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The offseason hasn't even officially started yet and already there have been two great developments in the NFC East:
1) Bill Parcells just announced his retirement...
2) The Giants decided not to fire Tom Coughlin...
So far, so good. Now we're just waiting for:
3) The Redskins make their annual push to win a Super Bowl in March by snapping up lots of mediocre free agents with ludicrous contracts...
With the league's worst run defense and the 18th-ranked run offense, the Super Bowl bound Indianapolis Colts disproved the old football adage that you win by running the ball and stopping the run, right?
Wrong. The only thing the Colts' win proved was that you win in the NFL by running the ball and stopping the run -- unless you have Peyton Manning and he finally performs in an important playoff game the way he does in the regular season.
If anything, yesterday's AFC Championship Game demonstrated exactly why an effective running game is so important. Holding a 21-6 lead at halftime, the Patriots were simply unable to shorten the game in the second half by grinding the clock. They ran the ball only five times in the entire second half, in a play-calling performance that would have had Andy Reid himself wondering how things got so out-of-whack.
The result is that they ended up getting into a shootout with the Colts. You don't want to get into a shootout with the Colts.
Dirk Johnson may have some competition. From Australia.
Semi-traditional media confirmation here.
The final result may not have met our August expectations, but this was certainly a season to remember for the Philadelphia Eagles.
I started this blog with the idea that this was the one topic about which I could find something new to say every single day. Ah, the joy of being young and foolish.
Looking back on my first post, I have to say I think the central point I began with was proven true. The window has not closed for this Eagles team, they are still a very talented group and Andy Reid has not -- we now know for sure -- lost his touch.
Unfortunately, not all my predictions this year turned out so well...
The daily publishing schedule has been alternately fun and harrowing, but there's no way it would be sustainable now that the season is over, at least for our Eagles. And so, after 267 posts and 189 comments (many of which were longer than my original posts) in 161 days, it's time to take a break.
Between now and training camp, I plan to post only as events warrant. This is going to be an important off-season for the Eagles, so I think that there will be plenty to discuss, although I promise to never, ever do my own "mock draft."
Thank you to all the folks who emailed nice comments or suggestions over the course of the season (and apologies for the extremely me-focused last post).
Finally, two suggestions. It may not look like it outside, but baseball season isn't that far away. There are a lot of good Phillies blogs out there, but the best starting point is Balls, Sticks & Stuff. Check out his pheed too if you want to see what other people are writing.
And if the Sixers and Flyers have you down and you need some Eagles sustenance, Wingheads is the place to go. It shares the same problems that plague every message board, but the ratio of wheat to chaff is remarkably high. See you over there.
What is happening to my favorite NFL writer? Has he just been so blinded by the enduring greatness of the greatest franchise in the greatest league being great all the time? Or maybe it's just too much caffeine:
Monday, 11/5/06
j. I like what I saw out of David Carr at the Meadowlands, but I do NOT like young kids who haven't done anything in the game yet mocking the mannerisms of a much better team. I speak of his faux jump shot after his touchdown leap into the end zone. Act like you've been there before.
Monday, 1/7/07
2. I think this is what I didn't like about the playoff weekend...
b. LaDainian Tomlinson's fiery words about the Patriots. It's a great controversy for us. They sounded small coming from a guy who'd just tasted bitter defeat. And it is no mortal sin for a visiting team to imitate the sack dance of the hometown hero. Happens every week.
Yeah, sure, it's not exactly the same. But I guarantee you his differing reactions had less to do with the details than did the names on the back of the jerseys.
If the Patriots started a criminal-of-the-month collection a la the Bengals he'd probably praise Belichick for recognizing he needed to build a "tougher and grittier" team.
This may come as a bit of a shock, but the Eagles did not lose that game on Saturday. They lost it in November. And October. And September and even August.
Different choices and outcomes earlier in the season would have meant not playing an away game in New Orleans on six days of rest against a team coming off a bye. The two teams were so close that if you flip those two things around, Philly probably wins.
Reid and the organization deserve a lot of credit for the way this year ended up. It would take a long time to list all the good decisions they made, from bringing in Garcia to finding Trent Cole in the fifth round last year to latching on to a useful player like JT Thomas. Maybe if they had won the Super Bowl, we would even be doing that right this moment. But they didn't, so it's time to look at the big strategic decisions that went wrong this season and that need to be addressed for next year.
1. Early season offensive imbalance. This is clearly the biggest X's and O's mistake of the season. At least the loss to the Giants does not happen if the Eagles had actually focused on grinding the clock and running the ball in that first game. There simply would not have been enough time for the Giants to come all the way back and take the game into overtime, where Jevon Kearse's season would come to an end. Westbrook was clearly gimpy and needed to be handled a bit early, but the Eagles began the season with six running backs on the roster (Westbrook, Buckhalter, Moats, Mahe, Perry, Tapeh). Someone could have carried the ball a handful of times.
