IBvBB Blogstravaganza (Part 3)

This is part three of our discussion with Gabe, the guy who continually makes oblique Simpsons and sci-fi references while discussing the Eagles over on BountyBowl.com.

For those who missed the beginning, part one is here on my site.  Part two is over on his.

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Gabe,

It turns out the hardest thing about this little discussion we're having is avoiding my comments section all day.  It's not uncommon for me to write something that's less than crystal clear in my posts -- and by "not uncommon" I mean it happens pretty much every day. 

That's sort of the deal with this blog (and most others).  I can either churn out an endless series of first drafts with the goal of putting forth the greatest number of new ideas possible, or I can spend a few hours each night trying to polish what I've already written, with the inevitable result being that I would write much, much less.  I think the first option is better, plus it allows this site to continue to be my writing playground and escape from a world where I must ensure our messaging leverages our existing brand position and is strategic, on-target and impactful, while also offering applicability to a wide range of possible audiences, whether corporate, consumer or political...

The problem is that if I venture into the comments to respond to something I wrote earlier, I'm basically clarifying/adjusting something that you should get a first crack at.  That makes it a moving target and isn't really fair. 

So I bit my tongue all day.  Which now leaves me with this:

1. Not sure the Marlins intended to tear everything down after the first WS.  I think I remember instead that when the stadium deal didn't go through, ownership had a tantrum.
2. Easy to forget what 10 years of sucking feels like.  It sucks.
3. I've been to two Redskins games in Washington.  Both times the Eagles won.  Both times the fans walked around after the game yammering about how the Eagles had never won a Super Bowl.  Didn't stop us from kicking your asses five minutes ago, dude.
4. Agreed totally.  I loved the Jeff Garcia experience, but felt the same way.
5. Exactly.
6. I said "classless" not "clueless."  And because it's my hypothetical. 

You bring up an interesting point about the 1993 Phillies.  Were those guys really a "fluke" though?  They sort of came out of nowhere, but after that 17-5 start, it felt all season like there was something special going on there.  If anything, not winning because of a couple of horrific blown saves felt like the fluky part.  That was a team of destiny.

Moving on to your specific questions, let's talk first about the Eagles' data-driven approach, since nothing drives sports blog traffic like an in-depth discussion of spreadsheets. 

I'm like you on this one -- totally without any hard facts to go on.  All we ever get are those occasional cryptic remarks from Andy Reid where he says something like, "I've looked into that and found that basically you idiots don't know what you're talking about."  But something has to be in that famous big fat binder, and it can't all just be calisthenics schedules, right? 

In fact, I'm still waiting to hear an explanation for one of those remarks Reid made last season:

On what his ideal run-pass ratio would be:
"I don't do that. I know that this offense is the best when it's as close to 60-40 or 50-50 as you can get it. I also know that, through studies that I've done, with a number of Super Bowl winners, that really doesn't matter as you go through there. You guys might take your time to do a little homework on that." 

If you follow the link to that post, you'll see that I actually did go back and "do a little homework on that."  What I found is that either my methodology didn't match what Reid meant ... or else he was kind of full of crap on that one.  I'd still love to find out what he was talking about some day. 

I also think there's a clear Moneyball slant to the team's thinking about personnel acquisition, but it's a LOT more refined these days than it was a few years ago when it basically seemed to boil down to: "Don't spend money on linebackers."

The biggest thing we've seen the past few years in the draft is the Eagles drafting more than their fair share of guys who dominated at the small-school level.  It's one thing to draft those Wheaton guys with freebie picks in the sixth round.  It's another thing entirely to be consistently taking guys from Cal-Poly, McNeese State and Saginaw Valley in the top half of the draft. 

All of which leads me to conclude that the Eagles think there's a market inefficiency around small-school players in the draft.  And it's one they think they can exploit.

The rumor for years for why the Bengals drafted all those thugs young men with character flaws was simply because the team refused to invest in its scouting department.  Faced with an inability to identify the best all-around prospects, the Bengals figured they would be better off gambling with those character issues, since even a blind squirrel could see these guys had talent. 

What if the Eagles are in the opposite situation?  What if they provide more resources to their scouting department or have otherwise figured out a way to increase their efficiency there?  Then they could -- in theory -- invest time in a broader range of players.  This would give them the chance to really do their homework on guys from schools where scouts don't usually hang out.

Or maybe the explanation is even simpler than that.  Maybe every team rates these guys the same way athletically, but other teams dock them more "points" in their evaluations for having played at a lower level of competition.  If the Eagles did a study on how those small-school guys have historically performed in the NFL, maybe they realized that there was too much of a discount being factored in.

Whatever, none of those ideas explain why the Eagles -- a team that seems committed to staying with a 4-3 base defense -- continue to draft so many guys everyone else seems to think would fit best as 3-4 outside linebackers. 

Just looking at the roster right now, they have clear 3-4 linebackers in Chris Gocong, Andy Studebaker, Bryan Smith and Chris Clemons.  Heck, that was actually the position Clemons played last year.  You could even throw in Trent Cole and Juqua Parker as two more guys who were looked at as tweeners coming out of college. 

I realize Jim Johnson likes his guys to be versatile, but that's still sort of weird.  For a team that seems to put so much emphasis on production at the college level, there's a whole lot of projection going on at those two positions.

One more NovaCare mystery I'd love to learn more about.

Since I need to wind this down, I want to shift gears to another topic we both care a lot about.  Play calling.  You've mentioned on a few occasions in the past that you feel like you can predict with about a 50 percent success rate what the Eagles are going to do in any given down and distance situation.  Leaving aside the issue that predicting "pass" every play would generally be a profit maximizing strategy in that game, what do you think the problem is and what can be done about it?  

I'm kind of split on this issue.  I do think the Reid/Mornhinweg pairing might be a little bit paint by numbers in its approach to attacking a defense.  That's one of the reasons I'm so irrationally excited about the hiring of the mysterious (and silent) Mark Whipple.  Something called the "whiplash offense"?  Yes, please.  I'll take two.

But beyond that, I'm not so sure the issue is having predictable playcallers as much as it is having predictable players.  After all, if it's a crucial time in the game, 65,000+ people in the stadium know the ball is going to Brian Westbrook.  There are only so many ways for that to happen.  Maybe if the Eagles had a few more -- ahem -- playmakers out there, they'd be able to mix it up a bit more. 

Or is Kevin Curtis really, truly a number one wide receiver and I should just shut up about the fact that he doesn't seem to be able to run past anyone on the outside under the age of 42?