Iggles Blog - Philadelphia Eagles Blog

Happy Thanksgiving

Logistics for this one are going to be a little tough, but slingbox conquers all. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Hugely Important Article

On a day when -- I kid you not -- someone is "guessing" that the Reid/McNabb relationship is "probably" frosty, Bob Brookover writes the single most important article you've read this season:

Eagles still confident in Reid
By Bob Brookover, Inquirer Staff Writer

Now that the public has weighed in so heavily against Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid, what is the talk within the inner sanctum of the Eagles?

Two sources close to the ultimate decision-makers on the Eagles seem much more inclined to blame the quarterback's support system - the offensive line and wide receivers - than the quarterback himself for the Eagles' woes.

Likewise, the Eagles' brain trust remains confident that Reid is a quality head coach and that there is a significant amount of talent in the locker room, the sources said yesterday.

Money quotes:

"I unalterably believe these two things: We have a significant amount of talent, and that Andy is a real good head coach," the source said, representing the feelings of the voices that count. "I know it's difficult to reconcile those beliefs with what's happening on the field, but you can't just forget about what has happened here over the last 10 years."

...

"I don't see a lack of effort on the field or anything else like that, but that's one of those things you do have to think about."

...

One source noted that the Eagles' wide receivers also have been disappointing in recent weeks.  "We're dropping way too many balls," the source said.

...

It sounds as if the Eagles are determined to get younger at both tackle positions next season, which means veterans Tra Thomas and Jon Runyan, both of whom will be eligible for free agency, likely will not be re-signed. The team also has concerns about center Jamaal Jackson.

One source said that left guard Todd Herremans has been the most consistent performer along the offensive line. A year ago, he was the offensive lineman most likely not to have a starting job when the 2008 season began.

One of the sources said the back injury to Shawn Andrews has been a big problem for the offensive line because he is so much better than Max Jean-Gilles.

...

"We tried to run it eight or nine straight times and never made it," the source said. "Andy always talks about running the ball effectively rather than running it a lot, and you can see why. When you throw a lot and can't run effectively, it creates a real problem."

Despite the fact that Brookover couldn't get these guys to go on the record, the Eagles' iron-fisted approach to media opportunities means it's not that hard to figure out who's talking here.

Andy's not going anywhere, guys.  And despite the fact that the source says the team has a "significant amount of talent," most of the article is a discussion of the positions where more talent is needed.

Big article.  Big.  Kudos to Brookover for this one.

The "Talent" Question

Let's start this discussion by defining a few key terms. 

I've been calling this team "mediocre" for the past couple weeks, which seems to be driving some people nuts.  "How can they be mediocre when they almost beat the Giants and Cowboys?!"  The thing is, I'm using mediocre in its original, rather than modern, pejorative sense.  Definition #1:

me⋅di⋅o⋅cre –adjective 1. of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad; barely adequate. 2. rather poor or inferior.

To me this pretty well sums up the Eagles.  They aren't good, they aren't bad.  "Barely adequate" is spot on. 

So we're not really all that far apart when I say "They're mediocre" and you say "But they have a top ten defense."  They're 10th in the league in points allowed.  If they gave up an additional 1.5 points/game they'd be right at 16th.  If they allowed 6.3 points/game less than they do now, they'd be the Steelers. 

Looks to me like they're closer to Door #1 than Door #2.

And if you combine the #9 offense with the #10 defense, go -2 in your turnover margin, and pile in some perfectly average special teams, you're not really elite.

- - - - - -

The second term we need to define is what we mean by "talent."  That's just not a great word here.  It's too imprecise.  How can I criticize the wide receiver position when DeSean Jackson has more athletic talent in his pinky finger than most of us can claim in our immediate families?

The problem is that Jackson is a rookie.  So while he's incredibly talented, he's not as skillful as a guy who's been in the league a lot longer.  There's still too much he has to learn.

So maybe we should use "ability" instead.  Or we could just pretend the word "talent" has the sort of all-encompassing meaning we'd like it to have for purposes of this discussion.  In case I slip.

