Iggles Blog - Philadelphia Eagles Blog

Too Bad This One's at Home

Ever since the 2001 championship game, I think we'd all agree that going against a Mike Martz offense on artificial turf is somewhere just below  starting a land war in Asia on the list of things in life you want to avoid.  But for this week at least, I think it's too bad the Eagles aren't on the road.

I'm not looking to bash Philly fans -- enough of that crap goes on around the country -- but I think most of us would agree that we're not always the most ... helpful fan base in America.  Again, I'm not criticizing the faithful, I'm just saying that there are times it's better for our teams to be on the road.

Here's what I mean.  Somewhere on the list of attributes shared by all Philly fans, you would have to put "usually or maybe always expects the worst."  It's not like it's our fault that our teams always choke and we end up broken-hearted every year, but you can only get burned so many times before you end up just expecting bad things to happen. 

The problem is that this can be a little self-reinforcing.  When the Eagles take the field on Sunday, tens of thousands of people are going to be holding their breath, all worried that this could be the day the season really does end up in the crapper.  If the Eagles get out to a hot start, no problem.  Everyone will clap and cheer and support our guys and we'll all be a big happy family.

But if that doesn't happen ... maybe the Lions break a big play on their first offensive series and the Eagles are down 7-0 before most fans are even settled in ... then we've got problems.  Because that stadium is going to go quiet.  And it's going to be unnerving.  And it's going to be about that point that the team realizes it's not always a bad thing to be playing on the road.

Here's to a fast start.

A Bounceback Opponent

During the preseason, I watched bits and pieces of a couple of Detroit games.  The offense looked decent, but the defense was so bad that I just couldn't see how they were going to win very many games.  A couple weeks later and suddenly the Lions are 2-0 and coming to the Linc on Sunday with a full head of steam.  That's the NFL for you.

(Although the Lions aren't that hot according to Vegas, which has them as about a touchdown underdog.  Has an 0-2 team ever been favored by more in a game against a 2-0 team?)

The Lions' defense was bad in the preseason.  As in worst in the league bad. They've improved to 22nd in the regular season, but that's with games against noted powerhouses Oakland and Minnesota.  And Oakland quarterback Josh McCown still torched the Lions secondary to the tune of 313 yards passing.  Look at their depth chart back there.  Maybe you're a better-informed fan than I am, but to me that secondary looks like the definition of "patch work."

All of which is to say, if the Eagles' offense doesn't show up this week, well, it might be awhile.

Another thing we know is that this isn't going to be the week the Eagles unveil their revamped, running-focused 2007 offense.  Not just because McNabb and company should have a field day against these guys, but also because Detroit does have a legitimately explosive offense.  The Eagles defense has been better this year, but I don't think 17 points is winning this game. 

Revisiting the 2006 McNabb

I guess the feeding frenzy is still going...

Lots of people are tossing around stats to show McNabb is in the midst of a prolonged slump that goes back well before his injury.  After the Monday night game, ESPN talking heads kept mentioning that the Eagles have now lost six of the last seven games McNabb has started.  The popular perception is that last year he started great, looked terrible for the last five games he played, and hasn't done anything much so far this year to justify his starting spot.

So let's review the mid-stretch of last year:

Date	Opp	Result	Comp	Att	Pct	Yds	Avg	TD	Int	Sck	Rate	Att	Yds
10/15	@ NO	L   24-27	19	32	59.4	247	7.7	2	1	3	91.5	--	--
10/22	@ TB	L   21-23	22	35	62.9	302	8.6	3	3	1	83.3	6	76
10/29	JAC	L   6-13	18	34	52.9	161	4.7	0	0	4	65.9	5	37
11/12	WAS	W   27-3	12	26	46.2	257	9.9	2	0	1	107.4	4	12
11/19	TEN	L   13-31	6	13	46.2	78	6.0	0	1	0	33.5	--	--

New Orleans -- No one can hang this one on McNabb.  The Saints were a very good team last year and the biggest problem was the defense being unable to get off the field at the end of the game.  Those are great numbers for Donovan.

