receivers were open but didn't get the ball, either because Vick didn't see them or was running for his life.  Or plays where the receiver would have been open if he'd run the right route.  Or screen passes that would have worked if his running back would just forget about the right joystick for once.

My issue with this line of thinking is that execution is not an exogenous variable.  Vick missed guys because he was under pressure all day.  The line struggled picking up seven rushers who had zero concern about the run game.  Rookie receivers always make more mistakes the more chances you give them.

And no, we don't really "hope they blitz."

But enough about the offense, let's talk about Todd Bowles and Juan Castillo, two guys who have been much maligned for their choice of coverages against Larry Fitzgerald, even though he ended up being about the only guy who did anything.  And they only gave up 17 points, playing with an offense that thinks ball security has something to do with a kevlar athletic supporter.

After watching the all-22 a couple times and from what we've seen so far this season, I think Bowles and Castillo had three issues coming into this game, two of which they knew about, one they didn't.

The first known problem was Brandon Boykin.  He's too good.  

Remember all the way back in August we were still talking about "Nickel Nnamdi":

That project is apparently on the fast-track, as Juan Castillo seems to be full-steam ahead with his plan to use Asomugha in a variety of ways. That means Marsh – or whoever wins the job — gets thrust into an important role.

“That’s our plan right now – we put [Marsh] in a lot of different packages just so we can try to take advantage of matchups,” said Asomugha. “The more he progresses, the more we’ll be able to do.”

The Eagles still see value in putting him in the interior. There’s even a name for the package – the “Nickel Nnam” – where Asomugha slides inside and Marsh gets the call on the outside.

“I approach it as being a starter because I have to come in and play with the first team in certain situations, so I have to be just as prepared as somebody that’s out there all the time,” said Marsh.

-- Tim McManus, Birds 24/7

So much for that.  Boykin was so good so early that the coaches seem to have decided they're going to run with him as the #3 cornerback no matter what.  Having said that, they don't seem all that fired up about letting him play outside.  

Some evidence for that viewpoint in a Castillo non-answer from today's presser:

On whether there is still an option for an alignment with Asomugha on the inside and CB Curtis Marsh on the outside: “Well, again, it depends on the down, whether it’s first or second down. Sometimes in base, when you’re going against their two backs, two receivers and tight end, if the two receivers are on the same side, you may see the two corners and you may see (CB) Dominique (Rodgers-Cromartie) inside, or Dominique outside and Nnamdi inside. Same thing as when they play two tight ends and one back and two receivers; usually, our corners go over and match up with their wide receivers.”

Evidently the coaches think the dropoff from Boykin to Marsh is so big that it's not worth playing the situational game where one guy is Mr. Inside and one is Mr. Outside.  That was issue #1.

The second challenge had to do with the type of team we are and the type of quarterback Kevin Kolb is.  When we've looked our best this year on defense, it's been playing a man underneath look with two deep safeties watching everyone's backs.  Unfortunately, when you're game planning for the Cardinals, that's almost the last thing you want to do.  

The shortest distance between two points is generally pretty wide open, which means against Captain Checkdown, there's not much point in just sitting those two safeties back there.  They're kind of wasted, and by the way, wouldn't it be nice to use at least one extra man on Larry Fitzgerald?  

The Cardinals also run a lot of short, crossing crap, so really you want to flood the short zones and make Kolb look for something downfield, all with your pass rush bearing down on him.

So, issue #1, we want to play Boykin and we need to keep him inside. Issue #2, we like to play 2-man, but that's a bad fit for Arizona and ideally we'd rather not just let them tee off on Boykin inside all day once they figure out what we're doing. 

Which brings us to the game plan we actually used -- lots of zone and combo coverages -- and then issue #3 ... which is that it turns out some of these guys kinda struggle with zone and combo coverages.

As Bobby April might say, here's how we paid our tuition on that one.

