Iggles Blog - Philadelphia Eagles Blog

Driving the Chariot of Awesome

This has nothing to do with a football.  A good friend of mine spent his summer driving through most of Central Asia in a vehicle that would be unlikely to pass inspection in the vast majority of U.S. states.  It's a fun story:

Here's their web site. 

Clinging to the Feeling

The last three weeks have been kind of a fun time for Eagles fans.  If there was a "soft" part of the schedule, the two-game set against Washington and Miami was it.  The Pats game was played with house money -- anything short of utter annihilation would have been an OK result.

But this week we're back to the serious times.  The Seahawks, who never seem to get the attention their results would merit, are a good football team.  They have the 11th-ranked defense, the 11th-ranked offense and both the NFL standings and Football Outsiders have them as the ninth(ish)-best team in the league.  They've also won three in a row. 

If there's a silver lining, it's that the Seahawks haven't really beaten anyone good all season.  Of course, neither have the Eagles.

And while it's great that only six NFC teams have a better record than the Eagles, it's also true that only four are worse.  Also, a 3-5 conference record at this point isn't what you want to see when you're trying to figure out playoff positioning. 

That's the problem with getting yourself into must-win situations this early in the season.  If the Eagles win, yippee, they're a .500 ball club.  Lose, and we can pretty much turn out the lights.

I think that's why I've been trying to avoid thinking about Sunday's game.  I hope things go well ... but couldn't you see this being a game where A.J. suddely wakes up and realizes he's a career back-up, everyone lets down after the roller coaster ride of last week, and we get another one of those frustrating Linc performances where everyone kind of bumbles around waiting for the next guy to make a play?

I've got a bad feeling about this game.

NFL Network Musings

A couple people were late showing up last night, so we paused the game at the start and caught up during the commercials.  I noticed early on that during a couple breaks I only had to hit the 30-second skip button three times before getting back to the broadcast.  I don't know the length of an average NFL commercial break on the other networks, but that seems really short.  When you factor in how many of the commercial slots last night were for the NFL itself as well as the cost of what was admittedly a very nice presentation, I wonder if the League is actually making money on this whole venture?

As I did some Googling to try to figure out how many commercials are in a normal telecast, I came across this interesting link.  You think I'm obsessive with the game tracking stuff, look at that breakdown of every single commercial during last year's Colts/Chiefs playoff game on NBC.  It's amazing how many of the commercials/plugs on the network are for the network. 

And yet it seems to me that there's a big difference in the value to NBC of 15-second spot plugging Bionic Woman and the value to the NFLN of a 15-second spot plugging NFL Total Access.  Clearly I'm just spit-balling here, but if the NBC promo works, it's going to convince a viewer watching one highly-rated program to watch another highly-rated program during the time of day that advertisers most want to pay for commercials.  If the NFLN promo works, the end result is moving a viewer over to a low-rated program with little ad revenue.  (If TV ad rates are linear, this wouldn't matter as much, but I think there's a "premium pricing" issue there.) 

The second problem is that there isn't that much to watch on the NFLN, which means we get 15 promos for the same show.  If NBC shows three promos each for five different shows, there's a chance one will grab my eye.  There has to be a diminishing marginal return issue for repeatedly hyping NFL Total Access. 

On the other hand, as I understand this stuff (which isn't at all well), NBC is a fully advertising-funded operation.  Revenues are almost 100 percent dependent upon the number of eyeballs watching each program, because that determines ad rates. 

In contrast, the NFLN has two sources of income.  Advertising is a piece, but so is the subscriber fee it charges to the cable and satellite operators, currently about $.70 / person / month.  If the figure in this piece is correct, the NFLN has about 35 million subscribers.  That would make subscription revenue about $300 million a year. 

Here's a good explanation of how that works for ESPN, another rights-fee supported operation:

ESPN collects as much as $3.25 a subscriber in monthly affiliate fees, the highest in cable, compared with about $2 for News Corp.'s Fox Sports, the media researcher Paul Kagan said. The fees make up roughly two-thirds of ESPN's revenue, and rose 10 percent to 20 percent annually before the recent contracts, he estimated.

Now ESPN has a huge TV / web / print operation that's been developed over the course of many years, while the NFLN is just getting off the ground.  My guess would be that subscription fees make up a much higher percentage of total NFLN revenues.  So if the ads the NFLN shows succeed in increasing ratings across the board, maybe that drives up average ratings and increases the potential subscriber fee?

I don't know, the whole thing's rather interesting.  If you know anything about this stuff, I'd love to hear about it.

