(Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images)
JORDAN Matthews is not the fastest WR, but he has other tools that should make him a monster. However, look at the pictures below and you may notice some big holes in his game.
Now these are just a couple of stills and they can’t, won’t, and don’t tell the whole story of what many fans noticed all year long. (Mostly because published pictures of incompletions are outnumbered something like 35:1 by photos of completed passes.) However, all season two things about Matthews kept jumping out. He doesn’t consistently fight for position or attack/high-point the ball when it’s in the air. And it wasn’t just Matthews failing to do those things consistently.
High-pointing and fighting for the jump balls are two things that coaches teach starting in Youth Football. I know this because my friend Joe Frazier coaches Youth Football, and he says that he teaches it. We both belong to a Facebook group called BirdGang Bangers, and it was not rare this season to see Joe posting (ranting) about the lack of fundamentals displayed by our own professionals.
I was content to tag the athletes with the blame for this until during the Ohio State/Oregon game I saw this:
During a “gotta have it” possession, on a “gotta have it” down, late in the game and behind in the score, Ducks WR Dwayne Stanford dropped a WIDE open pass. He dropped it simply because instead of attacking the ball, he was falling away as he caught it. Not falling. Falling away. As in, fading back in preparation to turn and run. Not quite running before the catch, but in there.
It occurred to me that Ducks WR’s had been doing that all game long. Then my stomach knotted up with a horrible question. What if they’re being coached that way? Not just the Oregon Ducks, but the Philly Ducks, I mean Eagles. What if this is a feature of our system, just to make it easier for refs to award full forward progress? It would be good for most moments in games, but it won’t make players fundamentally sound for moments when the system fails and athlete has to make a play.
I spent years hating (and writing about) our former WR coach Dave Culley, for the way he never seemed to be able to maximize WR talent here. (Terrell Owens mostly wouldn’t even work with him). Now I’m seeing that Culley’s successor, Bob Bicknell, doesn’t seem to know how to get the most of his charges either. I have to say that makes me concerned for the development of players like Matthews and Josh Huff. Matthews has the tools to be a monster, but I wonder if he’ll get the coaching he needs to fully develop those tools.
Perhaps the Eagles would do well to give Coach Frazier a call.
EAGLEMANIACAL.com 
This is very interesting and concerning. Great, tough questions Eagle! Hmmmmm.
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Waiting for the ball instead of attacking it, allows defenders a chance to recover and make plays against the receiver securing the ball. It makes me want to go back and re-examine Riley Coopers drops this year. It would also explain why Kelly doesn’t seem concerned about it. If it truly is part and parcel of how the system is run, then Kelly could have made peace back at Oregon with this “deal with the devil”.
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Eagles tanked season probably because they did not want to pay Sanchez. How else can you explain the nosedive.
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I can explain it as them tanking to move up for a better draft pick
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If they were truly “tanking” then why beat the VaGiants?
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Because the LAST thing on Earth Kelly needed was to show the city that maybe we have something worth developing with Matt Barkley.
Could you imagine if Barkley had a week of practice and went out and had a monster game? Even in a loss. The LAST thing Kelly needs is further fracturing inside the scouting department.
Remember how in love people were with Kevin Kolb here? Safer to start Sanchez, let him do whatever, then have people bellyache about him, and fight over Foles. Even now, NOBODY is talking about Barkley in any regard. Better to trot out your starters and win or lose, you know who’s leaving anyway already.
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Maybe if they did start Barkley and he lit it up he could have turned his worthless current career into possibly a 2nd round draft pick. I see no reason why the Eagles didn’t play their young players int that game for no other reason than to inflate Chip’s ego. 20 wins in two years.
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There was no GOOD reason not to play them. I wrote an article bellyaching about that. Beating the giants gained us nothing, and so did playing vets. If we were home and trying to give ticket holder their money’s worth, that would have been one thing, but there was no GOOD reason to play our starters.
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Jordan Mathews, to an extent Maclin, and Riley Cooper catch way too many balls with their bodies instead of their hands. There were more than a few balls early in the season Foles put right between his numbers and he dropped it cause he let it get into his body. He also has a tough time making catches in tight coverage as did the rest of our receivers. I think Mathews is a good young player with the potential to be really good, but I question if he could ever become elite or even to say Anquan Boldin status. I feel the Eagles need to address wide receiver. Far too many holes in the roster to be selling out to go and get Mariota IMO.
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When you point out that the entire position has the same problem, it just seems like it’s more a problem with how they’re being coached.
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You’re probably right and the fact you didn’t dispute me on it makes me believe you saw it too.
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