Westbrook Saga Day Four: In Which Everyone Goes A Little Nuts

The local reaction to the news of Brian Westbrook's relatively minor (or not) ankle surgery has been met rather calmly by the folks locally, I think.   The writers seem pretty measured in their takes and the fans understand that while we're not going anywhere without Westy, the guy has made something of a habit of getting dinged up and then playing lights out when it matters.  We've seen this all before.

The national folks are mostly on board with this meme, but the snippets MTC comprehensively catalogs this morning demonstrate that on another issue -- Westbrook's age -- those guys are all drinking from the same cup of coffee.

I think most of this comes from Westbrook's down year last season.  If he'd been just as good as he was in 2006 and 2007, no one would be talking about how old he was. 

It's true that the knee issue is a concern.  It bothered him last year and more than that it affected his play.  He just wasn't quite as explosive on the balky knee. 

With that said, I'm pretty convinced most of the problems with the running game last year were related to the blocking, which the Eagles seem to have addressed with three new offensive linemen and a real fullback.

This NFP post by Matt Bowen is interesting.  He relates the story of Eddie George breaking down from one of the most feared runners in the game to a guy who could barely move the pile:

Flash forward to George carrying the football for the Cowboys. He wasn’t the same back, he didn’t run with the same power and we couldn’t wait for him to get his hands on the football. Yes, the back who was feared in the NFL became target practice for defenders. <

The thing is, by the time George got to the Cowboys he was coming off eight straight 300+ carry seasons.  He had accumulated over 2,700 carries by that point.  And for a guy who's running style involved destroying anyone in front of him, that's a lot of mileage.

By contrast, Westbrook has only carried the ball 1,247 times.  And while he definitely picks his spots for going after tacklers, he's also been pretty smart about getting out or getting down once the run is over.  The amount of physical punishment he has absorbed isn't even close to what George went through.  It's really not a great comparison.

There's this bit too:

It’s not time to write off Westbrook, but this team will have to keep an eye on him and get McCoy involved early in the season. Westbrook can still put up huge numbers, but the days of him getting 25-plus touches a game might be coming to an end — if the Eagles want to make a Super Bowl run in ’09.

Obligatory chart:

Which is to say, I'm not sure those days were ever really here.  They force fed Westy in 2007 because they had to.  Beyond that, the goal seems like it's always been 18 carries, a couple screens, and however many checkdowns McNabb needs to take.

Mike Lombardi pretty much nails it this time:

[Westbrook] has never played 16 games in his career, so being healthy all season is not likely, but for the Eagles to make a run, being healthy at the right time is critical.

(Bonus Lombardi:  "By the way, I feel the Eagles No. 1 need is a blocking tight end, and have written that too many times. As Bill Parcells used to remind me often when I worked at the Hotel, 'The dog is dead, quit kicking it.' So I’ll stop kicking the tight end dog issue.")

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Thorin poses an interesting question in the comments of another thread:

Anyone else uncomfortable to hear they're reworking [our] probowl free agents technique? Not that there's not room for improvement, and not that Juan Castillo doesn't have a reputation as basically being the Jim Johnson of O-line coaches, but... It just makes me nervous, and those Castillo-coached o-line draft busts we seem to be carrying don't help.

To the main point, no, not concerned at all.  Peters' reputation is as a guy with unbelievable physical talent, not picture-perfect technique.  However many sacks he gave up last year, we can probably be certain that this work will help reduce that number in 2009.

Now, as to the second point, that's sort of interesting.  Juan Castillo does have a great reputation.  It's one I've totally bought into as well.  But it is at least mildly intriguing that with all the offensive linemen we've drafted the last few years, none of them could step in once it was time to let Runyan and Thomas walk.

If a guy with the physical tools of Winston Justice can't even get on the field as a guard, that's not really a ringing endorsement, is it?  Yeah, I know, head case rumors and all that, but effective coaching isn't just about how you take your sets.

MJG never really got to the next level -- maybe for physique reasons, but once again ... and Castillo's big success story, Jamaal Jackson, is now universally seen as the weakest link.

It's a little different too from the Jim Johnson situation.  He's a schemer and when the scheme didn't look so hot a couple years ago, I was pretty convinced it was a player issue.  The results since then bear that out.

But Castillo can't really blame the players as much, since it's his job to make them better players.  If all he's doing is helping the really talented guys get 5% better, that's nice, but it's not exactly the story that's been told.

Now I went pretty far there to see how much you could push the revisionist history.  I'm not saying Castillo is a bad coach by any stretch of the imagination.  But the experience of the past couple years suggests maybe a re-look at that reputation is in order.