Putting The Pro Bowl In Perspective

Everyone's had his fun mocking the NFL for what it did to the Pro Bowl this year.  Domo's fact- and snark-filled piece this morning was a particularly entertaining example of the genre:

Thanks to the league's decision to move the game from the week after the Super Bowl to the week before it, no other Pro Bowl ever has had so few of the league's best players participating in it as Sunday night's game will. Just 48 of the original 76 offensive and defensive players selected for the game will be suiting up.

A total of 14 players from the two Super Bowl participants, the Saints and the Vikings, won't be playing in the game, although the league is making them fly down to South Florida a day early anyway to wave to the crowd and make nice with ESPN sideline reporters Suzy Kolber and Michele Tafoya.

...

What's left is a very diluted product.

A note, first, on the NFL "making" the Super Bowl participants come down a day early here.  There are two possibilites:  1) it's a huge issue and it's mind-blowing that someone with as much money and clout as Peyton Manning wouldn't just tell the League to kiss off and tell him where to send the check, or 2) it's not that big a deal.

Given that the teams have two weeks to prepare for each other, I'm kinda leaning towards option #2.

As for the diluted product, that's true -- to a point.  Having a Pro Bowl without Peyton and Brees sort of misses the entire point of the event.  But it's not like all the guys went to Hawaii most years, either.  Wikipedia lists 121 players on the Pro Bowl rosters this year.  The average the last few years has been closer to 100.  So even before they moved it, you still had 24 guys -- an offense, defense and two specialists -- skipping out each year because of injuries, "injuries" or fatigue.

The problem is worse this year, but consider one more thing.  These are the guys on the Saints and Colts who have to miss the game:

Colts

• Peyton Manning
• Reggie Wayne
• Dallas Clark
• Jeff Saturday
• Dwight Freeney
• Robert Mathis
• Antoine Bethea

Saints

• Drew Brees
• Jonathan Stinchcomb
• Jahri Evans
• Jonathan Goodwin
• Jonathan Vilma
• Darren Sharper
• Roman Harper

Some of those guys are no-brainers, but did New Orleans really have three of the best offensive linemen in the NFC?  Two of the three best safeties?  Did Freeney and Mathis both really deserve to be starters?  (Actually, maybe.)  Does Dallas Clark, a glorified slot receiver, really need to be there ahead of all the other actual tight ends in the AFC?

Is anyone other than Antoine Bethea's immediate family going to be bummed that he's not playing there this week?

Two wrongs don't make a right, but if moving the Pro Bowl up helps to cancel out the bandwagon fan voting that comes with teams having great seasons, maybe it's not all bad.

Quarterbacks In Playoff Losses

Reader "Steve" -- and there are a few of those, but he knows who he is -- was intrigued by the Lawlor back-and-forth last week, specifically the contention that McNabb doesn't play all that well in playoff losses.  He put together this handy chart of a number of top current and former QBs to compare Donovan's performance to the other guys:

Everyone on the chart has at least four losses in the playoffs, other than Brees, Roethlisberger and Romo.  It's interesting to note that only a couple guys have really played all that well when their teams lost.  Everyone else was pretty bad, perhaps not surprisingly suggesting it's hard to win a playoff game if your quarterback doesn't do well.

Still, McNabb is at the low end of the chart.  And what's interesting is that, yes, small sample sizes, but the passer rating numbers are a bit more stable than you might expect.  You'd have to add a touchdown and take away two INTs just to get McNabb up to Peyton's level.  Or have him complete 15 more passes than he did.

What's maybe most interesting about the chart is something Steve pointed out when he emailed me:

I added a few more recent guys -- and it's a shame that Warren Moon was only 3-7 in the playoffs, seeing as he played relatively well in a lot of those games (passer rating of 85.9, completed 64%!). 

And yet, how many times have we heard it said about Moon that while he put up gaudy numbers, he wasn't really a winner -- despite the fact that his postseason numbers were actually better than his regular season numbers.

In the end, this might be the bottom-line takeaway here. 

Team loses, QB gets blamed.

The Gulf Between The NFL And The NFLPA

There was an outstanding article in the National Football Post today by Robert Boland about the CBA situation. His general point is that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the rhetoric about the NFL’s stance that the cap has to be cut 18% … that is just the initial offer.

It also obscures a bit of reality: there was a special adjustment that boosted the cap from $123 million up to $128 million this year. Backing out that one-time adjustment alone “slashes” the cap by 4%. Now, that adjustment reflects the shortfall of the cash payout that that owners had agreed to make to players during this CBA but haven’t, so it matters to the players on a theoretical level, but the truth is, that money isn’t going to ever be paid, so it is sort of crying over spilt milk to think of this as a concession.

More importantly, Boland points this out:

But any good negotiator knows where to look for helpful benchmarks or slack in an opponent’s proposal. An effective benchmark here is likely not rolling all the way back to 2006 numbers but limiting big jumps in salary growth in future years, and perhaps both sides looking heroic by taking a 10-percent cut. That would put player salaries at $115 million per team, just about the 2008 number. Owners would get more than $400 million back from their current spending, surely enough to ease margin pressure.

Let me look at his point a bit differently. The following graph [click for full size] shows how teams actually spent in 2008 (I don’t have 2009 numbers yet, or I would use those):

 
Let me explain the data first. Team salaries, from here, represents the actual cap (not cash) spent on players in that season excluding phony LTBE incentives and other roll over amounts. So it represents “true” cap spending in a year.