Why Did Nothing Work -- Cards Non-Video Rewind

I've watched this game backwards and forwards and the best I can figure is that the ineptitude was fully a team effort.  Read the below and draw your own conclusions.  For some of these you'll want to click to zoom in.  You also may want to have the gamebook open in another tab to keep track of where we are.

The Trickiest Play They Ran All Day Was A One-Yard Run

In 2011, the Eagles were a very good short-yardage rushing team.  They converted 67 percent of their "power" situations as defined by Football Outsiders:

Power Success: Percentage of runs on third or fourth down, two yards or less to go, that achieved a first down or touchdown. Also includes runs on first-and-goal or second-and-goal from the two-yard line or closer. 

Which was good enough for a sixth-place ranking, even though they were the worst team in the league in percentage of runs stuffed in all situations.

That was one Jason Peters ago, however, and based on what we saw on one play Sunday, I'm thinking Marty's not feeling quite as confident about the smashmouth approach this year.

Here's the set-up, Eagles are at first and goal on the one yard line.  Goal line package in, with a fullback, two tight ends, and an extra lineman (Demetress Bell at RT, pushing Herremans to the edge so he can be eligible to catch another touchdown pass).  

You'll recall this is the play where Vick got tackled right after he made the snap.  That happened because the Eagles are running an inside trap and the DT shot through to beat the block.  Here's the blocking on that part:

Pretty straightforward.  It's a little odd that Bell is the one executing the trap block, since he has to come over two gaps and Watkins is reaching for his man anyway, but that's not remotely the weirdest thing about this play.  Here's the next piece:

So even though Mathis is staring right at Ray Lewis, he's not going to block him.  He's instead headed inside for the other backer.  Still not that weird.

Ok, now it's weird.  Rather than Harbor and Dunlap sealing off their men on the backside of the play, they're both going to race to the edge like we're running an outside zone play.  Hmm, so we only have one fullback, which guy will he choose to block?

That's right, neither of them.  Havili and Vick are going to follow Harbor and Dunlap outside (in the alternate universe where Vick doesn't get tackled right away).

So if you're scoring at home, we're running at interior run play where we're going to miss the trap on the DT and leave the DE and Hall of Fame LB standing in the hole unblocked.  Note for now Lewis' position.  He has one foot in line with the G.

Right after the snap:

Everyone's moving the way we drew up.  Knowing the run is headed in the direction of those red circles, it all looks kind of doomed, doesn't it?  Check it out from the side:

But look what happens next:

Havili running wide side to the wide side manages to hold the DE for a beat and also starts to pull Lewis out of his gap.  Before he had just one foot on the G, now it's his whole body.  

At the handoff, Lewis is still moving that way, and what looked doomed before now looks like a hole even Tony Hunt could run through.

Because it's always fun watching Ray Lewis miss a tackle:

I truly hate NFL.com's approach to video highlights, but this is one where it's worth dealing with the annoying ads and clunky interface to watch it again. They even give an end zone replay at the end.

Lesson learned: why block one guy with your fullback when you can trick two into following him?

In Praise of Analytical Humility

Professional football is a tremendously complicated endeavor.  On any given play, there's stuff happening all over the field that even the most gifted coaches can't take in all at once.  That's the reason teams do so much film study and why coaches after a loss will sometimes truthfully answer, "I'm not sure what happened there; we'll check it out when we watch the tape."

When I'm doing a video rewind, there's a reason I use the words "I think" or "it looks like" a lot.  Without knowing for sure the actual play call -- what was supposed to happen -- we're left guessing the coach's intention by what actually occurred.

Sometimes this isn't too hard to do.  Yesterday Sheil wrote about two great, lead-preserving plays by Brandon Boykin.  All credit in the world to Boykin for execution, but we also need to credit Todd Bowles whoever's calling the coverages for some fantastic guesswork as well.

