No Air Quotes Required

Well that was certainly a short honeymoon.

The Eagles hadn't even finished ripping the wrapping paper off their new toy Sunday before the local grinches / offensive-line-technique-experts started bashing the move. 

This crap drives me nuts. 

Yes, we're all well aware that Peters gave up 11.5 sacks last year.  But that's a conversation starter not an argument finisher.  Do people really believe that an ability to wave around a single data point somehow means they have a better handle on this guy's abilities than, say, the head coach and former offensive lineman who's been watching tape of his play for years and had to go sell this move (and the accompanying $10 million / year contract) to his owner?

That is, quite simply, ridiculous.

And it once again proves that considerations of fairness rarely enter the minds of the most hard-bitten organizational critics.  It's all about points scored, not actual reality.

Just out of curiosity, how many sacks did he give up in 2007?  Anyone know?

Yeah, figured.  It was six.  And yes, of course I had to look it up. 

Here's another question for the know-everythings.  What percentage of the time was Peters left alone against the other team's top pass rusher?  Is that figure high or low for an NFL LT?  Does his QB take a lot of sacks?  Is he a guy with good pocket presence or is he someone who -- like the younger Donovan -- has a tendency to slide right into the spot where the pass protector thought it would be safe to direct his rusher?

I can answer at least one of those questions for you:

"They left Jason on an island the whole time the last couple of years and he was able to do that. Their protections are a little different than what we do, but it was nice to see him out there all by himself and have confidence that he can do that."

Look, we ran the numbers last week.  I couldn't tell you what the margin of error is, but broadly speaking you've got about a one-in-five shot of nabbing a Pro Bowler at the bottom of the first round.  (And according to some draft numbers Gabe showed me over the weekend, for OTs it's even lower.)  If the Eagles had packaged up a bunch of picks to move all the way up to the top, then you're looking at a coin flip.  For the cost of a #4 this year and a #6 next year, the Eagles just took that number up to something approaching 100 percent.

Reid made pretty much that same argument in his press conference:

"There are some very good offensive tackles in this draft. The tackles are going to go very high. For you to get from 21 to the top five or six or seven pick, that's going to use up quite a bit to get there. Then it's a 50/50 shot from there. We had an opportunity to get somebody who is proven and has done it in this league and actually played against the NFC East and was successful playing against the NFC East."

This was an awesome move.  Was the opportunity cost the forfeiture of a chance to get Boldin or Edwards?  Yeah, maybe, despite Banner's best efforts to suggest otherwise.  But if that's the only reason you don't like this deal, I'd urge you to consider the case of the New York Giants.

Eli Manning has not been and never will be one of the league's great quarterbacks.  But if you give him a great offensive line and a punishing running game, he's going to have success, simply because defenses are forced to commit extra players to come up and stop the run.  Once you do that, the secondary opens right up.

It makes little difference in that regard whether the safety is spoken for because he's double-teaming someone deep (a la Edwards) or stuck at the line trying to stop the run.  In either case, things open up.

The Eagles' great flaw the last couple years is that they haven't had enough guys consistently able to win their individual match-ups.  Peters is one of those guys.  This was a great move.