Why They Need Depth on the Defensive Line

Going back to the archives again, take a look at a couple of video rewinds I did last year where I counted the snaps each of the defensive linemen was playing. 

Here's the Redskins and here's the Lions.

What I wrote after the Redskins game:

As some point this spring, Andy Reid is going to sit down with Jeff Lurie and Joe Banner to talk about what his team needs to get over the hump next season.  There's a good chance Reid will mention the defensive line, which has shown marked improvement this year but could still use a couple of extra pieces.  Reid might even say something about "throwing fastballs at the offense." 

At which point Joe and Jeff should tell Andy that if little Jimmy isn't going to use the toys he already has, they're not buying him any new ones.

You remember how last year went, don't you?  Johnson spent all of training camp talking about how he wanted to rotate a ton of guys along the front four to keep them all fresh.  It worked great for a couple of games -- until Kearse got hurt and Johnson responded by playing all the backups less (except for Trent Cole, since someone had to start). 

Johnson made a New Year's resolution that this season would be different.  Once again the Eagles brought in a few veteran bodies to round out a young starting group and give Johnson and his staff the chance to mix and match depending upon the situations they faced. 

Sure stuck with that one...

In response to a reader request, I did a snap count for the Redskins game.  Since I did the same thing for the Lions game earlier, let's compare the two:

First of all, the defense was on the field for about the same number of snaps in the two games.  Secondly, might want to think about hedging that Trent Cole stock.

I just don't get this.  Patterson is playing out of his mind this year, so as long as he holds up, I guess we want him out there (oops), but Trent Cole played every single defensive snap in this game.  The guy's only 270 pounds, we couldn't get him a blow even for a series?

And it wasn't like Cole had much of an impact on this game.  He had three solos and three assists, but no sacks and not much in the way of pressure on Campbell.  As the same reader pointed out, if we're going to use Kearse as a $7 million situational pass rusher, maybe he could -- you know -- play some on the right side.  If it worked against Mike Vick, it would probably work against John Beck. 

The other point about Cole is -- contra Hugh Douglas -- it's not the double-blocks stopping him from getting to the quarterback (at least not this week).  He did get double-blocked occasionally, and Washington did a couple tricky things to keep him off-balance, but for the most part Chris Samuels handled him without incident.  This continues a disturbing trend for Trent.  He's a monster against the mediocre, but good tackles like Samuels and Flozell Adams don't seem to have much trouble against him.