Here's the pre-snap alignment on the first play, where Boldin ran the 15-yard out from the right slot:

And the second play, where Jones went deep from the same spot:

Identical offensive formations, very similar defensive alignments.  The one change is Boykin, who's well off the receiver in the second pic, or as some would say, "Juan Castillo isn't allowing him to play press."

But we can see immediate differences after the snap.  Again, first play:

Tight coverages across the front of the defense, Ryans moving forward at the snap to pick up the running back, safeties dropping into deep halves.  This is man under cover two defense.  In contrast on the second play:

Notice that for some players, it looks like the same defense.  Kendricks and Nnamdi are both in tight coverage on the TE and outside WR, respectively.  But look at the other guys.  Boykin is running as fast as he can backwards.  Allen is within the hashes this time.  And DRC is already coming off his man up top to pick up the leaking running back.  This is a classic cover three zone defense, with Boyking coming out of the slot to be the third deep guy.

Back to the first play.  Boykin can play aggressively on the out route, because he knows he has safety help over top:

Whereas on the second play he "is" the safety:

And as you can see at the time of the throw, that ball had no chance.  Great play by Boykin to break it up, but great call by Bowles someone to have him back there.

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So those are two examples of where we can probably figure out what they were doing, if we watch the play enough times to take it all in.  But here's one where we it's a bit tougher.  Pre-snap alignment down by the goal line:

We run an awful lot of man coverage this year, and at the snap that at least looks like what Nnamdi's in again.  Maybe we give him safety help, maybe we don't, but he's clearly locked up.

Oops, so much for that idea.  As his man cuts inside, Nnamdi lets him go and drops deep.  Looks like we're doing quarters coverage in the back and three across underneath -- maybe.  If we are, then Ryans needs to come off the tight end (?) and pick up the crosser.  Unfortunately, he doesn't and we get this:

Easy completion results.  

Now, I watched the play a few times, so if I had to guess, this one is on Ryans.  But it's possible Coleman was suppoed to invert with Nnamdi and he forgot and ended up in the wrong place.  Without knowing the call, we know nothing for sure, other than that it wasn't "Nnamdi's man" who caught the pass.

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I feel bad saying something unkind about Ryans, because he's playing so well, so let's close with one more play that's better for him.

To cut the suspense, I'll say upfront I don't know what this coverage is.  I think it's a cover four, with Nnamdi and DRC dropping to quarters, but it's also possible that it's zone on the close side and man up top.  If I had to guess, I'd say cover four.  Pre-snap:

I drew up the routes at the bottom since that's where the action is.  Up top it's outside guy run off, TE and slot run outs underneath him.  Beginning of routes:

DeMeco is locked up on his man while DRC is playing off.  Flacco's looking right at DRC's receiver:

Damn those non-press coverages that give up the easy crossing routes. Except wait:

DeMeco comes off his receiver (passing him to the safety) and jumps DRC's.  Flacco has to pull it down, and if you zoom in on the photo you'll see that was fatal, because T. Cole is about to swoop in from the blind side.  Just a great play all around, and an indication of why we don't just run the same thing over and over.

Browns Non-Video Rewind

So yeah, I'm obviously not going to get left out on the single greatest advancement in fan football watching since at least high-definition and quite possibly instant replay.

I'm not saying I'll do this every week, but at the very least I'll probably throw something up on Twitter every now and then, so follow there if you can put up with a 20:1 ratio of snarky comments to x's and o's.  

Lots of photos after the jump.

What If Michael Vick Were Tiger Woods?

I can't find a link now, but I remember a story from a couple years ago in which Tiger Woods explained that he was a much better golfer than he used to be when he was younger.  His competitors no longer watched him in awe on the driving range and he wasn't winning multiple majors each year, but he had so many more shots, you see.  He could hit it high or low, cut or draw it at any angle, and basically do a bunch of things he hadn't mastered back when the only way he knew how to win was to bomb the ball down the middle of the fairway and tuck iron shots within tap-in distance of the pin.

