BACK in February, the Eagles offered Jeremy Maclin a 5-year deal, which he rejected. Instead he inked a 1-year deal that will allow him to show that he’s back from injury, and still has his skills. If it all goes well he should be able to cash in next year as free agent either with the Eagles or elsewhere.
My guess is that it’ll be elsewhere.
We drafted WR Jordan Matthews in the second round and on the very same night, Chip Kelly said: “He’ll start in the slot”. Kelly added, “If the other team wants to play their smallest cornerback in (the slot), they will have to deal with a 6-foot-3 guy over 200 pounds.”
Since Matthews will start, he’ll get plenty of opportunity to shine. The problem is there’s only one football. If Matthews shines really bright, it may look like he and not Maclin, is the Eagles most dynamic threat at WR.
The emergence of Matthews could seriously undercut Maclin’s market value next year. Keep in mind all of this already assumes that Maclin stays healthy. Anything less than that would be disastrous for him.
If the gamble works out for Maclin, great; but he may find himself wishing he’d signed that 5-year deal.
ACCORDING to NFL.com’s projected starting line-up for the EaglesLeSean McCoy and Brent Celek may have competition for their starting spots.
As you can see, of the 11 Offensive starting positions only two are listed with a slash mark. Normally that mark on a depth chart means “either” or “splitting time”. If it means something else then they should say so.
Not that I’m putting a lot of stock in these predictions. One: Because it was done by NFL.com’s Chris Wesseling, who’s an idiot altogether. Two: Take a look at our projected Defensive starters. Notice how there is no DT/NT and there are 3 CB’s? (BTW: He has EVERY team in our division starting 3 CB’s.)
Wesseling’s prediction is thatBilly Davis will use Nickel and Dime packages 65-70% of the time. No, seriously. That’s his prediction. It’s like he didn’t even glance at our schedule.
This season out of 16 games, 9 of them are against teams that lean on power running. I wrote about that back February in my series “The 12”. (Back then we knew the opponents, just not the order.) Power running is the exact sort of game that teams will need to stay in games against Chip Kelly’s fast paced approach.
Does Wesseling seriously think we draftedBennie Logan last year and another NT this year, just so we can start a 3rd CB? With a 2 man D-line? Leaving our ILB’s unprotected against the run?!.
Going nickel or dime 6-7 times out of every 10 downs, is a recipe to have our LB’s beat up and worn down by the Bye Week. I’m far from Billy Davis’s biggest fan, but there is NO WAY that I can believe him to be that stupid.
Seems more like Chris Wesseling is just being an idiot again, which for him I’m afraid may be chronic. Somebody get that guy a ticket to a Pop Warner game. He needs to learn the basics of the game
But it brings up and interesting question. Who do YOU think will be our starters this year?
LET me get this out first: I have no intention to knock the guys we drafted in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. This article is about the picks themselves, not the athletes the picks were used on.
A WR would have been fine. Most knew we’d get one in round 1 or 2, so when we took Jordan Matthews, it was no big deal. His 6’3 212 pound body type certainly is a departure from DeSean Jackson’s, as Chip Kellydid say that they wanted to go in a different direction at WR.
I wasn’t over the moon for the pick, but it was fine. It certainly was nothing anybody sane could bitch about. It seemed solid. Since I was home, I kicked back, ate mango ice cream from the carton, and channel surfed while waiting for the next Eagles pick.
Then my team f 😦 ’d me. Maybe they didn’t 😦 you, but they definitely 😦 ‘d me. They (for whatever reason), decided to DRAFT a second consecutive WR. Specifically Josh Huff, who Mike Mayock likened to a RB. Seriously, who does that?!
There was NO logic to that pick. NONE. Consider the money they put out at the position already. Consider our other areas of need. Consider that you can carry only so many guys on a roster when the season rolls around.
It seems like nobody considered any of this.
Meanwhile most of the (non-WR) difference makers are gone, and we still haven’t gotten a Safety. Or a CB. We’re still small up front and our 31+ year old Guards have no depth behind them.
Eagle fans expect a LOT from Jeremy Maclin this year. Specifically, fans expect him to grab 1,000 or more receiving yards in 2014. Damn coming back from a destroyed knee. Damn the fact that in 2010 even with a guy to draw coverage from him, in 16 games Maclin fell 36 yards short of 1,000.