That Clicking Noise

Is the sound of tens of thousands of remotes being frantically buttonmashed as people look for a channel they've never thought to watch before.  Don't be alarmed -- It should stop in a minute or two.

Extrapolating Wildly From the Flimsy Reed of Personal Experience

I think this whole blood feud between the NFL and the cable companies over whether and on what tier those guys will carry the NFL Network is one of the silliest public debates I've ever seen.  If you're a pissed off cable customer, just pay the extra money for the sports tier or switch to satellite.  If you're the NFL and you really want to get special favors from the cablecos, maybe don't sign monopolistic agreements with their fiercest competitor that restricts the availability of your signature programming package.

As for the cable guys, asking those companies to stop acting like douchebags hasn't worked for 30 years.  For this we now want to get Congress involved?

However, based solely on personal experience, I do think the terms of the debate are about to shift.  In the year-plus that the NFL Network has been showing games, no one has ever, ever, asked if they could come by to watch a game.  I skipped most of the match-ups last year and didn't even realize DirecTV was showing the games in HD on a different channel until almost the end of the season.

Fast forward to tonight, and right now we have four five people coming over to watch the game.  All of them are cable customers.  If tonight's game lives up to the hype, the water cooler chatter might take a significant shift tomorrow.

Eagles Fans Are Fired Up

There's a direct correlation between Eagles' fans excitement about the team and the traffic I see here at the site.  When things aren't going so well, as during the earlier portion of the season, people don't seem all that keen on subjecting themselves to even more coverage of what's going wrong.  Heck, I'm not all that excited about writing about them when they're stinking up the joint.

But blog traffic is higher this week than it's ever been before.  It's amazing what two wins and a great performance against the champions-elect will do.

Let's hope they repay the enthusiasm with a big win at home on Sunday.  I think the Linc crowd is going to be ready to rumble this time.   

(And thanks to everyone who reads the blog.)

More Taylor Coverage

I've been surprised to see the folks at ProFootballTalk aren't really doing much to move the ball forward on this story.   I guess even those guys can't have sources willing to make stuff up talk about every single issue in the NFL.

As mentioned before, the best round-up of Taylor coverage (analysis included) is available on this Redskins' blog.  He's focused today on three pieces of the case that were originally misreported.

Patriots (Multimedia) Video Rewind

I thought love was only true in fairy tales
Meant for someone else but not for me.
Love was out to get me
That's the way it seemed.
Disappointment haunted all my dreams.

Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I'm in love, I'm a believer!
I couldn't leave her if I tried.

First things first, did you know that "I'm a Believer," the Monkees' classic that hit #1 on the U.S. charts in 1967, was actually written and first recorded by Neil Diamond?  It's true.  You learn something new every day.

Anyway, after watching every play of this past Sunday's game ... I'm a believer. 

In A.J. Feeley. 

I'm as shocked as you are.

A.J. made four bad decisions in this game.  There were the three interceptions, as well another floaty little out pass to Reggie Brown that could have been picked.  All bad choices.

Beyond that though ... I mean ... the guy was good.  Really, really good. 

In fact, he was so good, I'm calling it right now.  A.J. Feeley is going to start against the Seahawks this weekend.  Oh sure, they'll say it's because McNabb isn't fully healthy, but I think everyone understands how the "health" thing works in football.  If your backups are stiffs (Hi LJ!) then it's all, "are you hurt, son, or are you injured?"  If the guy behind you can play, then the coaching staff is a lot more likely to take the "why don't you rest up and make sure you get fully healthy" approach. 

A.J. proved Sunday night he could play.

Now, none of this is intended to disparage Donovan McNabb.  My position on his skills as a QB is well established and frankly I'm tired of the debate.  It's like being stuck at a party where some people just want to argue about abortion when there are far more interesting and fertile areas of potential discussion.  It's time to move on.

However, for obvious reasons I focused closely on A.J.'s performance during the game and came away with a number of observations.

First of all, I tracked the placement of Feeley's throws.  I wanted to see if some of the success of the offense could be attributed to his more consistently putting the ball on the money.  Of course, since I've never tracked that before, I have no basis for comparison, but here are the numbers:

Feeley was on fire on the first half.  Of his first 20 throws, I've got 13 of them right on the money (and I graded pretty strictly).  He was less accurate in the second half, but his overall numbers still seemed to me to be pretty impressive.

Two areas where his accuracy came into play were swing passes to Westbrook and crossing patterns to other folks.  In both those areas he seemed to throw nice balls in good position for running-after-catch yardage. 