- - - - - -

Getting to the matter at hand, not surprisingly, Andy Reid says he doesn't think his team is lacking in the talent needed to make a run:

On whether he thinks the defensive line has enough talent to compete in this league: "Absolutely. We have enough talent in this room, I'm not going to say in this room, but on our football team we have enough talent to be very successful in this league."

Now we talked yesterday about the whole issue of what Andy says versus what he might actually believe, but at some level, I'm not even sure this is the right question to be asking. 

As I see it, NFL teams have three kinds of players on their rosters: weak links, studs, and everyone else.

Weak links kill the teams they play for.  The coaching in the league is way too good these days to hide a guy.  If someone has a weakness, it will eventually be identified and exploited until:  a) he fixes it or b) he loses his job.  We saw an example of a weak link in action with the way the Giants went after Chris Gocong in both coverage and play action. 

The studs are the guys the other team has to specifically game plan for, every week.  Brian Westbrook is the obvious example, although you're not seeing that many teams playing DeSean Jackson without a safety over the top any more either. 

In the middle, you have the fat part of the distribution curve.  They're not studs, they're not weak links, they're just average players doing their jobs.

Now clearly there's a lot of variation there in the middle.  We're not ready to call Stewart Bradley a stud, and Omar Gaither isn't a weak link, but obviously, one guy's still starting and the other isn't, so there's a difference there. 

That difference is on the margins, however.  Think about it this way.  Most guys in the NFL are good enough to do their jobs on most plays.  If they weren't, they wouldn't be out there.  So maybe a cornerback who's merely "decent" gives up one more catch a game than a guy who's "pretty good."  That would be a concern for the team with the decent cornerback, but probably not a game-killer. 

If, instead, that cornerback is one of the weak links, then you're screwed.  Because it almost doesn't matter what you do schematically to try to cover him, at some point, when they need a big play or a conversion or a touchdown in the red zone, the opposing team is going to try to isolate and go after him. 

- - - - - -

The talent is such in the league that I think most teams can figure out a way to scheme against a certain number of studs.  Brian Westbrook is certainly not 100 percent this year, but it almost doesn't matter on all those screen passes or flare-outs where he catches the ball and immediately three guys are swarming him.  If the Eagles had more studs at the skill positions, other teams wouldn't be able to do this.

It's not just the Eagles.  Look at the Patriots.  They've run a similar pass-heavy, spread it around offense for the last few years.  When Jabar Gaffney was the leading receiver they were pretty good.  When they got Randy Moss and Wes Welker, they went to extraordinary. 

The Cowboys have the same deal with Barber, Witten and Owens (and Williams, a little).  The Giants have a ridiculous run game and Plaxico Burress. 

In the passing game, these are all guys who can't be stopped one-on-one unless they happen to be matched up against an opposite stud on the other side. 

And it's not just on the offensive side.  Just off the top of my head, you've got Shaun Rogers, Kris Jenkins, DeMarcus Ware, Julius Peppers, and Patrick Willis.  There are dozens more throughout the league.  These are all guys who continuously win their one-on-one battles. 

- - - - -

This is why I think it doesn't work to just go down the roster and tick off names of guys you think need to be replaced.  Most of these guys are pretty good -- it's just that not enough of them are elite.

Let's deal with the weak links first.  Now that the team has solidified the four special teams positions (K, P, KR, PR), how many holes do you see out there? 

On defense, it's none in the secondary, and none on the defensive line.  One black hole at linebacker.

On offense, the receivers are all fine, the running back position is fine and QB is what it is and I don't feel like arguing about it.  The line has issues and the tight end position is completely unproductive, but I'm not sure that's totally on the tight ends.  Fullback is less of a hole each week.  Klecko is impressing me in how well he can play football.  He just needs more reps.

So it's not a swiss cheese lineup.  There are a couple of weak links, but not so many that you can blame them for all the issues.

Flip that around, and the problem comes when you start counting the studs.  Who are the guys who consistently win their individual match-ups?  On the offensive side, it's Brian Westbrook and at times DeSean Jackson.  And Jackson isn't close to what he'll be in a couple of years.