I put up a poll yesterday asking fans how many yards they thought Maclin would get in 2014, and 58% said 1,000 or better.
It’s going to be tougher for him now both from the inside and the outside, yet fans are expecting more than he’s ever been able to deliver. Yikes.
Look…Let me step in on Maclin’s behalf for a second.
It would be nice if Jeremy went over a grand, but instead of expecting so much from him so soon, let’s be prepared to cut our guy a little slack.
He’s already going to be pushing. Partly out of pride trying to show he can be the #1; partly out of being on a 1-year deal and wanting a heavier wallet; partly out of just wanting to show he can be healthy again.
His own moments of doubt will be battle enough, he doesn’t need us rattling his cage even harder. After all we are his fans, right? Our job is to support him. To let him know we have his back. Not to make him think he has to run himself into the ground.
So while 1,000 would be nice, if it becomes clear that he can’t or he won’t; or if it turns out that he needs a week here or there, let’s remember who we are, and what we come to do. Instead of deriding him, let’s show our recovering Bird some love.
EVERYWHERE I look it seems fans want a WR. [Kelvin Benjamin], [Mike Evans], [Brandin Cooks], [Cody Latimer]. There are more names but you get the idea. Even if it means trading up, in a year where we’re short on draft picks, fans want a guy to pick up the slack left by DeSean Jackson’s departure.
Fellow Eagles fans, I think we may be outsmarting ourselves here.
Even if only for depth purposes, the Eagles drafting a WR is practically a sure thing. But it occurs to me that Jackson’s replacement may not be a rookie. It could be Jeremy Maclin.
Maclin isn’t going to put up 1,300 yards of course, but he could be used to open up the box and continue to make it easier to run between the Tackles. I don’t know if anyone remembers when he was drafted, but a lot was made of him helping out with KR/PR duties because he had done so in college and he could also break arm tackles and make guys miss. Andy Reid gave it a whirl but not much came of it.
Fast-forward to today. Chip Kelly runs a system called the Spread. While it’s called that because you spread your opponent out horizontally, it also has a way of isolating defensive players from help. Maclin, if he can still break an arm tackle and/or make a guy miss, doesn’t need Jackson’s speed to be dangerous.
While Maclin may not be a home-run hitter, having a more consistent hitter is nothing to sneeze at. (Put another way: Maclin may not be Ryan Howard, but it’s hardly a bad thing if he’s Chase Utley.) If Maclin can make guys miss and break tackles, teams will cheat a Safety his way and that will strreeeeetch the box horizontally and make it easier for LeSean McCoy’s blockers. (Though I think McCoy could get blindsided a LOT more this year, because of this.)
A single WR replacing Jackson’s numbers won’t happen in 2014. No one on the roster is physically capable of it, and a rookie has to still learn how to read NFL coverages. However, the most impressive thing Jackson did last year can be somewhat duplicated, and the best man for that job (so far) is Jeremy Maclin.
Sidenote: Earlier this offseason I predicted that Maclin would post a number of career lows and still have what would be a good year. That of course was with me projecting him in a 3 WR formation along with Jackson.
Things have changed obviously, so I’m going change right along with them and re-vise those numbers accordingly. My new prediction for Maclin: 74 catches, 890 yards, 10 TD’s.
CHIP Kelly, when asked if the Eagles were interested in [Johnny Manziel] responded:
“We have an interest in anybody that’s draft-eligible this year.”
Would have been too much effort to throw Nick Foles a bone, I guess.
This is really starting to wear thin isn’t it? The whole cloak and dagger, men of mystery vibe the Eagles try to give off, is really tiresome. Everybody and their momma knows we need a pass rusher, a receiver, offensive line depth, and a Safety in case Earl Wolffdoesn’t pan out; or if he does and Malcolm Jenkins blows up on the launch pad. NFL teams are not fooled by such shoddy trickery.
The idea that the Eagles may take a QB later in the Draft is pretty widely agreed on. The notion that we’d take one prior to round 4, no one really takes seriously. We have Foles, veteran Mark Sanchez, and a guy who can be the project in Matt Barkley. So no one buys the whole “Bond. James Bond” thing.