It's also worth pointing out that 28.5 percent of his throws were either bad misses or to the wrong team.  That's more than one in four.

The last column, labeled "tight spot," were throws he attempted where I don't think Donovan would have pulled the trigger (one was iffy).  He completed five of those six attempts.  Three went for touchdowns.

And this is a case where the numbers don't really tell the whole story, so let's look at some specific plays, starting with the bad first interception he threw to Asante Samuel.  The interesting thing about this play isn't the pass, but the problems with the blitz pickup:

Even with the benefit of replay, the announcers aren't always right.

Now let's take a look at a play with a happier outcome.  This is the touchdown pass to Greg Lewis.  I don't have time to narrate all these things if I want to get any sleep tonight, but check out the way A.J.:

• Recognized the safety blitz;
• Exploited the mismatch by bringing Lewis in motion, inside Curtis;
• Realized there was now no safety in the middle of the field and he could afford to loft the ball back there; and,
• Threw a perfect ball to Lewis, slightly to the outside shoulder away from coverage, for the TD.

Start to finish, that was a hell of a play.

The second Lewis touchdown was an even better throw.  No video, but he recognized the coverage, fit the ball into a tight window and put it exactly where it needed to be by recognizing that there was no safety help in the middle of the field.  My notes for the play read: "Unbelievable."  Man, what a throw.

Other points I noted:

• Feeley made a nice play buying time with his legs and scrambling to the outside before finding Jason Avant for a 21-yard gain at almost the exact same time Madden was explaining to us how Feeley was pretty much a stationary target in the pocket, unlike McNabb.  Good timing, sir.
• On the fourth-and-one QB sneak, New England didn't line anyone up over the center.  That allowed the Eagles to double the player standing over Andrews and Feeley just fell forward through that gap.  Herremans made a nice block on the other side to give him a bit more room to squeeze through, too.
• On the play following the successful onsides kick, when A.J. slipped and was sacked, I'm not sure the slip mattered that much.  Tra Thomas was badly beaten on the play by a blitzing linebacker who might have gotten to Feeley before he could have gotten rid of the ball anyway.
• The flip pass to Schobel when the Patriots came with an all-out blitz was so ridiculously pretty.  A.J. really seemed to know where the coverage was all game, other than the bad INT to Curtis.
• On the touchdown to Reggie Brown, A.J. (again) made an incredible throw into a tight space.  However, he missed L.J. breaking free running an out, which would have been a much easier pitch and catch for the TD.
• At the 12:20 mark of the fourth quarter, Feeley underthrew Curtis on a second-and-eight play where he had his man beaten, allowing the safety to get back into the play.  If he makes a better throw, that's probably a touchdown there and the Eagles are up 35-24.

The last point I want to cover in the Feeley section is the killer interception to Curtis.  It's clear on TV that A.J. is fired up about the play call in the huddle, he dropped back and looked only to Curtis, and he threw it even though the Patriots were in the perfect coverage for the play and Samuel didn't bite on the fake.  Bash the play call all you like, but watch it again and you'll see that L.J. Smith was running wide open across the middle of the field for the entirety of that play.  All A.J. has to do is check it down, dump it off to LJ and be happy with his 10-yard gain.  That one was totally on him, not the coaches.

- - - - - -

On the defensive side of the ball, things were a little less entertaining than I expected.  The biggest problem the Eagles had against the Patriots was Donte Stallworth.

Yep, Donte Stallworth.

And this isn't one of those things where we're just looking for any excuse to bash the organization for not keeping him.  It's true.

Think about how the Eagles have played their nickel coverage all season.  When the third cornerback comes in, Sheldon Brown typically moves in to cover the slot, while James or Hanson plays on the outside.  However, against the Patriots, Johnson chose not to pull his second-best CB off of Stallworth.  Clearly, with all the attention Moss was getting on the other side, he was worried about a possible mismatch between Joselio and Donte. 

What that meant was that Sheldon wasn't available to play his usual inside spot -- where he would presumably have done a much better job handling Wes Welker than any of the folks who actually did match up against him. 

A butterfly flaps his wings in Shanghai and...

As for the rest of the defense, it really was a tale of two halves.  In the first half, Johnson stuck with the brand spanking new 3-3-5 look that gave Brady so many fits.  In the second half -- perhaps anticipating a number of NE adjustments -- he switched mostly to his usual 4-3 scheme (or at least a 4-2-5 as they still spent a lot of time in nickel).