On the defensive side, it's Trent Cole and -- shockingly -- Darren Howard.  We see flashes out of Asante, but I wouldn't be surprised if the FO stats found at the end of the year that Sheldon had actually been more consistent.  I'm as impressed with Bradley as you are, but there's a big difference right now between him and young Trotter.  Big.  Beyond that we're still looking at potential.

- - - - - -

This is probably as good a spot as any to make a related point.  Have fans forgotten just how dominant guys like Dawkins and Trotter once were?  I'll admit right now that I was wrong about the struggles I thought Mikell might have in coverage, but comparing him to the young Wolverine is nuts.  They're not even close. 

- - - - - -

So what does this all mean?  Well, first of all, it suggests that no matter what plays the coaches call or who plays QB, the Eagles aren't limping in to the playoffs with their remaining schedule of truly talented teams.

It also means that Kevin Kolb better end up being one heck of a ballplayer.  Because the first-round pick they gave away to get him would have come in handy right now when we're counting the studs in this lineup.

Beyond that, this all suggests there's room for future optimism.  Yes, if McNabb is gone after this season, it's going to be an adjustment to go to Kolb.  Young quarterbacks are young quarterbacks and you just have to live with the mistakes for a few years. 

But consider the rest of the roster.  There are any number of guys who might be able to make the leap:

• DeSean Jackson -- The kid is clearly special.  If he keeps his ego in check and can stay healthy, the sky's the limit.
• Quintin Demps -- His play on special teams (coverage, not just returns) suggests a guy who is winning his individual matchups already in that phase.  If he can learn the defense, he has the tools to be better than average.
• Brodrick Bunkley -- Every month he seems to take another step forward in going from ties to wins. 
• Stewart Bradley -- He's already really good.  Another season or two of experience to shave 0.2 seconds off his reaction times and he could be right there.
• Asante Samuel -- Another guy who should feel more comfortable in his second year in the scheme.
• Shawn Andrews -- Leap made, fingers crossed he comes back.
• Johns Smith, Doe, Jones and Lewis -- Hypothetical first and second round picks in the April 2009 draft after the Eagles move Donovan McNabb. 

- - - - - -

This, incidentally, is one more reason I think Reid sticks around.  He's gotten through 80 yards of the rebuilding process, it only seems right to let him try to take it the last 20 (with maybe some new help in the personnel department).

Of course, it's the red zone that always kills this team.

Excellent Summation

Yep:

Look around the NFL. The team with the best record in the AFC, Tennessee, has Kerry Collins starting at QB. Collins is on his fifth NFL team. The Titans' first loss of the season was doled out Sunday by the New York Jets' Brett Favre - who has found new life after a full career and twilight in Green Bay.

This week's Eagles opponent, Arizona, is 7-4 with Kurt Warner (third NFL team) at quarterback. Tampa Bay is 8-3 and in the playoff hunt with Jeff Garcia, who is with his fifth NFL team.

There is every reason to believe McNabb can go somewhere else and thrive, especially if he finds a situation with a balanced offense and a good defense. Changing cities will mean shedding all the baggage and all the history, good and bad, that is attached to him here.

It comes down to this: McNabb will have a better chance to step in and win somewhere else in 2009 than Reid and the Eagles will have of returning to serious contention right away without him.

He goes on to list all the reasons why. 

And no, this wasn't the "more" I mentioned. 

It's So Cute When They Use The Lingo

It's pile on time among the Philly commentariat, so even non-football guys like Bill Conlin are lining up to get their whacks in.  Here's his take on the last few weeks:

Eras rarely end with a cataclysmic collapse. What happened in the 13-13 Bengals tie and the Ravens no mas belly-up were dead-cat bounces. The real bottom came with America watching - or so NBC would like to think - 3 Sunday nights ago, with that rumor of a running game unable to gain key inches, let alone a yard, and the Giants relentlessly moving the sticks with a three-headed ground attack. Let the 36-31 defeat stand as a gallant last hurrah for this flawed and fading assembly of rusting Andy Reid parts.

Yeah, so no, that's not what it means.  Pretty much backwards.  Now if they had won those games...