The average team salary in 2008 was $114.5 million. Setting the cap at that level in 2008 would only have constrained 15 of the 32 teams.

Now let’s compare that to what really was in place in 2008. The nominal salary cap was $116.7 million. However, because so many teams had rolled over LTBE money from 2007 to 2008, the average adjusted cap number for teams was $121.6 million. So teams didn’t have to be “cap efficient” in 2008 because they had plenty of space.

Remember way back in 2005, before the new CBA went into effect? Teams would minimize cap space paid in contracts today to be able to squeeze contracts under their cap. Teams in 2008 were doing the opposite. Many deals took bigger cap hits today than they needed to and left more cap space in the future. Deals are relatively more front-loaded from a cap perspective. That doesn’t change their cash values at all, it just changes how they are accounted for.

My point is that a $114.5 million cap probably would not have reduced team spending in cash terms by much at all, even for the 15 teams with some constraints. Those teams would have just been a little more creative with their accounting. So NFL teams could have reduced their cap from an effective $121.6 million to $114.5 million, or a 6% reduction*, and players would have been relatively indifferent.

Combined with the earlier 4% adjustment that I described, and that suggests that players could agree to a 10% drop in the cap from 2009 and their actual cash payouts wouldn’t be changed.

Now, obviously there is more involved than that, but keep those general guidelines in mind when listening to stories about the huge gap in the numbers between the two sides. The players could agree to what appears to be a huge concession … and not be giving up anything that would affect their bottom line.

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* Implicit assumption: the $5 million extra cap space from roll overs would effectively remain in place. I know the Last Capped Year rules wiped out LTBE roll overs, but the Eagles effectively got around this in the McNabb and Vick contracts, for example, by moving 2010 cash payments into the 2009 cap. Other teams merely front loaded contracts to have relatively large 2009 cap hits. It is hard to know exactly what impact all this will have until we have more data on the 2009 and 2010 seasons, but I think the $5 milion assumption isn't too unreasonable.

Revisiting the ESPN All-Decade Team

Last June, ESPN decided to jump the gun and name its NFL All-Decade Team.  You'd think naming an all-decade team before the decade is done would be the dumbest part of the whole exercise, but you'd be wrong:

Safeties Troy Polamalu and Ed Reed: Lynch (seven) and Dawkins (six) have more Pro Bowls this decade, but the Steelers' Polamalu and Ravens' Reed stood apart in overall athletic ability and their flair for the spectacular play.

"I love watching [Polamalu] play," Cowboys Ring of Honor member Cliff Harris told Mosley. "They give him a lot of freedom and he's able to make a lot of plays. I think I'd love playing in that defense -- even though it's the Steelers. I'm biased, but I still think it's one of the most important positions on the field. And no one can match Reed and Polamalu right now."

Reed's production -- 43 interceptions in seven NFL seasons, compared to 34 picks in 13 seasons for Dawkins -- separates him from all challengers.

At the time, I made a typically mellow and understated case for how stupid this selection was.  But with today's news that Brian Dawkins has made the actual all-decade team, I thought it would be fun to update the comparison:

Juqua Parker -- Run Stopper

"BFH" -- who used to run his own deal over at sportsdork.com -- emailed this link to a new FO piece on which defensive linemen were best at stopping the run.

The Eagles have a guy in the top five.  No, not Trent Cole.  Not Bunkley.  Or Patterson.

I think we can officially start questioning the reliability of "stop rate" as a meaningful metric.

Likely issue?  It's based entirely on plays where the player had a tackle or assist.  Which means all the other plays someone is completely blocked out of the action don't hurt.

Chris Gocong's stop rate must be awesome.

UPDATE:  Lest you think I'm guilty of blowing off a stat that doesn't compute with anecdotal recollection -- which would be ironic -- here's your sanity check.  Outside runs to the left going nowhere?  Check.  Outside runs to the right going somewhere?  Check as well.

Not Much Today

The real job spun up with a vengeance this week.  Not enough time to finish a couple things I'm working on.

Couple funny quotes in McLane's piece on Roseman:

"He's obviously their guy," one NFL general manager said. "He knows his stuff. It's not like the Eagles are promoting some guy off the street. He's become more involved in personnel matters and looks to have a keen eye for talent."

So, would that be Heckert?  Who else knows what kind of eye he has for talent?

Also:

"I see the talent level on those teams," Roseman said. "It's very high, obviously, on both sides of the ball. I think that's important. It goes back to great coaching, and we have to make sure our talent level is real high."

Still need some work on those cliches.  Maybe McD could lend him some reading material.

Lastly, this is an honor with increasingly disqualifying criteria:

This year, three Eagles were named to the All-Joe Team - tight end Brent Celek, offensive tackle Winston Justice and wide receiver Jason Avant. The only prerequisite for being an All-Joe member is the player cannot have ever been named to a Pro Bowl.

Since the Pro Bowl is approaching something like seventh alternate at a few positions, future All-Joe selections are going to feel about as special as being a quarterfinalist in the NIT.

It's Really Over, Isn't It?

No, not the season.  Just the portion of the Donovan McNabb conversation where anyone can find something new to say.

With Senior Bowl practices this week, I have to admit I'm starting to get interested in the draft.  Not, like, hugely interested to the extent that I have strong opinions about small-school, fifth-round outside linebackers.  But kind of interested.

In relationship terms, I think we've reached the point where the guy's buddies are at least able to get him off the couch.

My go-to site for matters draft-related is Walter Football.  Other sites provide a bit more fake precision in terms of number grades and more detailed breakdowns, but Walt has the most interesting opinions.  He's also a Philadelphia guy.  If you, too, are starting to poke your head out of the covers, it's not a bad place to start.

The site has a few interesting items for Eagles fans.  If Les gets you excited about USC safety Taylor Mays this morning ...

The first thing you notice about Mays, as one former NFL assistant on the sideline observed, is that he is huge. Tight end-sized. Southern Cal listed him at 6-3, 230; he towered over the other d-backs at yesterday's practice. He moved very well for a big man, covering large chunks of the field effortlessly. When Mays ranged over to help out Alabama corner Javier Arenas, breaking up a pass intended for Citadel wideout Andre Roberts, dozens of scouts murmured appreciatively.

... Walt has a corrective:

Mays lost a ton of money by going back to school; he was exposed this season as a hard-hitting safety who can't cover anyone. There is still an outside chance someone takes him in Round 1, however.

Who's right, who's wrong?  No one knows.  Especially not now, before the combines, pro days, etc.

Although, 6-3, 230, not a deep cover guy ... wonder if we could look at this guy as a WIL ...

Moving on, Walt does the same thing every draft analyst always does when trying to predict Reid's first round pick -- go with the linemen:

#24 - Carlos Dunlap, DE, Florida
Andy Reid loves drafting linemen on both sides of the ball, and the Eagles will be looking for an upgrade over mediocre left end Victor Abiamiri this offseason.

Carlos Dunlap lacks consistent effort and was charged with DUI recently, so there's a chance he could fall out of the first round. However, Andy Reid seems to be on a mission to redeem every single football player in America, and given his new (unwarranted) contract extension, Big Red can afford to take a chance on a high-upside, low-effort guy like Dunlap.

He gets the safety in the second:

#55 - Nate Allen, FS, South Florida
Sean Jones will not be back in Philly next year. He had major issues with tackling and was a huge liability for the Eagles against the Giants.

Told you he's got opinions.

Anyway, the most interesting thing he writes isn't actually about the Eagles:

Second-round quarterbacks have a 75-percent bust rate (I'll be exploring this soon). Excluding Drew Brees and possibly Chad Henne, name one successful Round 2 quarterback in the past decade. Don't try, because there are none. Believe it or not, the next best guy is Tarvaris Jackson (Kevin Kolb being an unknown right now).

...

And by the way, this is exactly why the Rams need to draft Jimmy Clausen. If they wait on a quarterback, their options here will be Tony Pike (spread shotgun system guy), Jevan Snead (the next Kyle Boller) and Colt McCoy (a poor man's Kyle Orton).

There's a reason that excluding Kevin Kolb (who hasn't played enough to make a determination), only two Round 2 quarterbacks panned out this past decade - the quarterback position is so important, that if a guy isn't a first-round prospect, he either has at least one very glaring flaw, or numerous things wrongs with him.

I'd have to do some digging to verify the numbers, but it's certainly an interesting point.

Walt's other guy also goes defensive end:

#24 - Corey Wootton, DE, Northwestern
I spent a lot of time on this Eagles pick and this is a tough team to draft for after they picked Jeremy Maclin last year. They won't go tight end after extending Brent Celek's contract. I doubt they go offensive tackle with the contracts they gave Winston Justice and Jason Peters. On defense, like I said previously, this is a poor 4-3 linebacker class. It is also an unimpressive safety class so I doubt they go there at this juncture. The only that makes sense is a defensive end, so they reach for Wootton who was injured most of last year after recovering from a serious knee injury.

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Personally, I don't see the Eagles making safety a high-round priority this year.  This year's experience notwithstanding, you can find safeties lots of places.  Other issues are much harder to address. 

I'm also a fan of Macho's.  Yeah, he had a tough second half of the year, but he's got good football instincts, more than enough athleticism for the position, and he hits the hell out of people.  Some slack needs to be cut for a rookie who had to change positions and come up to speed on a really complicated NFL defense.  I'm excited about what he might do next year.

With safety out of the picture, the draft priorities I see:

1.  Offensive line.  I know, I know, they scored a ton of points, focus on the defense, I get it.  But right now there are two gaping holes on that line, and I think we can say for sure they're not being filled by Nick Cole and Max Jean-Gilles. 

Maybe we get lucky and the RG hole gets filled by one of the Andrews brothers, while the center position is handled by McGlynn or Shipley.  These things are possible, but how likely? 

The o-line shake-up illustrates just how tricky an offseason this will be.  It's not like Reid can say, "Ok, huge, gaping hole, let's go get a guy."  There's a hole, but maybe we can patch it, but if we can't we're toast, so we better get a back-up plan in place, but how many resources can we commit to that effort when there are problems to address elsewhere?

Crap, just made the "trade McNabb" argument again. 

2.  Cornerback.  At the top of the draft, the Eagles will do their utmost to avoid drafting for need, as Sam has demonstrated.  They're set for now at the top two spots, but Sheldon's not getting younger and the cupboard is pretty bare after that (even if they bring Ellis Hobbs back as a kick returner).  For the long term, they need a guy here.

3.  Linebacker.  I expect next year's new starting linebacker to be a guy who's already in the league.  As complicated as the Eagles' defense is, it's really hard for a young guy to come up to speed quickly enough to make a first-year impact.  Time to rent a Shawn Barber or TKO for a season or two.  With that said, this is a great position to start bringing in some more talented players, for when the rental expires.

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Why not defensive end?  Honestly, I just don't see that being an area of need.  It would be a nice position to upgrade, but with Abiamiri and JP, you have capable players.  They're just not elite.  I think it's a lot more likely that we see another one of those Trent Cole or Bryan Smith type picks at that position.  Sure, you strike out on those guys a lot, but they're low risk and it's a position where being a tweener doesn't really stop you from having success (as opposed to, say, a cornerback who's a step slow).

A Double-Sided Error

Short post today, since we have actual, non-Eagles football to care about and discuss.

Everyone's had a chance to speak his piece on the McNabb issue in Friday's thread.  Ideally we can all just stand on our previous statements and not re-hash the whole thing every time there's a new post mentioning McNabb.  A lot of good points were made on both sides, although personally I find the trade value / cap issue lines of attack much more convincing than the "McNabb sucks" arguments.

There was one issue that came up a bunch in the thread that I want to discuss, however.  There's a mistake being made by (some) partisans on both sides, and it goes something like this:

Version #1 -- If we trade McNabb, we're basically blowing up the QB position for a year, so while it might make sense over the long run, we know for a fact we're going to miss the playoffs next year and cost ourselves a shot at a ring while we rebuild.

Version #2 -- We have no way of knowing how good Kolb will be, but after 11 years of McNabb, and especially given his performance the last few years, we know for a fact he's just not good / consistent / special enough to win us a Super Bowl.

The same mistakes are being made on both sides here.  First of all, there's just way too much certainty being expressed.  If results were actually this knowable this far in advance, we could stop wasting time arguing about things like this and just go put our life savings down on next year's over/under for Eagles wins.

That's not to say we can't make some predictions with a reasonable level of certainty.  Kolb probably would throw more interceptions than McNabb over a 16-game season.  He'd also probably complete fewer deep balls, but be much more efficient on passes under 10 yards.  All of these things seem pretty likely given the histories of both men.

The unknowable part, though, comes in trying to understand how all that will balance out.  Maybe the lack of a deep passing threat means opponents will jam the line, blitz the heck out of us and render our running attack even more impotent.  Or maybe Kolb's ability to complete short passes in tight windows backs off the blitz after a couple big catch-and-runs.  We just don't know.

(He might even throw a pick on the last offensive play of the season.  Again.  Boy, that would suck.)

The second issue is one of variance and team effects.  Look at how much year-to-year fluctuation there is over time for a number of long-career QBs: Favre, Brady, Warner, Brees, Garcia, Hasselbeck, Young, Montana, McNair and even Brad Johnson.  It's not uncommon to jump 10-15 points from one season to the next.

If you accept that the Eagles did have some issues this year -- WR turnover, offensive line problems and no running game -- it's really not that big a leap to think McNabb's performance could take a huge step forward next year if those issues were addressed.

Or maybe it wouldn't.  Only one way to find out, though.

Not The Time To Trade McNabb

Since the season ended, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the Donovan McNabb question.  I've hit it from every angle I could find.  After those two crushing defeats I was even willing to contemplate some doomsday scenarios.

I understand the case for starting the future now by handing over the reins to Kevin Kolb.  I've even tried to build some arguments for why that's the right move.  But after all the discussion and all the back-and-forth, I've ended up on some familiar ground -- defending Donovan McNabb.

I'm going to start by responding to Tommy Lawlor's piece as the basis for this discussion, because it's the most comprehensive, non-tantrum-y, pro-Kolb argument I've so far seen.  Also, everyone's read it, so I can't just pretend it doesn't exist. 

I'll address most of the issues he raises, as well as bring up some of my own.  I understand you may not agree with everything I have to say, even if you actually want to bring back McNabb.  Some people will only care about maximizing wins.  I get that.  For me, that's not the only issue, although I still think McNabb is the right choice even if that's where you choose to focus.

Still, my disagreement with Lawlor starts right away:

The Eagles have to make a decision about the future of the QB position. This isn't about our feelings for Donovan McNabb or Kevin Kolb. This is about what is best for the Philadelphia Eagles. I like both guys, but of bigger concern to me is the team. I'm an Eagles fan first and foremost.

The Eagles don't owe McNabb for his great career.

Donovan McNabb is as much a "company man" as any person with a nine-figure contract can be.  For 11 years, he's been a consummate professional who:

1. Worked as hard as anyone in the locker room.  (Why did DeSean decide to come to work every morning at 7 a.m.?)
2. Never did anything to disgrace the Eagles uniform.
3. Gave us a chance to win every game he played.

In my lifetime, Donovan McNabb has been the only Philadelphia athlete who had to be perfect every time.  On every play.  In every interview.  No one else has faced the same scrutiny.  Barkley?  He gave two craps what everyone thought, so no one ever bothered thinking too hard.  Dawk?  We cheered the hits and ignored the misses.  Iverson?  Please, his transgressions were part of his charm.  Lindros?  Sure, but hockey's a niche sport, not an all-consuming civic obsession.

Schmitty might have been the one guy.  I'm too young to really have a sense of what things were like back then, but I remember enough of what was said around me at the Vet to believe he might have been close -- if he'd pitched too.

Many, many fans have a mistaken understanding of the past 11 years.  They see Reid, Banner, McNabb, Westbrook, Akers and even Trotter all in the same places and believe the last decade has just been one long run.  They're tired of not making it to the finish line.

The problem is that the prominence of the familiar faces tends to obscure all the turnover at the other spots.  Much fun has been had with the idea that Andy's in year 11 of his five-year plan, but if you really go back and look at the way he built one team, then blew it up and built another one, you'll see that we actually just finished year four of Andy's second five-year plan. 

Donovan's been here for all of that.  Along with a handful of other guys, he has been the Eagles for the past decade.  So like Lawlor, I'm an Eagles fan first and foremost.  But for me, that also means rooting for -- and caring about -- the names on the back of the jersey too. 

McNabb has been under center for some of the greatest sports moments I've ever experienced.  Damn right I want him back, if he's still getting the job done.  And make no mistake, he is.

The main argument for keeping Donovan is that he's a proven player and a star QB. We then have to judge him against those types of players. The question isn't whether McNabb is good. He is. The question is whether he's so good, i.e. special, that you have to keep him and continue to build the team around him.

To what extent have they built the team around McNabb?  If you want to build around McNabb, go get some 6-4 leapers with the size to shield off defensive backs.  The mighty mites are very good players, but they're exactly the kind of receivers you would bring in if you were building a team for, say, Kevin Kolb.

He is a winner. You can't question that. Now let's go inside the numbers to look at the quality of the wins.

2006 - Only impressive win was vs Dallas, 38-24. McNabb tore his ACL and missed last 6 games.
2007 - Best win was late in the year at Dallas, 10-6. Not our best team. McNabb was coming off ACL.
2008 - Several good wins- PIT, ATL, NYG, DAL + playoffs. Hurting McNabb is the fact we played great D in those wins. We allowed 6, 14, 14, 6, 14, and 11 points in the victories.
2009 - Best win was 45-38 shootout over NYG. Only victory over winning team was ATL, but Matt Ryan and Michael Turner missed the game.

First of all, I reject "win quality" as a metric that means anything.  It's even worse than just using wins as a proxy for quarterback performance.  I'd also mention that in the 2008 games he's talking about we scored 15, 27, 20, 44, 26 and 23 points.  These weren't exactly 6-2 ballgames.  Furthermore, we hung 48 on the Cardinals at home -- and they went to the Super Bowl.

For 2009, everyone loves to use that stat about "winning teams."  What they're leaving out, of course, is that Carolina, San Francisco, Denver and New York were all 8-8.  In other words, they had winning records against the rest of the league.  It's not like we spent the whole season beating up on Conference USA.

Notice that only 2 of the games really required lots of points. In each of those games we got a defensive TD. We also scored on big plays. Sometimes defensive breakdowns were key. These weren't games where McNabb just surgically picked the D apart.

And again, that's the problem with just focusing on the wins.  Going back to 2008, we put up 37 in the first Dallas game and lost ... 31 against the Giants and lost, because for two years this offensive line hasn't been able to get one yard when it mattered ... we even managed 25 in the NFC Championship game, which we also lost. 

He does talk about some losses next.  I don't dispute the bad games.  We talk about the PTGSOPBP for a reason. 

Moving on:

Joe Flacco led the Ravens to the playoffs in each of his first two years. Matt Ryan led Atlanta to consecutive winning seasons for the first time in club history. Mark Sanchez has the Jet in the AFC title game. These guys each benefited from strong defense and a good running attack, but it doesn't help McNabb's argument about being a winner to see these youngs guys having that kind of success.

When they get to 82 wins and 45 losses, then let's talk.

Speaking of Sanchez, last year's NFCCG came up yesterday in the comments.  Donovan McNabb's first half in that game was described as "positively abysmal" when he went 11 of 19 for 109 yards with 1 INT.

Mark Sanchez is being feted on both coasts for last week's playoff win, in which his entire production was 12 of 23 for 100 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT. 

(As a reminder, Donovan went 17 of 28 for 266 yards and 3 TDs in the second half.)

The flip side of this is that McNabb hasn't had many great games in the postseason ... You can see that McNabb is solid. When he plays well, we win. The problem is that he's struggled in our losses. He threw 3 picks in the SB and in the loss to CAR. He wasn't good in losses to NY, STL, and TB. He was putrid in the loss to Dallas this year. The one time he did play pretty well in a loss was the title game at Arizona last year.

St. Louis!  We're basing a decision regarding next year's quarterback on the 2001 NFC Championship Game.

Look, I get where Lawlor's coming from.  He's doing an extended post(ish)mortem on Donovan's entire career.  But if the question before us is what do we do right now, we need to focus on the stuff that matters.  Five championship games ago doesn't.

As for being "putrid" against Dallas, that was a team effort.  I do think McNabb missed more than his fair share of plays in that game, but we lost by 20 and a long list of issues got exposed.

Also, I'd suggest this comparison:

McNabb -- Against DAL -- 19/37, 230 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
Romo -- Against MIN -- 22/35, 198 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT

Pressure kills every quarterback.  Anyone think the Cowboys would be better off getting rid of Romo?

Donovan is 8-2 in the Wildcard and Divisional rounds. He is 1-4 in NFC-CGs. He is 0-1 in the SB. All the losses aren't on him. No one would dispute that. At the same time, if he is a special QB you would think he would have had done something in one of those games to carry the team on his back. John Elway had "The Drive". Joe Montana had a handful of incredible drives/plays. Those are HOFers, but even guys like Eli and Big Ben have great SB drives in the last couple of years.

NFCCG scores:  24-29, 10-27, 3-14, 27-10, 25-32
SB score:  21-24 

"All the losses aren't on the defense.  No one would dispute that.  At the same time, for as much credit as JJ and the defense have always gotten for carrying this team, you would think they would have done something in one of those games to carry the team on their back."

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Lawlor's next section is basically his version of this post.  As stated at the time, I really don't think this was McNabb's second-best season.  I also think the last three years haven't been as good as what we saw before.

But I was also very careful about this part:

For the purposes of this post, the words "why" and "because" don't exist.  I'm not looking to explain the reasons why McNabb had the season he did.  There will, in fact, be nothing in these numbers that will move the "why" discussion forward even an inch.  This will just be the facts.

So let's talk now about the "why."

From 2003 to 2008, the Eagles had a different #1 wide receiver every year.  Thrash, Owens, Lewis, Brown, Curtis and Jackson.  DeSean finally broke the streak this year, but the #2 and #3 guys from 2008 caught a total of seven balls in 2009.  Neither one was a factor past September.

It cracks me up when people say McNabb finally had "weapons" this year but "still couldn't get it done."  Like DeSean threw himself those 1,156 yards or Celek's near-1,000 yard season just sort of happened while Donovan was off doing something else.

For the first time in a long time, the Eagles do have a talented set of skill position players.  We have every reason to be excited about them.  But these guys are young.  Drafting Jeremy Maclin, watching him miss training camp with a contract holdout, and then gradually working him into the offense isn't the same thing as signing an in-his-prime Terrell Owens and telling McNabb:  "Now go dominate the league."

How many times this year did we see the receiver go one way and the ball go another?  And after how many of those plays did the on-field gestures (or off-field coaching) indicate that the guy on the receiving end wasn't where he was supposed to be?

Consider too the unsettled state of the offensive line.  That thing was a mess almost the entire season.  And then once they finally did get things straightened out -- albeit without their single most dominating guy -- Jamaal Jackson blew out his knee and suddenly Nick Cole was snapping balls into his butt and Max Jean-Gilles was again prominently involved.

And it's not like McNabb got any help from the running game.  The addition of Weaver kept it from being a complete loss, but I again think it's funny that people expect McNabb to not be the least bit affected by Brian Westbrook going from "pretty much the entirety of the offense" to "he's out again this week, isn't he?"

Again, I'm not trying to argue that McNabb got busted down to JV.  The Eagles have a lot of good players.  But some people -- not, it should be noted, Lawlor, for whom I have the utmost respect -- are acting like McNabb was a bottom 10 quarterback this year.  His numbers weren't bad at all.  They weren't great, either, but they were pretty good.  Consider them against the the context of all the issues he faced and they're really a credit to what McNabb was able to accomplish this year, not some sort of damning indictment of his performance.

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Oh, and he got his ribs broken.  Played through that pain too, as usual. 

How many times the last few months have we read about Sheldon's hamstring?  One of the beat writers called it an injury "you or I wouldn't get out of bed" with.  And yet the broken ribs pass unremarked.

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One of my biggest frustrations with McNabb is our Red Zone play. It isn't all him of course. We need to run the ball more. We don't have the biggest or most physical skill players. Still, we have too many weapons to struggle the way we do. Marvin Harrison and Torry Holt aren't big, physical guys. They caught TDs based on precision passes and good routes. Donovan is a QB that needs to see his receiver open. He doesn't anticipate plays with any regularity. Normally this is a trait of young QBs, but some guys never grow out of it. This is good and bad. It keeps McNabb from throwing many INTs, but it also keeps him from making some RZ throws.

I agree with every word of this.  It's one of the biggest reasons I think Kolb will have success when he finally takes over.  If you want McNabb to have success in the red zone, prominently feature Celek, Ingram and Avant.  Kolb, on the other hand, will do just fine with the small, quick guys.

Paraphrasing something John Harbaugh once said:  "Kolb killed us in the red zone in practice.  Absolutely killed us."

(This is a point for Kolb, incidentally, if I'm not being explicit enough on that.)

McNabb did make some big plays and great throws this year. He and Avant connected on some sensational plays. As impressive as that is, execution in the Red Zone is a better way to judge a QB. Those are the critical plays that can win and lose a game. Donovan threw 12 RZ TDs in 14 starts. He only completed 45% of his throws. The good news is that he didn't throw any picks. Is it enough that he's safe in the RZ? I don't think so. RZ struggles have cost us games in the last couple of years. Avoiding turnovers and making sure you get at least a FG is a way to win games, but it won't win you championships.

Now he's just piling on.  McNabb wasn't good in the red zone this year.  But it's not like this is a career-long problem.  He's had really good years and then some that haven't been as good -- variation that is extremely likely when you're dealing with such small sample sizes.

Still, it's an issue.

One of my other beefs with Donovan involves running. He won't do it much anymore. Donovan ran 37 times this year. Carson Palmer ran 39 times. Donovan is still good at it. His 27-yard run on 3rd/25 vs Denver was a great, great play. The problem is that Donovan has gotten it in his head that he should only be a pocket passer. Why waste a god given talent like mobility? Don't you think Peyton Manning would run if he could? Heck yes.

Broken ribs.  And I actually don't think Peyton would run.  He doesn't need to.

One of the arguments people like to make for Donovan is that he's never really had a strong running game to work with. The stats definitely tell you that we don't run enough. I think the combination of Andy Reid, Marty Mornhinweg, and Donovan makes the problem worse. Those guys are way too quick to abandon the run. Also, McNabb is a streaky passer. When he's cold they like to let him keep throwing in the hopes he'll heat up. When he's red hot they like to leave the ball in his hands. A more consistent, but less dynamic QB is probably a better fit for them as playcallers.

I don't see how letting McNabb throw a lot when he's hot is a problem.  Nor do I see why letting him throw a lot when he's cold is his problem.  That last line just seems like wishful thinking.  Kolb threw 51 times against the Saints.  Against KC they dialed it back a bit to 34 passes -- but still against only 21 runs.  That's 62/38.

Other issues:

Age
McNabb is 33, the same age as Peyton.  Brady's 32.  Warner's 38 and Favre is 40.  Do any of those last four guys seem like they're too old to be playing football?

Attitude / Demeanor / Chippiness / "Outstanding"
Not mentioned by Lawlor, but this stuff matters to a bunch of fans.  They should get over it.

Injury Risk
If you keep both McNabb and Kolb, you have an enviable 1-2 situation.  Deal McNabb and that margin's gone.

Experience
Matters greatly.  You see McNabb march into the Meadowlands (RIP) and you know he's ready to handle it.  Kolb may take a year or two to get there.

Bad Weather
McNabb is the ultimate bad weather advantage.  Let's see Kolb throw some balls in 30 mph November winds before we give him NFCE killer status.

Window
We have no way of knowing how long the championship window will stay open.  We thought after the 2004 season that we'd be right back in the Super Bowl the next year.  Didn't happen.  How long can DeSean Jackson be the guy he is at the size he is?  Hopefully it's 10 years.  Unfortunately, it might be more like 3.5.  Sure, you have to make some tough short-term decisions to assure the long-term health of the team, but you don't trade your franchise quarterback away right before a season you think you'll have all the pieces in places.

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The last point is a little more important, so I'm going to blow it out a bit:

Trade Value

I made the case earlier this week that you couldn't just look at the situation as McNabb vs. Kolb.  If they trade McNabb, it's really Kolb plus whatever they get back for McNabb.

It was a fun exercise to go through, but I left out a key point:  Mike Vick.

If you trade Donovan McNabb, I don't see how you can let go of Vick.  With a team that won 11 games -- and should finally have the holes patched by next year -- you don't go into the season with just one guy at that position (unless that guy is Peyton Manning).  You need a back-up who can hold down the fort, should Kolb have any kind of serious injury.

You could, of course, just try to sign A.J. Feeley.  He knows the system, can keep you in a game or two, and wouldn't be the least bit threatening to Kolb as a starter.  Unfortunately, he's not threatening for a reason.

If you deal McNabb, you're not saving much on the salary cap front.  Just about $2 million.  You're actually better off trading Vick if you want to free up some space.  [UPDATE:  Of course, this is wrong.  See Sam's comment.  I should never write about cap issues without sending it by him first.]

From a trade value perspective, I couldn't begin to tell you what the two guys might fetch in return.  I have a suspicion that the spread might be less than we think, if only because of the age issue.

So if you trade McNabb, let's say you get a first-round pick and the aforementioned $2 million in cap space.  The pick would probably come in the 2010 draft.

If instead you trade Vick, you pick up almost twice as much cap space and some sort of conditional draft pick based on how Vick behaves plays in the new city.  I think you could be looking at something like a fourth-round pick in 2010 and a conditional that could go as high as the second round in 2011.

Granted, I completely made all those draft picks up, but they sound plausible.

So, option one is keep the Pro Bowl QB, kill the Wildcat forever, get a second(ish) round pick and $4 million in cap space (which Sam keeps assuing me matters for some reason I still don't totally understand).

Option two is ditch the Pro Bowl QB, keep running the Wildcat out of obligation, get a first round pick and pick up $2 million in cap space (ditto).

Let's see ... Freddie Mitchell ... DeSean Jackson ... carry the two point zero yards per carry ...

Yeah, I think I'll stick with McNabb.

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The final question is what you do at the end of the 2010 season if you keep both these guys.  The relevance of that question of course hinges on there actually being a 2011 NFL season, but let's break down the possibilities:

1. McNabb plays out of his mind next year and we win the Super Bowl -- Um, who cares what happens in 2011?
2. McNabb plays out of his mind next year but we again come up short in the playoffs -- How out of his mind?  Like kinda out of his mind or "we put 'Owens' on the back of Avant's jersey and he hasn't stopped throwing touchdowns since"?  If it's the latter, extend McNabb and then try to tag/trade Kolb.  Again, assuming there's even football the year after that.
3. McNabb plays pretty well, not awesome, but we win a Super Bowl anyway  -- See #1.
4. McNabb plays pretty well, not awesome, and we don't win the Super Bowl -- "Sorry man, we can only keep one of you, and he's a lot younger."
5. McNabb gets hurt, Kolb comes in and plays great -- "How many zeroes at the end of that contract, Kevin?"
6. McNabb gets hurt, Kolb comes in and stinks up the joint -- "Boy, good thing we didn't listen to those fans."

Of course, the risk that McNabb might walk for nothing is mitigated by the Vick discussion above.

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Final note:  At the end of the day, I don't want to see McNabb go.  I think he's earned the right to finish out his contract and play with this team when the young guys are hitting their primes.  But this is a really, really tricky issue.  My trade guesses could be way off.  The agents for all three quarterbacks could be making threats.  Reid might decide the shiny new contract extension means it's the right time to bite the bullet.

Which is to say that if they trade McNabb, I don't think either anger or euphoria will really be all that appropriate.  We can't be that mad if he goes.  It'll be a crummy day when it happens, but the guys running the show are just trying to win football games. 

As Gabe noted in an email the other day, that conversation will not be an easy one for Andy.  He's not just going to suddenly decide to do it.

On the flip side, the celebration we'll see from some other quarters ...

Eagles Front Office Now Accepting Resumes

Tom Heckert has made his first hires from the Eagles’ scouting staff, hiring away Jon Sandusky and John Spytek. Both were given promotions with the move.

As expected, new Browns general manager Tom Heckert is bringing members of his staff with the Eagles to Cleveland. Heckert hired Jon Sandusky as director of player personnel and John Spytek as personnel executive. Sandusky spent nine seasons with the Eagles, the last two as the pro personnel director. Spytek was with the Eagles for five seasons, the last three as a pro/college scout.

It is hard enough to figure out exactly what Herckert’s role and impact on the team was; evaluating whether these lower level guys did anything exceptionally well is even harder. Sandusky was the more senior of the two, and probably the bigger loss. He replaced Scott Cohen, who is now with the Jets, as pro personnel director in the 2008 off season after being his assistant for a long time. Penn State fans will also note that he is Jerry Sandusky's son.

As I pointed out in my post when Heckert left, the pro personnel department was never a strength under Heckert. Further, when we are talking about players like Asante Samuel, Jason Peters, Stacy Andrews and Michael Vick, the pro personnel department isn’t really going to be heavy players in that decision, it is going to fall on Andy Reid and Joe Banner and the GM and maybe even the player personnel director (currently Howie Roseman). I assume that the same holds for the Will Witherspoon deal.

However, there have been things to like in the past year in areas that do fall in the pro personnel department. The waiver claims of Eldra Buckley and Antonio Dixon were positives. Signing Danny Amdenola was clearly a good call, though he fell victim to a numbers game. Bringing in Tracy White and Jason Babin as street free agents were two good moves. Leonard Weaver was great, Sean Jones was about what we expected, and  Rashad Baker was a bust. All in all … solid, though nothing spectacular, I don’t think.

Again, that doesn’t mean that Sandusky wasn’t making great recommendations that were subsequently ignored, or alternatively that he had anything to do with the biggest successes, like Dixon and Weaver. It just means that it is hard to view him as a star.

All that said, there are a few areas where this impacts the Eagles.

First, let’s note that this is probably not the end of transitions from Philadelphia to Cleveland. Teams don’t usually change college scouting staffs until after the draft, and generally don’t poach scouts until then either. I fully expect some of the college scouts to jump ship in May.

Second, the pro personnel scouting department had four people before; now it has two. One of those two is pretty notable, and I would guess is in line to replace Sandusky. Louis Riddick was hired as pro personnel assistant after Cohen left. He had been the pro personnel director for the Redskins but didn’t survive a front office shakeup. There was a fascinating Washington Post blog post/article about this at the time:

That's three important holes to fill. Riddick's release was the most profound, however. When the team began to fall apart in the 2006 season, amid a flurry of failed trades and signings, team sources said a chasm began to form between Riddick and his mentors - Cerrato and owner Daniel Snyder. There was lots of internal fingerpointing, then team president Joe Gibbs came very close to making major changes within the front office, nearly making a major hiring that could have left even Cerrato without a job, sources said, and chasms formed.

Cerrato's reputation was poor among that coaching staff - a fact that rang clear in the "Problems At The Core" series of articles the Post did at the end of that season - but Riddick was generally held in higher esteem, coaches told us at the time, and still do now. Riddick, a former NFL defensive back, also took on greater duties under Gregg Williams's defense, and Williams ended up fired by the Redskins after an ugly end to his candidacy to be Gibbs's replacement. Riddick went from a potential shining star in the organization to getting the boot after seven years here, a fairly shocking turn of events over the last 18 months or so.

Under Gibbs the offense made very little use of the Redskins' advanced scouting work, according to team sources, (the consistently uneven performances of the offense may have had something to do with that). The defense, however, incorporated the work of the scouts heavily into game planning, team sources said. Riddick and the pro scouts would detail reports on the opponent each week and on Wednesday - the start of the NFL in-season work week - Williams would turn over the floor to Riddick, players said.

The entire defense would meet Wednesday morning and Riddick would get the first 10 minutes or so to outline the report on the opponent, detail some tendencies and pinpoint a few weaknesses. (Former offensive coordinator Don Breaux is among those expected to do more advanced scouting this season). Some believe Riddick's prominence may have been perceived as a threat to Cerrato - that theory is making the rounds in NFL circles, and though I have not talked to Riddick others who have say he was given no explanation from Cerrato or Snyder for why he was let go.

Finally, this will leave three openings with the Eagles that need to be filled. As I said, I expect pro personnel to go to Louis Riddick. Assuming Howie Roseman is promoted to GM, as is widely expected, his player personnel role would probably go to Ryan Grigson, the scouting director for the past four years. He was passed over for the player personnel job when Jason Licht left after the 2008 draft, and if he isn’t promoted, I would very much expect him to wind up with the Browns. That would be really quite significant, because it could force a total reshuffling of the deck, much like the one that happened after Marc Ross was fired in 2004.