I was reminded of that article during a recent Eagles broadcast, when the announcers told us how Marty Mornhinweg explained to them that Vick was actually a much better quarterback in 2011 than he had been in 2010.  He had a much better understanding of the offense and felt far more comfortable with everything they were asking him to do, he just needed to improve his execution.

Even after factoring in the usual level of coachspeak BS, this is an astonishing statement.  Mike Vick didn't come close to reaching the heights of 2010 last year.  He spent much of the season looking befuddled and out of sorts.  Everyone talks about how reckless he is, but the truth is that many of the biggest hits came because of tentativeness.  After the defenses had a summer to scout the New Vick and figure out what looks gave him trouble, he wasn't sure what he was seeing, didn't trust himself to let it go, and got punished for hanging on to the ball too long.

For comparison, it's worth reading a few things Tiger's old swing coach said earlier this year about him:

"For me, and I think we saw this at the Masters, he looks like he's playing 'golf- swing' and not golf," [Butch] Harmon said. "In my opinion, he's very robotic. And you could see that at Augusta with all his practice swings and the double-cross shots when he's trying to fade it and he hooks it. I think everyone thought because he won at Bay Hill that he was back; well, he didn't hit it great at Bay Hill, he hit it OK. And Bay Hill's not a major."

Earlier, he told me, "When I had him, I'm more of a natural-type teacher, I like to keep what you do naturally and just try to improve on it. I like to let you be creative, which he was good at." There comes a point where swing changes, no matter how sound and well-intended, can become counterproductive. "Under pressure," Harmon said, "which swing am I using? What am I thinking? What are my eyes seeing? There's too much more that goes into it than just the actual swing. He's changed so many times he may have confused himself.

Put Vick's name in there, swap out the golf language with some footballese, and that sounds like an accurate diagnosis of what we've seen from Vick in the past year or so.  He's not playing football, he's thinking it, which is something of a problem when you're talking about the most gifted, natural athlete to ever play the quarterback position.

Vick has said before that he wishes Andy Reid had gotten to him sooner. Everyone does.  When Vick was at his best in 2010, he ran the Reid offense -- for a short period of time -- better than anyone we've ever seen.  

But you can't change history.  Right now, we have Vick the 32-year-old, not Vick the 23-year-old.  He's never going to play the game the way Peyton Manning plays it and -- here's the kicker -- the more they try to push him in that direction the more it seems to screw him up.  It turns out, you don't get all the good stuff Vick gives you plus 30 percent or 50 percent of Peyton. You get a discombobulated mess that leaves otherwise sane individuals asking if, you know, maybe it's time to give Nick Foles a shot.

You can't have good quarterbacking without good decision making, but there's no rule about where those decisions have to be made.  At one extreme you have Peyton Manning, who can go long stretches without even getting a playcall from his offensive coordinator.  He just lines up, decides what he wants to run, and goes with it.  

That's a great approach, if you have Peyton Manning.  The Eagles don't, so it's time to concede the point and go back to coaching Vick the way they did before. 

Butch Harmon again:

"If he ever asked me what I thought he needed to do, I'd tell him, look, go on the practice tee without anybody—without me, without Sean [Foley, his current coach], without Haney, without a camera, and start hitting golf shots. Hit some high draws, some low draws, high fades, low fades, move the ball up and down, move it around; don't worry about how you do it and go back to feeling it again. Quit playing golf-swing and just hit shots; just say to himself, I'm gonna hit a low fade, and I don't need anybody to tell me how to do it, I'm just gonna feel it. He's Tiger Woods, for God's sake. He doesn't know how to hit a shot?"

He's Mike Vick, for God's sake, he doesn't know how to find an open receiver and bury the ball in his gut?

I have had a sense of deep forboding heading into this season in a way I literally can't remember.  Vick has looked broken for a long time and between the coaching and the abysmal offensive line play, there was no reason to believe he'd be getting the time and space he needed to pull things together.  After one game, it's hard to feel like I was off in that assessment.

