Even More Dialogue (Part Five)

SECOND UPDATE:  Wow, someone's been saving up some wild stuff about McNabb for a long time now.  Seriously check that out.

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UPDATE:  Part 6 available over on Gabe's site.

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You know the deal by now.  Part five is below. 

For those catching up:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. 

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Gabe,

I'll be honest.  Yesterday was a little straitlaced for what we're trying to do here.  I knew I was in trouble when I asked my wife to read through the post last night and got the:  "It's just not ... I mean ... it's really good.  You made some good arguments.  I just didn't ... [pause] ... I think it's really good."

Kiss. Of. Death. 

So tonight you'll be happy to know I've taken adequate precautions to avoid a repeat performance.  Besides being ready to pick more than a bone or two with what you've written, I have also taken the liberty of fortifying myself with a glass of homebrew (relax, don't worry...), my fair share of a bottle of quite good Zinfandel, and, if I'm being honest, half a bottle of this. 

Of the latter, I am partaking for solely educational purposes, since we are currently trying to determine what expression of this style we want to be making for the holiday season.  (I'm looking for something with a bit more complexity, by the way, but maybe that's the downside of moving from wine back to beer.)

All of which is to say writer's block should not be an issue.

As for your point about the wide receivers, THANK GOD you made it, since things were getting a little boring with all the agreement.  To recap:

[L]et me propose a theory: not only am I sick of the wide receiver discussion, but I’m even more sick of one of its most ridiculous offshoots — the contention that Donovan McNabb’s career is somewhat wasted because he “only played with a True Number One Receiver for one year.”  (GCobb loves this one.)

Um, how about this: Donovan McNabb is privileged to play with the best back in the NFL in 2007 (not my opinion, the results of the Football Outsiders stats).

I'm a little "off" Football Outsiders right now, mostly because I reminded you that the PFP 2008 was coming out this week and yet somehow you received your copy two days before I received mine.  Next year I'm going back to BN.com. 

As for the point about the wide receivers, that's where I'm going to have to disagree with you.  GCobb is (basically) right.  The Eagles had one heck of a window during the Donovan McNabb era to win a Super Bowl, and sadly they always came up one guy short. 

This is, in fact, where I draw the line between myself and the truly committed stats geeks out there.  The real stat-heads will go to their graves arguing that the Eagles' offense in 2004 wasn't really that special -- that they were just as good in 2003, but because of a tougher schedule and some bad luck, things didn't work out quite as well.

Bull.

Look, I respect the heck out of the people who make these arguments.  They are people like former Wingheads (and current EMB) mega-contributor Austin/ArlingtonFan who know their Birds, have ample statistical evidence to support their cases, and generally aren't the type of people you want to be arguing multiple regression analyses with.

They're still wrong. 

You can win a lot of football games just by having a solid team, excellent coaching, and good schemes.  But the unfortunate truth is that in the playoffs all the teams fit that description, at least after the first weekend.  Which means it takes something more than just "solid" to get the job done.  You need to have playmakers -- guys who can do something special when everything breaks down and the game becomes just man-on-man across the field.

Ironically enough, I came to this unshakeable conclusion during a period of time when I wasn't able to be much of an Eagles fan.  It was the late 1990s and I was living in a state of relative poverty (yes, I could pay my electricity bill, but no, I didn't have a bed) in San Diego.  Not only did I not have NFL Sunday Ticket back then, I didn't even have cable.  In fact, to get my fill of football, I used to watch the spanish rebroadcast of Sunday Night Football from the station in Tijuana late at night, hours after the game was done. 

And yeah.  It was fuzzy.

In fact, if memory serves, I didn't even get to watch the Eagles when they came to San Diego to play the Chargers because the game wasn't sold out and so was blacked out in the local market.  Tough times. 

Since I couldn't watch the Eagles, the team I most enjoyed watching during that time was Tampa Bay.  They had a player from my noted football powerhouse of a college, a stifling defense (I've always been a sucker for stifling defenses), and a demonstrably good guy coach in Tony Dungy (ditto on good guy coaches).  What they didn't have, however, was a single offensive playmaker anywhere on the roster, which absolutely killed them in their 11-6 loss in the 1999 NFC Championship Game against the Rams.

That was my formative moment.  To this day I remember discussing that loss the following Monday with a guy I worked with who'd played tight end at Utah.  We both agreed that Shaun King wasn't a great quarterback, but if he'd had even one guy who could make a play, they could have won that game.

Fast forward to January 18, 2004 and what was maybe the most humiliating loss in the history of Philadelphia sports at the hands of the Carolina Panthers.  I covered this in detail a few weeks ago, so I'm not going to rehash it here, but if we ever needed proof that the playoffs are about playmakers, there it was. 

So yeah.  In hindsight, the Eagles screwed up.  There's no reason they couldn't have won at least one Super Bowl if they'd had a true #1 wide receiver for more than a single, glorious season.  (Did you know, incidentally, that last year the Eagles had not one, but two guys on the roster who'd been drafted ahead of Randy Moss?)

Where I diverge from the hanging jury that is the local commentariat, however, is in how I parcel out that blame.  Clearly, prior to the 2004 season, Andy Reid didn't think he needed "that guy."  This was probably a product of his time in Green Bay, where the story has always been that Brett Favre didn't truly reach his potential until after he had to give up the "crutch" that was Sterling Sharpe. 