Tampa Bay -- This was a weird game for McNabb, because it demonstrates that he was in no kind of slump at the time -- look at those numbers -- but he also pretty much singlehandedly cost his team the game with three bad interceptions.  We learned after the fact that the Eagles used a predictable route adjustment out of a certain formation when facing a blitz and Ronde Barber knew about it beforehand.  Either way, he certainly wasn't "slumping."  The picks were game killers, however.

Jacksonville -- Easily McNabb's worst game of the season.  He was bad.  The rest of the team wasn't much better (38 yards rushing for Westbrook).

Washington -- McNabb bounced right back in this game against Washington.  Fantastic numbers in everything but completion percentage, due to taking a lot of deep shots down the field.  The "prolonged slump" folks should have their hands full explaining two TDs and a 107.4 passer rating.

Tennesee -- McNabb got hurt on the second play of the second quarter.  The Eagles were only down 7-3 at the time.  He wasn't off to a hot start, but there were three quarters left.

Reed Returns

Evidently the Monday night injury to Dawkins was enough to convince the Eagles they should probably keep four safeties on the roster.  J.R. Reed is back, backup right tackle Pat McCoy has been cut.

I guess other teams aren't as impressed with the Eagles' backup linemen as we might possibly have hoped.

The irony here is that Correll Buckhalter actually did a nice job running back kicks on Monday.

Where Are All the Other Running Backs?

Rich Hofmann has a very convincing piece in the Daily News today arguing that help for the offense isn't coming from Brian Westbrook:

BRIAN WESTBROOK is on a pace to touch the ball 408 times this season. Last year, by comparison, San Diego uberback LaDainian Tomlinson touched the ball 404 times. In the NFL last season, only Kansas City's Larry Johnson (457) touched it more.

The point is, the Eagles cannot work Westbrook much harder than they are already working him. They cannot just hope to Westbrook their way out of the 0-2 hole in which they find themselves.

(Oh, and did you hear he was already on coach Andy Reid's injury report yesterday with a knee strain?)

He makes this point as well:

Everybody talks about how they leaned on him and leaned on the running game last season once Jeff Garcia took over from McNabb following the knee injury, and there was some truth to it. But Westbrook is touching the ball more this season than he did during that run of games. He is averaging 18 runs per game this year and averaged only 18.7 runs during that vaunted stretch. There really is not much room to expand his role.

It's clear from the above that the weird thing about this season isn't that Westbrook isn't running the ball enough.  It's that nobody else is.  Last year, Westbrook accounted for 72 percent of all non-quarterback rushing yards.  This year that figure is up to a whopping 94 percent.  It's the same story with attempts.  Last year, 67 percent of the carries, this year 86 percent.

During the summer, I put together this graph suggesting one possible way the Eagles rushing load might be divided this season (if you want to read the completely-reasonable-but-now-provably-false thought process that went into this graph, it's here):

If we were to redo that graph above this year, it would basically all just be green.

So what's going on?  The first issue, I think, is that the offensive line hasn't been as good this year.  Westbrook doesn't need that much space to bust a big gain, but guys like Buckhalter and Hunt aren't really make-ya-miss runners.  As long as the line isn't clearing big holes, maybe Reid and Mornhinweg think non-Westbrook carries are just wasted plays.

The second issue is more Hunt-specific.  On the Eagles, rookies aren't just handed playing time.  You have to give the coaches a reason to put you on the field, otherwise you're staying on the bench.  The coaches must have felt his 92 yards on 30 preseason carries weren't reason enough for him to be out there, despite the fact that he looked very solid in the final two games.  I'm beginning to wonder, though, if maybe drafting Hunt wasn't so much about helping the team this year as it was about having a workhouse back on hand a few years from now when Westbrook is well past 30 and the team is breaking in Kevin Kolb.

Here's what I truly don't understand, however.  The plan going in to this season couldn't have been using Westbrook -- and only Westbrook -- to carry the football.  So what were they going to do?  It's not like Ryan Moats was even going to make this team before he got hurt, so clearly he wasn't the backup plan.  They had to be thinking about either Buckhalter or Hunt as the guy eating up attempts.  This story even said Buckhalter was "promised" more carries. 

So what happened to these guys?