In today's NFL, it all comes down to the quarterback.  You don't need to have the best guy or even a Hall of Famer a guy who actually deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, as Eli Manning has twice demonstrated, but you do need a guy who can make throws when it matters.

In some ways, Andy Reid is now looking at the fairest test possible.  Last year was a train wreck and he could justifiably have been fired for his coaching personnel decisions, but dismissing Andy Reid because his defense sucked is a bit like firing your hitting coach because the bullpen can't hold a lead.  

This year, though, the defense looks fixed.  Which means it's all about Vick. If Andy Reid the quarterback whisperer can't turn that around, then you know it's time to move on.

No, Penn State Should Not Shut Down Football

I distinctly remember the first time I helped make the decision to fire someone.  We'd done a poor job with the interviewing process, a couple of people we'd liked had dropped out, we badly needed help, and we talked ourselves into the idea that we could make this person work.

We couldn't.  Within two weeks it was clear we'd made a terrible decision, and we were way too small to carry any deadweight.  So we fired him.

Working a few different jobs before this one, I'd often thought people should be fired.  Lots of people probably should be.  But this was the first time it became real, when it wasn't just some equation in my head (value added - cost of employment < 0) but a real moment with some dude who just found out people thought he sucked so badly that there was no real hope of things working out.

If there was anything good about the situation, it was that he'd just graduated from college, hadn't left another job to take ours, and back then young people without experience could actually get hired for things.  Add in the severance package and he was better off than when he came to us.

These are not the kinds of advantages likely to be shared by most of the people involved in the Penn State football program.  They have kids and spouses.  Maybe narrow, specialized skills.  They live in the middle of nowhere.  And the economy still sucks.

So when you sit comfortably at your computer, basking in your righteous indignation and prattling on about "sending a message," ask yourself how many more innocent victims you want to add to this story.  

Here are some names and faces to get you started.

Last Dumping the Notebook Almanac Post

The Eagles Almanac, a collaboration of nine Eagles fans and writers that previews the 2012 season, came out Monday.  I contributed a few pieces, but didn't have time to write up everything I researched.  So buy the book, and then if you want more, I'll be dumping out the notebook for a few days.

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As I mentioned a couple days ago, I hand-waved past a lot of the math in the "Is Asante overrated" post.  It's not my intention to dive back into that, but I did want to pass along a couple of related charts, because they're interesting in their own right.

These charts display the average gain for all pass attempts from the past three seasons.  In the first chart, INTs are counted as -50 yards.  In the second, I just counted them as incompletes.  

What I find interesting about these charts is what happens once you start to get beyond 20 yards.  Take a look:

In both charts, there's a pretty darn orderly and linear relationship for the first 15 or so yards.  Then things get weird for awhile, before the linear relationship mostly reasserts itself (with more bouncing around as the sample sizes get smaller and smaller).

The first chart is a better representation of reality, because INTs are worse that incomplete passes. And it sure does look like there's a dead zone once you get past about 20 yards.

(It's been a fun week.  The reddit AMA a few of us did is worth checking out too.)

Wednesday Notebook Dump

The Eagles Almanac, a collaboration of nine Eagles fans and writers that previews the 2012 season, came out Monday.  I contributed a few pieces, but didn't have time to write up everything I researched.  So buy the book, and then if you want more, I'll be dumping out the notebook for a few days.

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Back in the old days, today's post would have been a humdinger.  There's a lot of data collection involved, reference to some work other people have done, and so many underlying tables that -- even now -- it's clear you readers haven't lost the taste for.

But we're in modern times, so apologies, I'll give you what I've got.

Full disclosure:  I set out this offseason to "prove" Asante Samuel is overrated.  Not that he's not good, he is, but that if you take away the interceptions, he's not otherwise a great cornerback.

Now, of course, that bolded part is ridiculous.  Interceptions are hugely valuable and a guy who's merely "good" but also chips in 8 INTs is obviously someone you want on your team.