We all noticed Gocong putting his hand on the ground and rushing the passer in the first half, but one thing I didn't see during the game was just how often Trent Cole and Juqua Thomas were dropping into coverage from their DE spots in the 4-3.  Johnson really used those three guys as almost outside 3-4 linebackers throughout the game, and it's worth pondering whether this move presages a shift in philosophy next year once they cut the cord with Kearse.

Johnson blitzed a lot in this game.  I didn't keep exact numbers because I was tracking too many other things, but I counted five, six and even seven (!) pass rushers at various times in the game.  I really liked the read-blitz thing he had his guys do early.  Someone like Gocong would blitz, but then if the running back released, he'd slam on the breaks and cover the RB man-to-man.  This was a great way to handle the Pats' shifting block schemes.  If they went max-protect, you had an extra guy coming, but if they instead released him, you didn't have to worry about him burning you with the dump-off.  I liked it. 

As for Thomas, check out this play:

3-12-PHI 46

(6:13) (Shotgun) 12-T.Brady pass short right to 83-W.Welker to PHI 4 for 42 yards (75-J.Thomas).

Um, yeah, you read that right -- a 42-yard gain by Welker with a tackle made by a defensive end.  Check it out:

No one can say these guys don't hustle.

With Trent Cole, I watched him carefully early on to see if a) he was getting extra attention and b) the 3-3 or 3-4 look was what stopped him from rushing the passer.  The answer to both questions is pretty much no.  He was doubled at times, but only when the Eagles rushed three and there were spare blockers.  And even in the three-man line, the Eagles lined him up wide and told him to rush the QB.  He wasn't pulled inside like a traditional 3-4 defensive end would be.

As for Gocong, he seemed to like playing up on the line of scrimmage, although I think he actually got fewer snaps than he has the last couple weeks.  When the Eagles went to the four man line, they were frequently in nickel, for Moss/Welker-related reasons.  That kept Gocong on the bench for a lot of the second half. 

This game also made clear once again that you can't blitz Gocong the long way round.  He's a good pass rusher for a linebacker, but he's not super-fast.  If he's not taking a straight path to the quarterback, the ball's going to be gone before he gets there.

Other defense-related notes:

• J.R. Reed looks like a player.  He hits well and he appears to be the fastest safety we have when it comes to breaking on the ball.  I am stupendously impressed with where he is right now.
• With that said, Reed really needed to come up with that interception he dropped.  Dawkins could have saved a hypothetical three points as well (Gostkowksi missed the field goal) if he'd come up with a ball in the end zone.  I wish these guys could catch.
• I still don't understand why Sheldon Brown stopped running on that touchdown Gaffney had at the end of the half.  He had great coverage and then just ... gave up. 
• Dawkins looks really slow these days.
• At one point in the fourth quarter, the Pats called three straight screens.  The last one was an audible, but I could almost hear Belicheat thinking, "see, we don't need your signals to call this crap."
• On the Patriots' last third-down conversion that really sealed the Eagles' fate, Takeo Spikes was way, way too slow coming out of his pre-snap blitz bluff to cover the slot receiver.  The pitch and catch could not have been easier.

- - - - - -

Four points on special teams.

1)  I have no idea how the guy standing directly over the ball could ever possibly be drawn offsides on a punt.  You're lucky your status as the back-up center precludes Andy Reid from benching your butt next week, kid.

2)  The bad punt by Rocca in the fourth quarter started with a bad snap.  Sav did a good job scooping it up, but it clearly threw off his rhythm.  It looked on television like he dropped the ball too far from his body and caught it more with his toes than his foot.  Live and learn for the rookie.

3)  How could the Patriots' special teams not be ready for the "surprise" onsides kick?  They were in no position to make a play there.

4)  Finally, I think after this week we might finally have a better sense of what's wrong with the kick return team.  Check out these two plays during the Pats game.  On the first one, all four blockers in front of Reed -- including the "wall" and his lead blocker -- completely whiff on the guys they're supposed to be blocking.  On the second, the wall guys do a great job blocking the second wave of defenders, after they let the first wave go through untouched.  I'll be the first to admit I don't know jack about coaching special teams, but somehow, none of this seems right to me:

White Lightning Redux

Some very good stat work from BGN here demonstrating Kevin Curtis is quietly having a solid season:

After 11 games Curtis has 50 receptions for 793 yards and 4 TDs. He's averaging about 16 yards a catch.  Last year the Eagles starting WRs, Reggie Brown and Donte Stallworth, didn't equal that production in a full season.