That means the Eagles can drop the act.
Unless of course 95% of fans and media are wrong, and the Eagles do go QB early. That would mean ignoring other needs and putting your starting QB on notice, right? And nobody believes that the franchise is dumb enough to do something like that.
Could you imagine a scenario (not involving injury) where we go from Foles and DeSean Jackson, to a rookie and Jeremy Maclin? Me neither.
So enough with the “We have an interest in anybody that’s draft-eligible this year” kind of talk. Only idiots buy that sort of talk and there is no reason to play to the idiots. Let’s hear about guys we may actually get at positions we actually need.
(NOTE: This film used in this article is of the 2013 Eagles/Bears game. All the snippets (none longer than 34 seconds), are culled from a video I got off of YouTube. There’s more film out there, but this was the most extensive example that wasn’t just scoring plays.)
LAST year the speed of DeSean Jackson forced defenses to begin many downs with their FS practically lined up in the parking lot. This did two things for our Offense.
Made the FS late to help in run support, and even to most tackles after a pass.
Forced OLB’s to frequently play inside the DE and back from the Line Of Scrimmage (LOS). They’re of almost no use as blitzers, late to fill against the run, and out of position to defend the outside pass. Remember our LB’s in the Wide 9? This is what we reduced opponents to.
And we gained these advantages prior to the snap of the ball!
The OLB’s playing on the DE’s inside hip changes everything from an Offensive Tackle’s perspective. The OLB being “in and back” means the OT doesn’t have to worry about two players on the edge. Since there’s no LB “out and over”, there’s no stunt or outside overload blitzer for the Tackle to worry about. Everything is literally in front of the OT. As an ex-O-lineman I can tell you, that’s the easiest block you can make without being on Hollywood Squares.
Remember how Jon Runyan would have to turn to his outside to block Mike Strahan? Take notice how on this running play Jason Peters completely ignores Julius Peppers
Here it is again
and again
and again
The FS isn’t so far back here, but again watch the OT ignore the DE
and again
Gotcha didn’t I?
In almost every one of these plays the FS lines up in in the press box, the OLB is inside the DE, and the OT just steps forward, ignores the DE and makes himself a problem for a LB. (Big people beating up little people.) It’s 1-2-3.
Against the pass it’s almost sad to watch. Almost.
There is nothing remotely resembling Safety help underneath; and due to the run game’s success, TE’s are getting easy releases off the line and into those underneath patterns. Here’s an example
Here’s another
Hold up, I have one more
Okay last one, I swear
Since the FS had to move so far back, teams had to compensate inside with a LB to fill what would normally be the FS’s run support lane. If teams didn’t do that instead of seeming unstoppable, our run game might literally have been unstoppable. And it was ALL, (every play you just saw) dictated by the one player.
This is what we have to make up for in 2014.
That’s not saying we have to find a player that moves a FS out again (though it would help). But we need to find a way to routinely make blocking schemes easy; get TE free releases; and practically renders one of the defensive players non-existent.
Yes. It is indeed a tall order.
The scheme’s keys weren’t hard to decipher, so believe me if an ex-semi pro OT can do it, you can bet your ass that NFL DC’s would have been too. This is partly of why I think Chip Kelly is going to a truer version of the Spread this year. But again, if I’m onto that, you can guess who else will be.
LET me share something with you. On an average day Eaglemaniacal.comgets about 40 visitors and 68 views. The site itself is little older than a month old, and those numbers (at this stage) are actually pretty solid.
When I posted the LeSean McCoy story I was (of course), hoping for better than my average day. What I could not have anticipated was the 500+ views and all the responses the story got. At first I was happy. I was up all night responding to your individual takes on the situation. (Mostly on Facebook because for some reason you guys won’t post comments on the website itself.) But by the time I got to 250 hits, something in my gut began to sink.
I realized that people were clicking the link or reading the story not from curiosity like I’d hoped, but with a sense of dread. A sort of “Oh no, not again!” was sitting in the back of your minds, because this has happened to you before. And it has happened you TOO OFTEN.
It was never my intention to freak you out, but the idea that fans couldn’t just dismiss the idea of the Eagles moving McCoy, speaks volumes about fan’s trust regarding how our team handles our favorite players.
