EAGLEMANIACAL.com

YOU’LL have to pardon me if I don’t jump up and do the ‘Chicken Dance’ over the signing of Guard John Moffitt. It’s not like we added an All-Pro or Pro Bowl level performer.  The guy is a reclamation project, pure and simple.

After retiring for two years to handle a multi-faceted drug problem (performance enhancing drugs, marijuana, cocaine, and ecstasy), Moffitt is back hoping to show that he can be a contributor in this league.

This despite the injuries that also plagued him. That list includes a blown out knee, elbow surgery, and shoulder damage. Oh yeah, there’s also sleep apnea and “floaters” crossing his vision from all the head trauma he absorbed from over almost  20 years (man and boy) in football. We’ll see what he’s got left, but as a player he wasn’t all that great before he retired. Somehow I’m doubting that two years of sitting on his couch did his game much good.

The signing perplexes me more for another reason though. Chip Kelly says that culture is the most important thing. He says that “culture wins football”, and that “culture beats scheme every time”. So how does the signing of Moffitt benefit the culture here? For instance, what message does it send to Lane Johnson, who was already stung once by a PED suspension last year?

Moffitt has by pretty much any and every account, been sort of fuck-up his whole NFL career. The idea that Moffitt has something meaningful to contribute to this team’s culture, when LeSean McCoy or DeSean Jackson or Evan Mathis apparently did not, is worth a raised eyebrow I think.

The truth is, the Eagles neglected the Guard position, then let go of a player (Mathis) they could ill-afford to lose (just to make a point). Apparently Guards have not shown well during OTA’s and the Front Office has attempted to patch a leaky roof by signing first a college back-up (Jared Wheeler), and now a ho-hum player with a history of what he called “dumb mistakes”.

Put bluntly, I don’t like this signing. I mean be honest, if the Redskins, giants or Cowboys added these guys you’d hound your rival fans about it. I have no idea why we don’t trade for a real Guard if we can’t agree to terms with someone like Gabe Carimi, Nate Garner or even Davin Joseph.

In any case, for the sake of anyone dropping back to pass in an Eagles uniform this year, I hope Kelly is right and I’m wrong about Moffitt. However, if you’ve been reading me consistently over the last year and a half, you know that my track record is more than simply impressive, and the odds that I’m wrong about this, are staggeringly low.