2. Waiting too long to address the linebacker position. We know the Eagles' cap philosophy is that linebackers are a "value" position. On defense, you spend big money on the line and the cornerbacks and you fill in at linebacker with what's left over. This approach might even have worked, had the Eagles been able to draft as successfully at this position as they have at others during Reid's tenure. Unfortunately, with Gardner, Caver and now McCoy, that hasn't been the case. Against the Saints, the Eagles' linebackers were regularly exposed as being not that good against the pass or the run. Maybe Gocong is the answer at SAM, but if he's not, there's a chance we could be right back in the same position at year from now. Omar Gaither did come on strong late in the year and might be a player. Unfortunately, we needed him sooner.
3. Not forcing young players to advance. I get it, both Moats and Bunkley have issues. I understand. But there's no reason either one of those guys should have been so underused this season. In Moats' case, he could definitely have taken pressure off an injured Westbrook and a recovering Buckhalter early in the season. Even without NFL-level technique, Bunk is a massive body that should have at least been in the DT rotation, if only to keep the other guys fresh. The Eagles managed to lose six games this season without him. Would his playing 10 snaps a game really have cost them a seventh? And wouldn't some playing time have helped him advance faster than he actually did? This was a developmental year for a lot of guys, unfortunately, it was a lot of wasted time for these two.
Honorable Mention: Benching Rod Hood. I don't know what Hood did. There were all kinds of rumors flying around about something he had said or done in the locker room, but all I know is that last year Hood played like a starting-caliber corner and this year -- post-benching -- he played out the string. He had the Christian Laettner face going on Saturday, looking like a guy who would have been happier anywhere else on the planet that didn't involve being in an Eagles uniform.
Honorable Mention #2: Not slipping Sean Considine some designer steroids. Considine flies around and has great instincts, but he hits like a ton of feathers. Steroid jokes aside, I hope he is able to bulk up a little bit this off-season. I like him at the free safety position, but he needs to stop getting run over.
I've been completely out of the loop since the moment the Eagles game ended on Saturday. Until this morning, I hadn't read one news account, blog post or message board item about the game. I was a blank slate.
I actually considered writing something from that perspective, just to see how it would stack up against a discussion that's moved along by three days. Then I decided that would be a really good way to look kind of dumb.
So now I've looked around a bit and I think I'm up to speed. So here's point #1: Andy Reid was right to punt that ball. Rich Hofmann has a great look at the percentages today that makes it clear that converting 4th-and-15 is a long, long shot. He focuses on the limitations of Jeff Garcia, but it's also clear that this is not a 4th-and-15 kind of receiving corps. Stallworth is fast, but in that situation you prefer "big" and "veteran."
Regardless, it's clearly a coin flip situation. Neither option was particularly good. Sometimes life is like that.
But here's the thing. I grant that I haven't had time to do a thorough search, but I've not seen one person yet who has criticized the decisions Jim Johnson made after Reid decided to punt the ball. The front four had been pounded all day, the guys were clearly gassed and yet Johnson decided to play it safe with his base defense for three plays?
I was out of town, so I didn't record this game, but at the time it was happening I was screaming at the television. Why were our linebackers not stacking the line? Why didn't we have Bunkley on the field, who for all his apparent issues, is really friggin' big and young and fresh? Brees is a good quarterback, so clearly you have to at least be aware of the chance that he might pass, but that's why you pay the guys in the secondary.
I don't want to be too hard on Johnson. It's not his fault that he has to game-plan around some clearly limited pieces every week. I really don't think the problems with the Eagles' run defense have much to do with his scheme. And the bottom line is that the players and coaches did a great job salvaging what looked to be a lost season.
But if you want to jump all over a coaching decision, at least pick the right one.
Currently hoping just to make it back through some nasty weather.
Heck of an effort. Congratulations New Orleans. Best of luck next week.
(Only one comment: Why did Jim Johnson not go to a goalline defense at the end of the game?)
The plane is at the gate, so I'm almost off for the annual pilgrimage to Vegas.
The good news is that the group is composed entirely of hard-core football fans, so we always go this weekend, the best two-day stretch of the playoffs.
The even better news is that a handful of these guys are Cowboys fans. I miiiiiiight be a little obnoxious, at least until our game starts. I was going to bring a Tony Romo jersey to wear, but it was new and kind of slick and I must have dropped it before I could get it into my suitcase.
The good/bad news is that I'll be in Vegas ... so the likelihood of me spending too much time in front a computer the next few days isn't high. I'm testing a posting app on my phone right now, but posting under those, er, "conditions" may not be a good idea anyway.
So we'll see, either way:
Go Eagles.
May 28, 2008
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