A Deep Breath

There are two ways of evaluating this disgusting mess of an 0-2 start.  You can say the record speaks for itself, McNabb sucks, Reid doesn't know jack about coaching or assembling a roster, the receivers are terrible, the defense is mediocre and anyone not named Brian Westbrook should be trudging down Broad Street in sackcloth and ashes, asking -- no, begging -- for forgiveness.

The other way of doing this is by surveying this carnage, taking a realistic assessment of what's worked and what hasn't, and trying to figure out what that means for the rest of the season.   

If the first option sounds pretty good to you, here are the phone numbers.  I imagine the waits are currently pretty long.  I might try the second one here and see what happens.

Positive: The overall performance of the defense.  Last year at this time, we were all going nuts because the Eagles had managed to blow a game to the Giants despite holding Tiki Barber to 51 yards and taking a 17-point lead into the fourth quarter.  We didn't know it at the time, but it was a sign of things to come (the lead-blowing part, not the run-stopping part).

This year's defense has shown signs of significant improvement.  Like the offense, the unit is a work in progress, but running backs are already discovering that the soft underbelly of years past is no longer there against the Bunkley/Patterson tackle combo.  In week 2, Omar Gaither flashed the ability we saw last year as he led the team with nine tackles.  Chris Gocong doesn't have a long list of highlights yet, but on the other hand, he's yet to be taken advantage of, either.  That's more that could have been said for Dhani Jones.  Takeo Spikes has been more solid than explosive, but once again we haven't really had that on the weakside since Shawn Barber v1.0. 

These were all question marks going into the season.  With the possible exception of Spikes, the results have been better than we could have anticipated.

Negative: The poor performance of Jevon Kearse.  Seriously, what the hell is going on here?  I was going to lump all the defensive ends into this category, since it seemed like the team couldn't get any pressure at crucial points in the Washington game, but it's pretty tough to criticize Trent Cole for "only" having two sacks in two games so far, just like it's pretty tough to criticize JT Thomas for "only" having one sack in his limited role. 

Scroll down this page and take a look at the defensive stats.  Seven million bucks buys you one assisted tackled in two games?  He spent the whole night going against a backup and couldn't get on the stat sheet against Washington. 

Is it just that his knee isn't fully recovered yet?  Either way, maybe it's time for Juqua to get some more snaps.  I'm not saying you start him, but the best players need to spend more time on the field.

Positive: Some parts of the offense are working.  Those parts are "Brian Westbrook running" and "Brian Westbrook catching."  Moving on...

Negative: Everything else about the offense seems broken.  You can't argue that the offense has been good, or even average.  So far, it's kind of a mess.  But I don't buy the argument that the problems are talent-related and can't be fixed.

The first problem with the offense has been the offensive line.  Not that they've been bad, but they haven't been as good as they were last year.  In 2006, the Eagles ran for 4.8 yards a carry.  This year that's down to 4.4.  That's still slightly above average, but it's not good enough. 

In pass protection, things were pretty rough the first week, but improved significantly against Washington -- the problem in that game wasn't McNabb not having time.  I would suggest that this continued improvement is likely a reason for optimism.  The line should approach the level of play from last season.

The rest of the passing game has a number of issues.  LJ Smith isn't healthy and should clearly be sitting out until he is.  I just don't see how having him out there, limping around and risking further injury, is a good thing for either the Eagles or LJ.

The rest of the issues seem to be timing-based.  Consider this, the one guy with whom McNabb seems to be comfortable is Jason Avant.  That's probably because Avant is playing a possession role where he's not trying to beat guys deep.  He's getting to the right spots in the zones, he's running very throw-able routes and it doesn't hurt that he catches everything that comes his way. 

For everyone else, the timing is off.  Consider that one pass McNabb rifled to Reggie last game on either a slant or post down by the end zone.  It was a Nolan Ryan fastball and Reggie couldn't hold on to it.  Now there are two possibilities there.  The first one is that McNabb just threw it that hard because that's what he does.  But it was single coverage.  Donovan didn't have to worry about any help coming from the middle of the field.

What I think actually happened is that McNabb got off the timing in his progression of reads.  Because he was a little late recognizing it, he tried to make up for it by gunning the ball in there.  McNabb may not believe in rust, but that's clearly what it seemed to be.