To be clear: I HAVE NOT HEARD OR READ THAT LESEAN MCCOY IS GOING ANYWHERE. It was just fan conversation.
But it brings up a very interesting point.
I created Eaglemaniacal.comso that fans could BE HEARD. I’m not a journalist, I’m just a regular fan. But I got HEARD, didn’t I? You too can get heard. In fact, Dammit you SHOULD get heard!
Write something on here. Make it story about your favorite Eagles moment, or your favorite player. Or about the time you met________. Or about why you love tailgating, or your favorite tailgating spot. Make it about the sports bar where you watch the games, or that drink you invented (It’s called a Joe Banner: 3parts vodka, 1 part Kool-Aid.) Make it about anything. Just make sure we all hear YOU.
NOT sure why everyone wants to talk about a guy who isn’t here anymore. Seems a little disrespectful to the guys who’ll actually be putting their bodies on the line in Eagles uniforms.
No disrespect intended to those who’ve come before, but shouldn’t it be the future we want to talk about? That and the players now responsible for fulfilling the dream? Maybe they deserve to be on our minds a little more. Maybe it should be those players we’re discussing so passionately.
I mean, they do inspire the fans don’t they? The fan base does Trust Chip, right?
If so, then act like it. Don’t say it, show it. Not to me. Not to each other. Just show it.
Don’t talk big, BE big. Because our future, is now.
LAST year LeSean McCoy led the NFL in rushing yards. Part of that was due to his 314 carries. Part of it was the Offensive Line opening holes for him. Part of it was the Line having fewer people in the box to block. Don’t expect Shady to repeat in 2014.
With the subtraction ofDeSean Jackson from the line-up, Chip Kelly is going to do things to try mimicking that effect, even if he no longer has the last year’s cause.
Expect to see Darren Sproles in motion a lot. Expect to see the TE split wide 30-50% of the time. (When they’re out there.) Expect to more 4 WR formations than you’ve seen here since the days of Greg Lewis and Hank Baskett.
Expect to see “The Spread” as God and Mother Nature intended it. In many ways we’re finally about to see Oregon’s Chip Kelly.
Last year Jackson’s presence gave Kelly’s system a shot of pure adrenaline. Kelly had never had a WR who could give him what Jackson did in 2013. Never before did Kelly have a WR who could take the top off the defense and evacuate the box, but that’s gone now. Those days are over. Then again that’s not where Kelly’s head is anyway.
In 4 years as Oregon’s Head Coach, Kelly’s system produced just one WR with 700 yards or more (Jeff Maehl in 2010). Kelly (like early Andy Reid) simply doesn’t value the position highly. He wants blocker/tackle breakers, not dynamic field stretchers. Role players, not game changers. He wants a Billy McMullen, not a DJax.
And you don’t spend a 1st round pick on a role player.
Believe it or not, I don’t expect the passing game to be less efficient. I do expect the running game to be less explosive though. There are a number of reasons why. (Especially if they trade Evan Mathis, when it was Todd Herremans who struggled.)
1. McCoy won’t see as much work. In 4 years as Oregon’s Head Coach there were no 300+ carry RB’s for Oregon. Kelly likes to spread the carries out between his QB and (usually) 2 RB’s.
2. The box will be stretched horizontally to create more space, but there will still be just as many defenders in the box. Last year wasn’t a true test of the spacing aspect of Kelly’s system, but he gon’ learn TODAY! Especially since Kelly can no longer take advantage of collegiate hash mark spacing.
3. NFL defenders are faster than college players. With fewer players in the box last year, Kelly didn’t have to coach against this. Expect a few plays this year where Shady gets blown up by lateral hits he didn’t see coming.
4. Last year I said there were some smoke and mirrors along our 10-6 season. One of them was the Offensive Line. I’m waiting to see if a fundamental problem gets addressed in the Draft, because it’s been ignored so far.
That being said, not leading the league in rushing isn’t the same thing as being ineffective. McCoy will churn out yards and will probably even tote a decent average (4.1 maybe?). However more guys in the box will make him pay a lot more often for those sick juke moves.
BTW: If Sproles finishes 2014 as the starter, don’t say no one ever mentioned it.
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