More later.

The Nixon Question

The most famous moment of the Watergate hearings came when  Republican Senator Howard Baker asked White House Counsel John Dean, "What did the President know, and when did he know it?"

If I'm Jeff Lurie, that's the question I'm asking myself this morning.

It's annoying that I seem to need to write this every time, rather than just stating it once and moving on, but since the same question keeps coming up, here's what I think about Andy Reid.  I don't think he's forgotten how to coach.  I don't think his offensive system has been "figured out."  I don't think his play-calling -- which often isn't even his play-calling -- has been the real problem this year.

I do think he's never properly valued the run game.  I do think he continues to be a much better coach from Monday through Saturday than he is on Sunday.  But the Eagles are not a mediocre team this year because he's suddenly become a bad game-planner.

They're a mediocre team because they're a mediocre team. 

All that stuff about "he should have run the ball, no wait that didn't work, he should have passed the ball" is just a distraction from the real issue here.  Knock yourself out arguing about that, but in the end it doesn't matter.

What matters is that Andy Reid is the architect of the least talented team in the NFC East.

- - - - - -

We'll never know exactly how the Eagles' front office works.  The folks at the top have overlapping titles and indistinct job descriptions.  So we can't say definitively who made what mistakes.

But Andy's the grand poobah of that whole deal there, as he might say (not the poobah part), and I find it hard to believe that if he ever came into conflict with Heckert or Banner or whoever is running the scouting these days, that Lurie would ever side with the other guys. 

So now Lurie has a couple problems.  The first is that there's always been a little kernel of truth to the idea that Reid won (early) with Ray Rhodes' players.  Not a HUGE boulder of truth, because this roster certainly wasn't loaded with talent when he got here, but it didn't hurt that guys like Brian Dawkins and Tra Thomas went to all those Pro Bowls. 

The second problem is that the Eagles have now gone through pretty complete cycles with two different (nominal) GMs, and the results upstairs have continued to lag behind the results in the coaches' offices.

This is why Lurie needs to ask himself what Reid knew, and when he knew it.  If the leadership of this team got together this summer, cracked a few cold ones, and assured Lurie that happy days were here again, then we have a serious problem.  Because that would mean these guys don't have a good handle on their roster, aren't doing a great job evaluating talent, and continue to be overly optimistic in their approach to developing players. 

But what if there's an alternative explanation?  What if those same people met two winters ago and laid out a plan for the future of the franchise that made it clear they knew some rebuilding was in order?  After all, it's not that hard to pinpoint where a lot of the problems lie:

1)  The Eagles have aged badly at a number of key positions, such that former Pro Bowlers at quarterback, safety and left tackle aren't the same guys they used to be and former Pro Bowlers at cornerback, middle linebacker, defensive end and defensive tackle aren't around any more.

2)  Two bad drafts hollowed out the talent base just at the time those picks should have been stepping into starting roles.  (Check out '03 and '04.  With Andrews out, there's one guy still on the roster from those two drafts.  And he just got benched.)

This would explain a lot:

• Why they drafted Kevin Kolb when they could really have used some immediate impact talent to make a run.
• Why they traded their first round pick to Carolina for a first-rounder next year and two immediate line prospects (Trevor Laws and Mike McGlynn).
• Why no younger players got the patented Eagles' early extension this year (Banner blamed the salary cap, but check out what he said: "I'm a little reluctant to lock in to too many players without knowing what the next cap will be. Also, we're only a couple of years away from the next round of television deals. So you don't know what's going to happen with that. You don't know what your player costs are going to be. I'm glad that, for the moment, we don't really need to do anything."  Not sure I properly weighted that last part when it first came out.)
• Why they were unwilling to make any go-for-broke free agent moves this summer or fall.  Why bring Tony Gonzalez onboard a sinking ship when you're going to need that pick next year to continue rebuilding your core?

Now I realize that not once in the last two years has any member of the Eagles organization come out and said, "Please be patient, we're rebuilding."  But that doesn't really prove anything.  As long as they can maintain the illusion of competence, there's no point in bumming out the paying customers -- rendering them non-paying, non-customers -- nor do you want to create an atmosphere around the team where guys think, "It's ok we lost, we're not really trying this year anyway."