As for Curtis, the biggest problem is that McNabb still hasn't figured out exactly where he's going to be.  Hopefully that turns around soon.  I also think the Eagles need to use him differently.  The guy's spent his entire career in the slot, he probably knows a thing or two about playing there.  Maybe he should get some breaks from going against press coverage on the outside all the time.  Stay with your two WR look, but put Westbrook on the outside and Curtis in the slot and you've got a mismatch somewhere.  Either the corner has to slide out to Brian or you have to put a linebacker or safety on Curtis.  Either way the other team has issues.

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The key point in all of this is that there are entirely credible explanations for what's gone wrong so far that don't require believing that McNabb is suddenly a terrible quarterback. 

Here's a comparison.  Say you had a wide receiver, let's call him Breggie Rown, who had a track record of success in this offense, to the point where the team gave him a healthy contract extension and the fans thought he was an up and coming player.  If Breggie suddenly had trouble hanging on to the football, what would be your initial reaction?  Would you say, "Man, Breggie needs to catch the @#%$!@% football"?  Or would you say, "Clearly Breggie just isn't a good wide receiver any more and we need to bench him and play someone from the practice squad instead"?

My guess is you'd say the former.  So why is it, when McNabb misses a few guys and clearly displays his rust from time off, people say "Oh, he just doesn't know how to play quarterback any more, let's bench him and put in the rookie"?

I guarantee you, the only people in football who approve of the idea of benching McNabb are the defensive coordinators he'll be facing in the next 18 games.

You Think McNabb Has it Bad?

Try being A.J. Feeley.  It's like no one even remembers he's on the roster.

Next Day Thoughts

Ok, let's do this...

Sav Rocca was better than he looked to the naked eye.  Eagles fans have been wondering where all those booming 60-yard kicks have gone since the preseason, but Rocca hasn't really been bad, just inconsistent.  The one everyone is going to remember was the 33-yarder near the end of the second-quarter that didn't do a good enough job pinning the Redskins deep.  If he'd gotten that down near the end zone, Joe Gibbs might have sent in three straight running days and called it a half.  But here are his punts on the night:

45 yards -- no return
39 yards -- no return (muffed)
33 yards -- no return
56 yards -- 8 yard return
43 yards -- 9 yard return

That gave Sav a gross average of 43.2 and a 39.8 net.  I think he's focusing very much on hang time right now, which is why we're seeing shorter kicks but no returns.  He needs to get a little more consistent -- although it's fun watching punt returners who have no idea where to line up -- but compare those numbers to Dirk's last three years and you'll see it's not that bad.  Maybe he'll be the first guy to break the mythical 40.0 net barrier.

What's it take to get a holding call?  On the list of reasons the Eagles lost last night, this one blown call doesn't make the top 10, but I'm tired of seeing our linemen getting mauled out there with no calls.  Take a look at the big scramble Campbell had at the end of the first half to set up that bizarre touchdown series.

Jamaal Jackson isn't the only guy in the league you can call holding on, Mr. Carollo. 

Something's up with the offensive line.  It's not just that William (Tra) Thomas left the game with back spasms and had to be replaced by Winston Justice.  The Eagles also activated eight linemen for the first time in a while, getting Max Jean-Gilles on the active roster and sitting Tony Hunt.  That may just have been due to pre-game concerns about Thomas' back, but you never know.

No one's complaining about Jim Johnson's schemes right now, are they?  There were all kinds of interesting things happening out there last night.  I saw Sheldon Brown playing the deep middle and both safeties up in the box.  He had coverages where both starting cornerbacks were covering Santana Moss.  He continued to present a moving target by constantly swapping packages and players.  He's also still running that zone-blitz where Trent Cole drops and then has a hard time trying to cover somebody.

Well, three out of four ain't bad.  The defense has looked pretty good so far, but whatever failings they do have are not the fault of the coaching.  Which leads to...