Asante is a complicated fellow, though, and his particular ... "style" of play means he has more negatives to set up against those interceptions than the average NFL cornerback.  Missed tackles, for starters.

But we've talked about all those other issues for years and we're not learning anything new there.  So I wanted to set aside all the extra stuff and just look at how he covers.

For years, I've been unsatisfied with the traditional CB yardage metrics. You'll see guys who have great YPA figures, but then you don't know if that's because they're really that good or because they play in a cover two system where they get to sit down on the flats all day.  A true "cover" corner is going to have responsibilities extending much further down the field.

So what I took into my head to do was to look at every single pass thrown over the past few years, figure out what the average result was for each distance, then map the attempts faced by all our cornerbacks to figure out how much they under or overperformed the average.

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This is the part where I'm going to skip a lot of the backstory.  Know that the database I built contains 88,000+ attempts, average results are broadly similar across all three directions, a linear function is a decent approximation but works better if you take out INTs -- that's a column in itself -- and for every INT I assigned a result of -50 yards, a figure about which we can quibble, but should be reasonable.

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I talked a lot in the Almanac about the number of attempts -- which I think is an important, if second order, metric -- so now let's look at what actually happened on all those attempts:

And the numbers settle down somewhat if you drop the (-50) for INTs, but the overall story doesn't change:

Sooooo, that's the moment I stopped trying to prove that Asante Samuel was overrated.

Almanac Week -- Dumping The Notebook

 

The Eagles Almanac, a collaboration of nine Eagles fans and writers that previews the 2012 season, came out Monday.  I contributed a few pieces, but didn't have time to write up everything I researched.  So buy the book, and then if you want more, I'll be dumping out the notebook for a few days.

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One of the stories people tell about the Castillo-led Eagles defense is that the group started slowly -- really, really slowly -- but by the end of the year everyone was on the same page and things were clicking.  Leaving the larger debate aside for a moment, let's take a look at the number of non-screen pass plays that Football Outsders' game charters identified as "hole in zone," "blown coverage" or "uncovered":

Not really a match with the "everyone on the same page" storyline, is it?

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Another just-for-fun graphic, all pass attempts by direction and distance in 2010 and 2011.  Note the strong Nnamdi effect (click for full size):

(And actually, this link is an even better "full size.") More later this week.

Eagles Almanac Now On Sale

When I stopped blogging, one of the things I considered doing instead was a mid-summer Eagles preview piece that I'd sell for a couple bucks.  I still kind of wish I'd done it, but realistically the time just was never going to be there.

So a few months ago when Brian Solomon approached a bunch of Eagles writers about putting the Eagles Almanac together, I of course said, "Yeah, don't have time for that."  

Brian really didn't take 'no' for an answer, though, so I ended up contributing a few shorter pieces that, in retrospect, are almost embarrassingly meager next to the other essays in the book.  

If you're an Eagles fan, you really have to buy the Almanac.  There will be other season previews, like the irreplaceable Football Outsiders Almanac and all the stuff the Daily Inquirer News will publish.  And it's not like this will be the only place to read what folks like Brian, Mike Tanier, Sheil Kapadia, Tommy Lawlor, Jason Brewer, Jimmy Kempski, Tom McAllister and even occasional blogger Sam Lynch have to say about the team.  (It is pretty much the only game in town for the casual humor stylings of the artist formerly know as bountybowl.)

But these pieces are really good; they're really fun to read next to each other (the juxtaposition of Tom and Gabe's essays is an impish move by Brian); and they're exactly the topics Eagles fans would want to read about, which makes sense since all the writers are Eagles fans.

So go buy it.  It's five bucks.  You won't regret it.

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As a final note:  It might not look like it terms of the amount of text I produced, but I actually did a LOT of stats work when I was putting my little pieces together.  If you read my deals and think "I wonder if he looked at ..." -- I probably did.  As a service to readers (of the book, not the blog, those are long gone) I can answer follow-up questions here.