But this makes a huge difference for Jeff Lurie.  If the guys he has running this team didn't know what was coming, then it's clearly time for some different guys to be running this team. 

If they did know, then you still have to watch the way things go the next few weeks.  There's a difference between ugly and unraveled and Lurie needs to decide which one we're seeing. 

But assuming the team doesn't crack and this is, ahem, "all part of the plan" ... then at least recognize that it's time to level with the fans.  Now that we know winning out isn't going to solve everything, you're not going to get away with just telling everyone it's steady as she goes.

Not if you want to be able to show your face in the city, at any rate.

Oh Come On

This is stupid:

In the fourth quarter, Kolb drove the Eagles 69 yards to the Baltimore 1-yard line. He failed to get into the end zone on a quarterback sneak, and then suffered from the same sketchy play-calling as McNabb did - a pass play from the goal line that Ed Reed picked off in the back of the end zone and returned 108 yards for a touchdown.

It's not sketchy play-calling to call for a QB boot on second-and-goal from the one.  Every coach in NFL history has made that call.  It's bread and butter down by the goal line, and when the sneak didn't work, it made perfect sense.

We're not in high school any more.  This is an NFL quarterback who supposedly beat out A.J. Feeley this summer for the #2 job.  You going to just call running plays, even though none of them work?

I know this is a small point, but I'm so friggin' tired of this "anything sticks" brand of criticism. 

WHAM

That, folks, is the sound of the door slamming shut on the Eagles' 2008 season. 

Oh sure, the team will talk a good game this week.  How they're not out of it yet.  How they just need to make a little run.  How anything can happen in the NFL.

Nope.  It's over. 

The wheels are off, the lights are out, it's time to close the book on Kellner.

Andy Reid admitted as much at halftime when he benched Donovan McNabb.  Yeah, McNabb was playing like crap again today.  There's no question. 

However, after Kevin Kolb came in and did his best Mike McMahon impression, it was just as clear that Donovan would have given this team its best chance to win today. 

McNabb's had a hell of a run here.  I doubt his career is even close to over.  But even if he trots back out next week as the starter, his career in Philadelphia is done.  We're just waiting to see what date goes last on the tombstone.

But it's time to find out what Kolb can do.  I doubt he's as bad as he looked today, but he's not getting any better sitting on the bench.  Throw him out there, let him get a taste of those NFC East opponents this year so he's better prepared next year for what's coming.  Find out if he's got it.

It's also time to get all those other young guys into games, starting next week against the Cardinals.  I want to see Booker.  I want to see Demps.  I even, yes, want to see Winston Justice. 

Reid isn't going anywhere, folks, so this isn't the end of the Andy Reid era.  It is, however, the end of the second third McNabb era.  The one that kind of ended up sucking, most of the time. 

I don't blame McNabb.  Those of you who do will probably be a lot less vocal today, after the anointed one came in and looked like crap.  But in the end, it doesn't really matter.

Either way, it's over.  Time for Act IV.

Ravens Open Thread

UPDATE:  I was playing with this this morning and it's way too buggy to use now.  So please continue to shout across comments as per usual.

TypePad has upgraded its commenting platform and -- thanks to a notification from Tom about it -- I've signed up for the beta.  It's got new features like user profiles you can use across sites, thumbnails, blahblahblah, but the cool thing is that it now allows threaded comments.

So rather than having to say, "I'm responding to that guy three posts up, no, the other one," you can just hit reply and have it appear underneath. 

Welcome to state of the art for 2007, people.  Enjoy the new power responsibly.

Week 12 Picks

The results haven't been compiled in awhile, so I don't know how well I'm doing.  But I have a bad feeling.

The best part, though, is that now I'm getting emails from the other guys that say things like:  "Derek if you want help writing a Football Rules 101 for Iggles Blog let me know, it would be a public service and that is a nonpartisan effort I can get behind."

Thank you, Donovan.

Picks after the jump.