But after that Carolina loss, Reid has done nothing but try to bring in that big name guy.  They signed Owens and Stallworth, but more importantly we also know they've gone after Moss, Johnson, Fitzgerald and (maybe) Williams.  In fact, I'm not sure there's a top-flight wide receiver anywhere in the league that the Eagles haven't at some point tried to obtain.

You know what, though?  Sometimes things just don't work out.  And as we all know, the only surefire way to get a truly elite talent is through the draft, when the player doesn't have the option of signing somewhere else.  But a quick look at the history of the "can't miss" first round wide receivers of the last few years shows that many of them in fact do.  So it's a little hard to blame them for not going that route either. 

None of this is to knock the guys the Eagles now have at the wide receiver position (much).  They're quality players.  It's just that they're not the kind of wide receivers McNabb does his best with -- as I've discussed many, many times before.

They should be perfect for Kevin Kolb, however.

Of course, all I've really done so far in this post is argue in favor of conventional wisdom.  Knowing how much I hate that, I've got a question for you:  What pieces of offseason conventional wisdom among Eagles fans do you think are most and least likely to actually be true by November? 

Please show your work.

And since I know you're dying to discuss the mental state of Donovan McNabb, please know that I'm all ears.  Not to give too much away, but my own personal tipping point with McNabb rhymes with "Ram Toliver."  I still haven't gotten over that. 

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p.s.  As for recanting my position on B. Ryan, don't hold your breath.  Defensive genius and personnel savant, no doubt.  Not my style, however.  Give me winning with class every day and twice on Sunday over I-don't-care-what-your-excuse-is-fake-kneeldown bullshit.

Comments

[EaglesFanInSanFran]

Great reading guys! Let me try to add something to the mix for both of you to chew on:
Being out here in the Bay Area, Mr. Moneyball, Billy Beane, is always in the news and that got me to thinking - based on some of your comments on talent evaluation and putting together a ballclub - about a parallel between AR and Beane in terms of they both being able to put together teams that win consistantly, but ones that never win it all, with their "fatal flaw" being too much of a reliance on numbers and long-term thinking and not on "going for broke" and saying "screw the numbers, I want this guy because he has those winning intangibles."
This popped into my head because Beane is taking some major heat out here over the Harden trade to the Cubs, as summed up nicely by one A's fan as "Beane is always making moves for a tomorrow that never comes." Lou Pinella and Cubs fans, on the other hand, view the move as a risk more than worth taking (of course, given their WS drought, they'd probably applaud signing Charles Manson if he could help them).
Focusing on AR, the one time you can say he's gone for broke is with TO - and, if not for a horsecollar tackle by Roy F-ing Williams, it probably would have gotten us to the promised land.
And when it comes to numbers vs "winners," the one guy I always think about first is Jim McMahon - lousy numbers, but a winner that most guys would want go to war with!
Anyway, just my 2 cents.

[Eric]

I'm not going to look at past off seasons, but you can't say AR and the front office didn't go balls to the walls this off season.

They offered Moss a good contract and he went back to a team which has more potential. No one knows what they offered for C. Johnson, but we know the Redskins offered a 1st rounder and a possible 2nd 1st rounder and more to get him. And I would assume the Eagles weren't offering that much and they still didn't make the trade with the Redskins. There were rumors and speculation of the trades for Fitz and R. Williams, but no exact specs on those.

So, they tried and failed. I understand the "fans" point of view when they say, "We could have had Williams if they offered them the 2 1st rounders next year and Lito!". Maybe you're right. But I think that's a bad deal and I don't see how people can think it is. Do you really think this team is a Roy Williams away from winning a Super Bowl? I tend to lean to the side Derek has taken that McNabb needs open receivers whereas Kolb could probably do much better with the guys that are here now. However, I'm not willing to give away the future for Roy Williams or Chad Johnson.

But I'm also not comfortable with 19 mil sitting in the cap!

[BowenNation]

This blogstravaganza is phenominal! I have to . If anyone does a background check on me you will see that I am definitely an advocate of the Eagles acquiring a true #1 in order to be get back to the Super Bowl. However I have to diasagree with you on the position that you have to be more than just, "solid" to get the job done. I have two Championship teams in mind.

Note: These numbers do not include the Super Bowl. Both teams played 3 playoff games each before the Super Bowl.

1. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2002)
Brad Johnson QB 53 of 98 yds 670 yds, 5 td
Michael Pittman 6 rec for 63 yds, 0 td, 182 yds rushing, 0 td
Mike Alstott 8 rec for 70 yds, 0 td, 100 yds rushing, 4 td
Keyshawn Johnson 14 rec for 194 yds, 1 td
Keenan McCardell 7 rec for 50 yds, 2 td
Joe Jurevicious 8 rec for 197 yds, 1 td

2. Baltimore Ravens (2000)
Trent Dilfer 35 of 73 for 590 yds, 3 tds
Jamaal Lewis 103 att for 338 yds, 4 td
Qadry Ismail 9 rec for 150 yds, 0 td
Brandon Stokely 7 rec for 91 yds, 1 td
Shannon Sharpe 6 rc for 230 yds, 2 td

At best, "solid" would describe the Bucs and Ravens offense's. They just had to manage the game. Tampa Bay and Baltimore both had stifling defenses that carried them to their championships.