Brown - 46 rec, 816 yds, 8 TDs.
Stallworth - 38 rec, 725 yds, 5 TDs.

It's a good point, and it bears repeating.  Kevin Curtis is a quick, technically sound receiver who runs very good routes and can kill you in the intermediate passing game.  He is not a burner who can just line up and beat you deep in the mold of Donte Stallworth. 

But I do want to pick a few nits with the rest of what Jason wrote.  First of all, Curtis is "on pace" for 73 catches and 1,153 yards the same way your buddy who slept with that really, really hot freshman their first week in college before she figured the whole college thing out is "on pace" to eventually hook up with Heidi Klum.  One outlier really skews the sample. 

In Curtis' case, we're talking about the Detroit game.  If you take that one out of the mix and replace it with his "average" game, you're looking at more like a 62 catch, 915 yard season, which is probably a better fix on his true output. 

I'm not saying the Detroit game doesn't count -- every player will eventually have a game that skews his stats one way or the other -- but if we're trying to get a handle on how he's likely to perform next year, I think this gives us a better read on his true potential.

It's worth mentioning as well that three of Curtis' TDs came in that game.  He has only one more on the season.  Without getting into the whole McNabb thing again, it is probably fair to suggest that a guy his size is a better target at mid-field than down by the goal line. 

A couple other points I'm not sure I totally agree with:

He's been an upgrade over the piece we lost from last year, which was Donte Stallworth.

In terms of consistent production, yes.  In terms of opening up the rest of the offense by acting as a deep threat, no.  That distinction needs to be clear.

It would certainly seem that the biggest difference between the offense last year and this year in terms of production has been mostly due to the dropoff of  Reggie Brown and LJ Smith. Obviously LJ has been hurt and hasn't played but Reggie has taken huge steps back.

First of all, the production in the passing game hasn't been that different from last year to this one.  In 2006, Eagles' quarterbacks completed 323 passes for 4,309 yards.  In 2007, the pace is 342 receptions for 4,058 yards.  That's not a huge gap, although the average completion (13.3 last year vs. 11.9 this year) speaks to the lack of a vertical threat. 

As for my man Reggie Brown, you owe him an apology, Jason.  This isn't "huge steps back" (2007 numbers are projections based on his current pace):

And since we're on the subject, here's a ball distribution comparison between this year and last year:

I'm actually surprised by the figure for Baskett/Avant/Lewis.  I thought those guys had kind of disappeared, but that's not actually the case.  With that said, this is a passing game that's now dominated by Westbrook and the wide receivers in a way that hasn't been true in the past:

Trent "Deja Vu" Cole

One month ago today, Trent Cole led the Eagles' defense against the Vikings with eight tackles and two sacks.  Those were his last sacks of the season.

If you're scoring at home, that's nine sacks in his first seven games, none in the four since.  He was particularly a non-factor against New England, chipping in only one assist and making no other contributions to the stat sheet.  (I'll know more about how the three-man line affected him after tonight.)

Of course, this is simply a continuation of Trent's career-long pattern.  Last year, Cole had 6.5 sacks after eight games and only 1.5 the rest of the year.  Five of those sacks came in the first three contests.  During his rookie season, he started more slowly because he didn't really become part of the rotation until the Denver blowout the day before Halloween.  He picked up five sacks in the next three games -- winning the starting job when (if memory serves) ND Kalu was injured -- but managed zero sacks in the season's last six games. 

In the last two seasons, Cole has 10 sacks in September, 5.5 in October and 1.5 in November.  He's never had a regular season sack in December or January.

That, folks, is a trend. 

Of course, we don't know exactly why this is the case.  The first theory -- which is more charitable to the Eagles' coaching staff -- is that Cole's early-season success draws a lot of attention and teams adjust later in the year by sending more blockers his way.  Unfortunately, that theory is based on the notion that other teams' coaches are idiots who every year spend the first half of the season ignoring him and the second half adjusting all their schemes around him.  It's also belied by the video rewind work I've done where it hasn't appeared to me that Trent is getting all that much extra attention. 

The second theory is that Cole is an undersized guy with a huge motor who wears down over the course of the season, compromising his effectiveness.  The problem with this theory is that it would seem to indicate that our coaches are idiots for doing things like this.

Let's see ... every other coaching staff makes the exact same series of mistakes ... or it's just one coaching staff that always claims to want to rotate guys but when push comes to shove and there isn't enough production from the backups, they just leave the starter out there ... whip out Occam's razor, carry the two ... and voila!