Early Leader For Camp Wunderkind

Three years ago, it was Hank Baskett.  Last year, it was Lorenzo Booker.

This year?  All early signs are pointing to Jeremy Maclin as the current edition of the training camp darling.  The guy who looks so good practicing against teammates that he immediately captures the imagination of fans as maybe being the guy who can put us over the top.

It's a little unusual for that fellow to be a first-round pick.  Expectations are already so high for those guys.  It's much easier to be someone who comes in a bit more under the radar.  Fans aren't ready to critique your every mis-step.  They may not even pay attention to you unless the ball comes your way.  Which means you can screw up 10 times, make one great catch, and all of a sudden we're all convinced you're the next Marques Colston.

And yet the Maclin buzz is already building.  Garry Cobb, never one to waste too much time forming his opinions, is giving us daily Maclin updates over on his site.  The upshot?  The kid's impressive -- and he's getting better fast. 

Heck, he's even got me all excited -- and I'm the guy who wrote this all of two weeks ago.  Now I'm starting to wonder if I'm selling the dude short.

And that's the beauty of the training camp darling.  It's very pure.  A schoolboy's crush.  Sure, some of the old timers will point out that the track record for regular season success following TCD status isn't great, but who wants to listen to those bitter old men who have had their hearts broken too many times before?

This is real, man.  You just don't understand.

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So, speaking of schoolboy crushes, after yesterday's scurrilous suggestion that Chris Gocong should be placed #2 on the Whipping Boy Depth Chart behind Matt Schobel, I felt I had no choice but to defend the guy's honor. 

The challenge, of course, is that from strictly a production standpoint, it's not that easy to do.  It definitely felt like he took a big step forward at the end of last year, but take a look at his career progression:

 

So yeah, he was better in the second half of the year in terms of making plays, but that's really only because he wasn't productive at the end of last year through the first month and a half of 2008.

Here's a three-game moving average comparison for the starting linebackers last year (I put Gaither's early stats and Jordan's late stats on the same line):

I did the moving averages because the game-by-game numbers bounce around a lot and you end up with something that looks like a seizure patient's EKG.  The bottom line (literally, in this case) is that Gocong had his ups and downs, but was pretty consistently the least productive member of the crew.

And it's not just that he comes off the field on third down all the time so his stats are artificially depressed.  None of the linebackers make that many tackles on third down.  If you handed Gocong four more third-down stops last year -- sprinkled along that chart however you see fit -- his percentage would be in line with the other two spots.

The most popular Gocong defense -- that he's a defensive end being asked to play out of position -- isn't really all that strong considering he's not a very good NFL pass rusher.  I'm guessing the team would feel a bit better about his continuing issues at SAM if, when they turned him loose, he actually got to the quarterback.  He doesn't, even when they stick him on the line and give him a straight shot.  He doesn't seem to have the explosiveness needed to get there with pure speed and he's not big enough to overpower a decent tackle. 

Three sacks in two seasons is not what these guys were envisioning when they picked Gocong up four years ago.  And yeah, this is about to be his fourth year.

And yet ... and yet ... I'm not ready to give up on the guy.  He did make some strides last year.  His pass coverage seemed to get much better, at least on tight ends, with five passes defensed versus only one the previous year.  (He still struggles a bit with the faster/shiftier running backs.)

His upside on running plays is obvious as well. When he fills a hole, he really fills a hole.  There were a few collisions last season I remember where the fullback had to have walked back to the huddle thinking, "Hey, let's run weakside next time."

The core problem for Gocong is that he seems to be caught in a bit of a catch-22.  Because his linebacker instincts still haven't totally developed, he gets in trouble when he's too aggressive.  How many times last year did we see him overpursuing or otherwise getting himself out of position on plays he needed to stay home?

On the other hand, he has a parallel tendency to sit back and wait too long as well.  So, as above, when he reads everything correctly and attacks the line, he's a monster.  But if he's a step slow figuring things out before he attacks, all of a sudden he's catching the wall and not making a play.

You can't just tell him to be more aggressive, but on the other hand, you kind of have to.  Like I said, it's a tricky spot.

The thing is, he's kind of down to his last shot with this team.  He's in the last year of his contract, and as much as the Eagles' braintrust constantly touts the team's linebacking corps, I think they're talking about the group as a whole, not just the three starters. 

They have Omar Gaither, who got benched even though he was one of the three best LBs on the team last year (and I don't think they're permanently down on him).  They have Joe Mays, who may or may not be anything other than a career special teamer, but for everyone who says he's too small, keep in mind he's the exact same size as Zach Thomas.  They drafted a college SAM you can read about in today's paper.

And then there's the big one -- Stewart Bradley -- who has looked great in the middle but was drafted as a strongside guy and would seem to have little trouble making the switch.

We saw last year that the Eagles had no problem pulling a guy off the field if they thought they could get a bit more production out of the spot.  Would they really move two guys around for the same thing?  I don't know, but inasmuch as you could easily play Gaither as a two-down backer in the middle and then slide Bradley back over in the nickel, it wouldn't be that crazy a switch.  (I'll be curious to see if those guys are moving around at all in training camp this year as an early sign of what might be coming.)

All of which Gocong knows.  He's a smart dude who doesn't need to play football to make a living, but whatever he decides to do next isn't likely to be this much fun or nearly as lucrative.  I fully expect him to show up and give everything he has this year to make it all work ...

... which is why I think it's crap that this guy is even on the whipping boy list.  We know he works hard, plays hard, gives back to the community, is well-liked by the guys around him and otherwise is everything you'd want in a football player other than being a bit better than average.  Furthermore, it's not like he's obviously killing the team every time he's on the field, a la some other guys who really shouldn't even be getting paid for their work on Sundays.

If it doesn't work out for him here this year, I make a motion for a "no hard feelings" breakup.  You know how it goes.  "We had some good times together, just didn't work out, still cool with bumping into each other, right?" 

Or maybe it's just that those schoolboy crushes die hard ...