EAGLES/PATRIOTS PREVIEW

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/12/04
Posted in: Coaching, Defense, Offense, Players, Preview, Roster, Uncategorized. Tagged: , . 9 Comments

Wk13- 12-6.15

SUNDAY         4:25         Gillette Stadium         Foxboro, MA

THE Eagles enter this game with a record of 4 – 7, and still mathematically in the hunt for the NFC East crown. A road win over a 10 – 1 Patriot team, would get a lot of fans believing in this team’s ability to win the division. Not every fan. Maybe not even most of them, but a lot of them. There is no team in sports that I hate they way I hate the Patriots, and a win in their house would be awesome, but to win there you need to find some weakness to exploit.

EAGLES

Defense

I feel like even the Phillies could suit up and score touchdowns on our Defense. Defensive Coordinator Bill Davis basically told every team in the NFL to put their #1 WR on our Defense’s right, because CB Byron Maxwell can’t be moved from the left side. Last week against the Lions, Davis sacrificed rookie CB Eric Rowe to save Maxwell from having to leave his comfort zone.

There are so many things so fundamentally wrong with this Defense that it would take far less time to mention what they do right. For instance in the last two seasons we ranked 32nd and 31st vs the pass. This year we’re only ranked 20th. Then again in those other season we were tough to run against. This year we’re the 5th worst team in the NFL vs the run. It’s why only four teams see more rushes against them. Why throw it when you can just run it?

Offense

This team is 20th in the NFL in scoring. (That statement has me itching to start laying blame, but that’s not a what Preview is for.) Our Offensive Line has allowed 13 sacks over the last 4 games, including the the one that injured QB Sam Bradford.

We’re 12th in rushing but it’s up and down. We not very good at throwing the ball, running the ball or blocking for the guys doing the throwing and the running. There really isn’t anything this team can hang it’s hat on as a rally point, and no player is stepping up and saying “It’s on me”.

Patriots

Defense

Their 4-3 front is stable and sets the tone for the rest of the unit. The unit gets after the QB, as 20 of their 35 sacks are owned by the starting defensive line. They’re also ranked 11th in the NFL against the run, allowing only 97 yards per game. The Secondary has 10 pick to this point. While that’s not as many as we have, the Patriots more stable form of defense means they don’t need turnovers to perform well enough to help their offense.

Offense

QB Tom Brady has thrown 28 touchdowns and just 4 interceptions. RB LeGarrette Blount has almost 600 yards rushing and 6 touchdowns while averaging 4.2 yards per carry. That said, Brady enters this week missing his top 4 receivers due to injury. A few cleverly disguised coverages could cause communication problems between Brady and the targets he now is forced to rely on.

Right now not having his usual weapons means Brady has to take chances that he normally wouldn’t. A smart team should be able to exploit that weakness. Let me repeat that louder. A SMART TEAM SHOULD BE ABLE TO EXPLOIT THAT WEAKNESS!!!!

BOTTOM LINE

If the Eagles can find some weakness to exploit and win this one, great. But I’m not delusional. I have absolutely no reason to expect that they can beat a more talented team, with a better coach, on the road, after quietly laying down at our opponents feet for three straight weeks. I just hope the Patriots don’t break the scoreboard.

PREDICTION

Patriots 54 – Eagles 13

REPLACING BILL DAVIS

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/12/02
Posted in: Coaching, Defense, Front Office (F.O.), Players, Rants, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

bdawk

WHILE Defensive Coordinator Bill Davis hasn’t been fired yet, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where he gets to return for the 2016 season. For that reason I’m as giddy as a kid on Christmas Eve. I’m generally the last person to advocate for anybody getting fired, but we can’t get any better as long as he’s hanging around here. Every year we’re a joke versus the pass, and many fans (as is common with sports) blame the players.

Last year I made it a point to say that our Cornerbacks weren’t the problem and that the real problem was our defensive scheme, which I mentioned last November, and even Brian Dawkins took issue with it a month later. I specifically pointed out our flawed cover coverage concept. I said our pass defense problems would persist until the defensive scheme was changed. Many disagreed and clamored for a new Secondary.

Lo and behold fans got what they wanted. If you were one of the fans screaming for a new Secondary, congratulations. How did that work out for you? What did I tell you would happen? The Eagles even went so far as to overspend on the top Free Agent on the market in CB Byron Maxwell. They were aggressive and didn’t cheap out. There were about a million and five things wrong with that signing. I even went so far as to point out some of what they were.

Side question: Who leases a shiny, new, 12 mil a year CB, and then uses a rookie back-up to cover WR Calvin Johnson with no Safety help? Answer: Someone who should be fired.

If Davis is fired we’ll need a replacement. QUICK! Of all of the assistants on this staff who would you like to see take over for him? (Cue the sound of crickets). And other ideas? Please don’t say Brian Dawkins. I love the guy but he hasn’t even been a position coach yet. Asking him to come off the street and put together a defensive scheme and game plans that worked, is to set him up for failure.

And please, no one say Rob Ryan. I’m so sick of hearing his name. He’s been awful everywhere he’s gone. If he wasn’t Buddy’s son and Rex’s brother, he’d be one more fat guy buying two buckets of KFC while saying “It’s not as good as it used to be when it was Kentucky Fried Chicken. Hey, you remember Gino’s?” So please don’t mention him.

If Chip Kelly were to be fired, I don’t really know who I’d want to replace him yet, but I already have a short list of people who I’d like to see replace Davis. You’ve likely never heard of any of them before and that’s part of the point. These are guys hungry to prove that they’re ready for the job. There’s also no book on their tendencies that would help opponents early on.

If say…Rob Ryan, came here, you already know it’s a 3-4 with a blindside rush LB, a NT that plays over the Center, and multiple ineffective coverage looks. The NFL would have to learn a new guy just as he’d have to learn the NFL. If you get a position coach already in the league, he has several legs up on any collegiate coach that we could bring in, and so the NFL is where I focused my search. Here’s my short list:

Kris Kocurek: Currently the Defensive Line coach for the Detroit Lions. He has a knack for getting production from young players, which hints at him being able to motivate people on their lown evels. It would be nice to have a coordinator who could also develop players we draft instead of wasting pick after pick like we’ve been doing.

Bryan Cox: Currently coaches the Defensive Line for the Atlanta Falcons. He also coached the front seven for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He’s a former player, who brought his lunch pail and intensity on Sundays. That doesn’t always make for a good coach, but Cox seems to have made the transition. The positions he coaches tend to be solid but not flashy. It would be interesting to see what a whole defense coached with that solid, intense, hard-nosed attitude would look like.

Adam Zimmer: Currently the Linebackers coach for the Minnesota Vikings, over his 9 year career he’s had success both working with and without his father (famed DC now Vikings HC Mike Zimmer). While he’s never held the reigns as a DC, he may be itching to be more than a position coach, and has a GREAT brain to pick for advice.

Andre Patterson: Currently the Defensive Line coach for the Minnesota Vikings, he has plenty of NFL coaching experience but none as a coordinator. He’s been collegiate DC, and twice he was a collegiate Assistant Head Coach. Having coached at the high school, college and NFL level, he’s yet another candidate that has shown that he knows how to get young players to produce early.

These guys also have one very important thing in common (as far as I’m concerned). They all come out of 4-3 systems. While the 3-4 is faster and more flexible, it’s also less stable and easier to exploit. There is no point in shipping out Davis for a less good version of the same thing. I’m no Kelly fan, but I think with a 4-3 defense this is a team that has a shot at winning playoff games. A 3-4 serves as a poor counterbalance for the offensive system we run.

Time to make a change.

WHY THE EAGLES REGRESSED

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/30
Posted in: Coaching, Conversations, NFL, Rants, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . 4 Comments

chicagosinkhole

AFTER three seasons here’s what we’ve got:

2013: 10 – 6 with a playoff loss

2014: 10 – 6 with no playoffs

2015: 9 – 7 (at best since the team is currently 4 – 7)

This team is not making progress. In fact it’s regressing, as you can clearly see by the diminishing returns every year.

Most fans and journalists attribute our slide to the league catching up to the version of the Spread that Chip Kelly runs. While it’s clear that that has in fact happened, there are bigger factors at work here that the media is either missing or afraid to mention for some reason.

I don’t believe that this many pro journalists are missing such obvious signs. It’s more likely that they want to stay on the Eagles organization’s good side to keep their access to players, coaches and news to report. I on the other hand am not a journalist, so I have no ass to kiss. This means when I see something I have no incentive to shut up about it. So here’s what’s destroying our team.

Inexperience:

Most coaches come out of college as assistants or coordinators. The lion’s share of NFL Head Coaches do a little time in the NFL before they get handed the big headset. (One example would be Andy Reid.) They get a chance to learn things about how the NFL works vs how college works. For Kelly it was a crash course, and he had no time to pick up any of the NFL’s nuances. Now with the duties of being a GM, he has even less time to look into the fine points of being an NFL Head Coach.

At this point with this much to do, he will never be able to catch up now. He will simply never have the time.

Stagnation:

Smart coaches learn they have to constantly innovate to keep ahead of the curve. What they learn over time is that the NFL is a copycat league. Other coaches will steal/borrow/adapt the things you do to help their own systems; and in the process of practicing against it day in and day out, they learn how to defend against the thing they stole/borrowed/adapted from you.

Kelly on the other hand is still running the same basic handful of plays and concepts that he was working in early 2014 after the Offense shifted from a being partially vertical, to being almost exclusively horizontal.

Inability to adjust:

Checking out of one play and into another almost never happens anymore. You can almost set your watch by what the Eagles run on a given down and distance. I mentioned last year that the WR Bubble Screen to WR Jordan Matthews had all but disappeared. It STILL hasn’t been able to make a return because teams take it away. Kelly says the reason the Eagles don’t challenge deep often anymore has to do with coverages that take that away from us. So why does he just eat that?

When the Eagles get into a hole, what you don’t see is him on the sidelines actively coaching. He becomes a spectator. At that point the CSC security staff seems more involved in the game than he is. If things don’t go his way early, he has no idea of how to get them back on track.

Players:

If you thought I was about to rant about all the talent he gave away, Surprise! I’m talking instead about the players that are still here.

Injuries are beginning to really mount despite the smoothies, sleep schedules and all the other sport science ubba-gubba that he preaches. This is the one that I’m most surprised to never hear about. His sports science crap is just that. CRAP. It’s not crap because it’s not working now. It was always crap.

Listen, players at Oregon didn’t benefit from smoothies. They benefited from being between the ages of 18 and 22! They also played fewer games than NFL players. It didn’t hurt Kelly to have a game day roster twice the size of an NFL  game day roster. (The Ducks 2015 roster has 105 active players on it. In the NFL your roster is 53, but on game day you only have 45 active. )

Kelly is also known for driving his players harder in practice than he does in games. That’s easy to get away with when a guy is 19 and you’ll only have him for 2 more years. But when a guy is 30+ with almost a decade of NFL wear and tear on him, you just can’t beat him up like he’s 20 anymore. