Great Read From Tommy Lawlor

Obviously there's a ton of overlap between the two readerships, but just in case you're not reading Lawlor -- who also does Eagles Blitz -- here's a great self-scouting post he has over at ScoutsNotebook.

And yeah, I'm a couple days late with this, but I don't read him until after I do the video rewind each week.  Then I compare what I saw to what he wrote.

If you scroll up from the link above, you'll see his version of the KC video rewind.  Something we both noticed:

"[Peters] Had a good block on the option play we ran to his side. He and Cole doubled the DE, then Jason released and went for the OLB. He got a hand on the guy, but couldn't make a clean block. That LB forced McCoy out of bounds. Jason slapped his hands together when he saw that, mad at himself for not making a better block. I love having a LT who has that kind of mentality. Run blocking isn't a necessary evil. It is a good thing and getting LBs will lead to big plays for the RBs. Tra never showed that kind of an attitude in his play or actions."

I loved that too.  You see that stuff from Peters more than most guys, which is one of those, "Ok, he actually cares," moments that are good to see. 

You can actually see that play in the first video of the rewind.  Just watch Peters.

Time To Start Boning Up On This Stuff

New homework assignments.

Bring On The GCobb Training Camp Reports

And so it begins.  For the out of towners, GCobb will get you your fix.  Just remember these simple rules to ensure safety and maximize your enjoyment of that site:

1. Refresh often.  Cobb posts frequently this time of year, knowing he's the eyes and ears of fans across the country.
2. Read holistically.  He doesn't believe in one post per issue.  You may have to read two or three different pages before you get his full argument. 
3. Confirm with other sources and adjust perceptions accordingly.  If all the media types think Rookie A looks good and Cobb thinks he looks great, the kid probably looks great.  If no one else is talking about him, but Cobb still thinks he looks great, it's likely Asante Samuel was just going easy on the guy.
4. Don't be a (rhymes with whoosh-rag).  Look, he doesn't care about typos.  There's no need to point them out.  (Comment registration was a great step for those guys.)
5. Finally, know yourself.  If you're a McNabb hater or member of Kevin Kolb's immediate family ... don't go over there.  Just don't.

Breaking Down PFP

^{- Posted by Derek -}

The guys from Football Outsiders have changed the name, but it's still the same great book.  And since there's a good chance this is a temporary change -- what with them maybe even having a publisher and all next year -- I'm sticking with the old name.

I'm going to do this post a little differently than in years past.  Typically, I've gone through the entries for the Eagles and their NFCE brethren, picked out the juiciest morsels for sharing, and then riffed from there.

I'm mixing that up a bit this year, for two reasons.  The first is that the book is now a digital download.  And while I sort of miss having the big ugly volume to flip through, you can't really use the "Amazon hasn't shipped my order excuse" any more. 

The second is that I think they got a number of things wrong this year.  And I'm going to save my precious excerpting allowances to explain why.

- - - - - -

Starting point:  They don't love the 2009 Eagles, predicting only 9.3 wins and assigning the team a 27 percent chance of being a "Super Bowl contender" (11+ wins).  One reason?  Injuries:

One of our biggest concerns about the Eagles in 2009, in fact, is ... not a single member of the rotation at either defensive line or linebacker missed a single game a year ago, something that’s extremely unlikely to recur. That health even extended to the secondary, where the four starters combined for a total of 63 starts, with only Asante Samuel missing even a single game due to injury. That’s also not likely to recur in 2009.

In response, I would argue that the Eagles are extremely well positioned to handle ordinary injuries on the defensive side of the ball, due to the terrific depth they've assembled (major injuries, particularly to a guy like Trent Cole, are going to be tough for any team, but there's no reason to assume the Eagles are any more likely to suffer such a fate than any other team). 

In PFP's own words:

No team in the league has more quality or depth at corner, one through four, than Philly.

So that handles corners.  At linebacker, if Bradley goes down, that's going to hurt, but they seem to have replacement-level backups at both outside positions.  At tackle, Trevor Laws played well in limited action last year, and although you'd worry about weardown if one of the big guys blows a tire, he'd likely be fine as a short-term replacement against anyone but the Giants.  Defensive end is extremely deep and while no one's replacing Cole, there are plenty of able bodies.

The one position you'd worry about -- from an unproven back-up perspective -- is safety.  If Jones beats out Demps, we still won't really know how Quintin will do out there.  If Demps wins, then Jones is perfectly capable of starting.

So yes, injuries are always of concern.  Please know, dear football gods, that I am not mocking you.  We always worry about injuries.  But if a guy goes down, the Eagles' defense seems like it has ample reinforcements.

- - - - - -

Fun fact #1:  The Eagles ran in second-and-long situations only 37 percent of the time last year, the 19th-highest rate in the league.  So much for the theory that every drive has to start:  "Incomplete pass, Run up the middle."

- - - - - -

The FO guys also aren't all that high on Todd Herremans:

Herremans will compete with Max Jean-Gilles for the second season in a row for the left guard spot ... Had Jean-Gilles not been filling in for the injured Andrews at right guard, he very well might have lost his spot for good ... If it were up to us, we’d go with ... Jean-Gilles at left guard ...

As we discussed a week ago, this observation does not hold up to close scrutiny.  Herremans was very good last year, MJG was uneven, and now that we have the numbers to back this up, I feel pretty confident in knocking back the MJG train.

- - - - - -

Fun fact #2:  In 2008, the Eagles ran "max protect" 10 percent of the time.  Going back to 2007 and 2006, the figures were 13 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

- - - - - -

Looking at the rest of the line, they have this to say:

Furthermore, our research indicates that the best offensive lines are the ones that experience continuity, so while Philadelphia has added superior talent with their free agent acquisitions, it may take a season for that talent to gel into a superior line.

The last bit is certainly true.  It might take some time for these guys to figure each other out, especially with all the injury/rehab issues at play.  With that said, I remember their essay on offensive line continuity, and I also remember not finding it all that persuasive at the time. 

To re-hash, for the 2007 PFP, they ran a correlation analysis that found offensive line continuity was correlated with good things, like winning and offensive DVOA.  The directionality question was almost completely unaddressed (you don't make changes to offensive lines that are playing well, and injuries suck).  And I'll quote this part:

Continuity does not measure whether the new lineman is a top pick or a star free agent or some guy off the practice squad. 

Exactly.

- - - - - -

Fun fact #3:  "On offense, the Eagles had the league’s biggest difference in rushing DVOA depending on how many running backs were in the formation. With one back, they averaged 5.0 yards per carry with 29.1% DVOA; with two backs, they averaged 3.2 yards per carry with -13.1% DVOA."  Yep.

- - - - - -

The FO guys are very high on Bunkley and Patterson:

The ascension of the defensive tackle combination of Mike Patterson and Brodrick Bunkley from promising to elite came over the second half of the season ... They’re not dramatic, penetrating one-gap tackles who accrue tons of defeats, but simply a pair of players who teams struggle to account for on every play.

As we've discussed before, I think those two guys are very, very solid, but I'm not ready to give them elite status yet.  (And you'll kindly note how closely that description above mirrors my prediction for Patterson from before the 2007 season, when he was still getting a lot of crap.)

Speaking of previous discussions, let's take another look at that sack post from May.  This is from the comments:

Let's revisit the numbers question when PFP 2009 comes out (in whatever form they're going to end up doing). When that happens, we'll get solid numbers on things like QB hurries, which will give us a more complete picture of their pressure.

Well we've got the numbers ... and they ain't pretty.  Patterson can add three hurries to his 0.5 sacks.  Bunkley had one hurry, in addition to his two sacks.  Talk about roles all you'd like, but that's pretty much case closed on how much pressure those guys got.  (Unless Joyner can bail them out ...)

With that said, those aren't remotely the scariest numbers in that table.  This one is:

Player .......... Sack .. Hurry
Darren Howard ... 10.0 .... 4

That is, quite simply, an unsustainable ratio.  I'll have to do some more data collection to put that in better context, but what it means is that Howard was converting an insanely high percentage of his pressure opportunities into actual sacks.  That's a bit like a baseball player having an unreasonably high batting average on balls in play.  You're going to get regression to the mean the next year.

That's one more reason to worry about the interior pass rush.  At this point, if I'm on the Eagles defensive coaching staff, I'm drawing up lots of ways to get second-level guys free coming up the middle.

- - - - - -

Fun fact #4:  "Asante Samuel broke up 31.2 percent of the passes in his direction, a percentage surpassed only by Corey Webster amongst starting corners."

- - - - - -

Here's a head-scratcher:

Middle linebacker Stewart Bradley was about what we expected last year; he’s effective against the run and a sure tackler, but he still has a ways to go in coverage. Strongside backer Chris Gocong is probably the unit’s best player ...

The most charitable explanation is that it's doubtful FO's advanced stats have yet figured out how to account for plays where the linebacker misreads the action and gets washed out of the play.  But it figures the smart guy would do well on the smart guy stats, however.

With that said, no, he isn't.

- - - - - -

Fun fact #5:  Asante Samuel really has no interest in tackling running backs, thank you.

- - - - - -

Quick hits:

LeSean McCoy -- "Well, the bad news is that he can’t pass block and he has serious fumble issues ..."

Brian Westbrook -- "Simply put, there’s not enough cartilage left in Westbrook’s knee ... About the only option the Eagles would have left would be Synvisc injections, the same treatment Randy Johnson uses to keep his knees lubricated. That’s Westbrook’s last resort, and honestly, it’s not that far away from coming into play."

Kevin Curtis -- "[A] player like Curtis, who operated out of the slot and didn’t play on every down, was less likely to get injured in his part-time role than as a primary receiver for the Iggles."

DeSean Jackson -- "One thing Jackson needs to work on is disguising his cuts and his routes; just under 16 percent of the passes thrown to him were defensed, far worse than the 4.5 percent averaged by the rest of the team."

[Ed. note: Or is he just one of the few guys McNabb has trusted over his career to actually make a play on the ball?]

Maclin -- "Expect Maclin to be a part-time receiver and return specialist this year before emerging as the Eagles’ best receiver by 2011, assuming that he can stay healthy."  More on Maclin in a bit.

McNabb -- "He’s accurate enough to play quarterback in a West Coast offense, but his erratic mechanics yield stretches of extreme wildness (he led the league with 14 incompletes where our game charters marked the defender as 'Hole in Zone')."

[Ed. note: That's just funny.]

- - - - - -

Fun fact #6:  Buy the book.  "Turn" to page 507.  Check out the chart at the bottom.  Seems awfully definitive.

- - - - - -

The last thing I feel I should at least mention -- Sam pointed it out -- is the "Playmaker Score" analysis in the essays at the end of the book.  They create a new wide receiver metric for college production (TD / G * YPC) and find that higher numbers are better predictors of NFL success.

Maclin's college production gives him a 10.0, which puts him in the third tier, not a good place to be. 

I would note in response that DeSean Jackson's "Playmaker Score" appears, if I'm doing the calculations correctly, to be 9.4. 

He seems to be working out ok.

More On Those Spending Stats

Ok, this is going to be a bit convoluted, but stay with me.

This weekend, Eagletarian linked to a story by NFL.com's Jason La Canfora about how much each team had spend in terms of actual salary dollars from 2004 through 2008.  We linked to it, a spirited discussions has ensued (here and elsewhere), and so it goes.

Anyway, today, Eagletarian linked to La Canfora's latest offering, in which LC demonstrated he's just as bored with the offseason as the rest of us by breaking down the spending per win. 

Now, I tell you all that just to establish where everything is before I link to this post on Don't Boo The Birds, in which those guys do the same thing LC did in his most recent post, except they also do the analysis for postseason wins and provide some commentary on the bottom for why some teams really stuck out.

Anyway, it's an interesting read.  I still hope when the MSM guys get back from vacation they pick things back up by waving the numbers in Banner's face and demanding an explanation. 

As mentioned before, the "controversy" itself is meaningless, but it sure is fun when the Eagles have to pull back the curtain a bit.  Bray, jackals, bray...

Fresh FO Content!

Yeah, we don't use exclamation points around here very often, but when the Football Outsiders guys start giving premium content away for free, we're all over it.

Gabe noted a few weeks ago that FO would be doing something a little different with Pro Football Prospectus this year, due to a little issue related to not having a publisher.  In an attempt to assuage everyone's concerns that maybe this year's version of the Football Outsiders Almanac (née PFP) wouldn't be the same great offering, they're giving away sample chapters for free. 

You can start today with the New York Giants chapter, wherein we get to see the new book is pretty much the same as the old book.  Long live the new book.

Now, with all of that said -- and really, I can't overemphasize how much you need to buy this book -- I know from personal experience that there are times one can get so excited about disproving conventional wisdom that, well, you get out in front of the data.  And they've done that here:

The correlation of the incident to the team’s downswing in performance yielded a simple narrative: The Giants offense wasn’t as good without Plaxico Burress, and it turned them into a totally different team.

That narrative is simply untrue.

The Giants’ passing offense actually improved with Burress out of the lineup ... The running game declined some without the threat of Burress stretching the field to concern opposing safeties, but it wasn’t enough to drag the offense down; the team’s offensive DVOA was 20.6% with Burress in the lineup and 27.8% over the eight games he wasn’t around.

Those topline numbers are all well and good, but check out the chart they also helpfully include:

(Ordinarily I'd not just pilfer the graphic, but since they're giving the chapter away for free -- and since you should really, really buy the book -- I think we're ok.)

I'm not denying the extent to which defensive issues contributed to the team's slide, but look at those rushing numbers.  Going from a DVOA of 21.1% to 11.3% is a huge swing.  It's basically the difference between "we can't stop those guys" and "now we've got a chance." 

And it's exactly what we predicted would happen when Plax went away for good:

Burress demands a double team ... But that's out the window now.  Today, rather than worrying about how he's going to square the circle by constantly helping over the top on Burress while also bringing enough guys into the box to stop that wicked running game, Jim Johnson has the luxury of saying, screw it, I'll let my secondary cover these guys one-on-one, focus on stopping the run, and bring extra guys all day to try to shake up Eli.

This is a huge change for the Giants.  And while it might not be enough for the Eagles to pull off a win this week, it will be enough to ensure New York isn't winning another Super Bowl. 

The reason, I would wager, that the passing statistics look relatively unaffected is that I imagine every defensive coordinator in the league came to pretty much the same conclusion:  I can't beat these guys if I don't stop their running game, so I'll throw what I have at that and take my chances with Eli. 

There's tons of other good stuff in the chapter, of course, so get reading.  The info on how the defense will change now that Spags is gone is also interesting.  Personally, I'm not a huge fan of seeing great pass rushers dropping into coverage all that often either, but if I'm a Giants fan, I have to wonder if we're changing things up because that makes the most sense or because our new defensive coordinator has never held that position before and only has two years in the scheme.

Also, I've really, really been looking for an excuse to link to this. 

Mosley Talks To Maclin

ESPN NFC East blogger Matt Mosley writes about the Eagles' offseason additions today.  His take on Maclin and the "pro-style routes" question:

If there's a negative about Maclin, it's that he played in a spread offense in college. I think that's a crock, but you'll hear a lot of scouts bring it up ...   But all this talk about not knowing the full "route tree" sounds like a lot of NFL savants who are intoxicated with their own coachspeak ...

"We ran a lot of no-huddle [at Missouri]," Maclin said. "There were a lot of 10-yard and 12-yard routes. And we had options on those routes. I would say that we used a lot more concepts than plays in college. It's obviously more complex here, but fortunately I pick things up pretty quickly."

Maclin also hasn't determined whether or not he'll join McNabb in Arizona this summer:

"I haven't figured that out yet," Maclin said. "I've got to speak with Donovan."

More non-Maclin stuff in the full story.

Promoted From Comments

There's a point at which one goes from "Football Worried" to "Real Life Worried."

Football reasons, my butt.

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.

Stupid

Pro Bowl invitations are pretty much done as a backward-looking measure of individual achievement. 

But, you know, the NFL can make money off of it, so they'll keep doing it.