The defensive line has a problem.  The Redskins were playing with a backup right tackle and a backup right guard, and yet the Eagles couldn't get any pressure on Campbell when they just brought the four down linemen.  I plan to focus on Kearse when I re-watch the game, but at first blush, he's not giving them anything out there.  JT Thomas is easily outplaying him right now in his limited action.  And Trent Cole spent most of the night getting stoned too, although Chris Samuels is a pretty good left tackle.

Especially until Lito gets back, the Eagles desperately need to get some pressure up front.  Especially with the folks coming to town next week.

Omar Gaither is coming around, just in time.  After a slow start in the preseason and game one, Gaither last night again looked like the player we saw flashes of last year.  The Eagles middle linebacker had eight solos and one assist, to pace the team with nine tackles.  That's big.  Gocong continues to be mostly invisible.

That Dawkins hit made me sick to my stomach.  I'm grateful he was able to walk off the field.  Just goes to show, even when a guy's been playing football for decades, sometimes mistakes happen.  Thankfully, we're not looking at another Kevin Everett situation.

Finally, McNabb is going to be fine.  Post-game smiles or not, I'm sure he hears the howling that's just now beginning to build.  Here are the facts:

1. He's only 10 months from major knee surgery.
2. During much of his rehab time, he wasn't able to play, practice or prepare.
3. This is a timing-based offense, which means even small issues will cause big problems.

The guy's Superman, but he's not actually, SUPERMAN.  I thought he showed significant improvement over the Green Bay game.  So much, in fact, that I wonder whether keeping him on the shelf for so much of the preseason was a good idea.  He's struggled the first two weeks and the rest of the organization hasn't stepped up enough to bail him out.  Is that a phone booth over there?

A Work in Progress

No one ever said this was going to be easy.

I spent most of the game with one eye on the Wingheads in-game chatroom.  I won't name names, but the natives were restless.  McNabb had some staunch defenders in there, but let's just say those folks had to do a lot of staunch defending...

Look, we knew this season was going to be a work in progress.  Too many young guys.  Too many questions about Donovan's knee.  A rebuilt defense.  While it's surprising how bad they've looked at times this year, the fact that there have been struggles isn't at all surprising. 

The season isn't over.

Let's repeat that.  The season isn't over. 

Right now, the defense is far better than it was a year ago.  While the offense didn't light up the scoreboard tonight, it looked like it had a much better rhythm than last week in Green Bay.  Yeah, 0-2 is 0-2, but I'm telling you, this thing is already starting to turn around.

Which isn't to say there aren't some questions.  Ron Jarowski spent most of the night harping on the inability of the Eagles wide receivers to get open against the Redskins secondary.  Right now, if you're just going by production, Reggie Brown and Kevin Curtis shouldn't be the starting wide receivers.  Reggie deserves the benefit of the doubt, given his past performance, but Curtis isn't making plays, he isn't hanging on to the football and he's proving us both right and wrong for writing:

"I actually expect Curtis to start strong, slow down in the middle of the season as a larger role takes a toll on his smallish frame, and then close fast once Andy and Marty start getting more creative with some of his packages so he's not constantly fighting off jams at the line all the time."

Right, of course, because he is having trouble just lining up on the outside and fighting off cornerbacks all day.  Wrong because it didn't take long for other teams to figure that out.  We'll see about that last bit.

That leaves Jason Avant, who seems to be emerging as the guy McNabb most wants to see on the field when he needs a receiver to come through for him.  He's doing it this year.  Baskett did it last year.  Might be time to give those guys a bit more of a chance.

Of course, all anyone's going to want to talk about this week is the performance of McNabb.  First of all, he wasn't great, but he wasn't that bad (28-46, 240 yards).  He's just rusty.  This is a timing-based offense.  He needs some more work to get things back together. 

He definitely looked a whole lot better this week than he did last week.  His progress was encouraging.  Heck, he even managed to run around a bit out there just to show he still could.

This is where the Andy Reid approach really pays dividends.  You might be freaking out right now, but Big Red isn't.  He's going to stay calm, just like he always does.  He's going to go back and tweak the game plan to "do a bit better job at putting his guys in a position to make plays," like he always does.  And he's going to get this thing turned around.

Just like he always does.

I Don't Think Reid Was Icing the Kicker

I only see nine guys on the field.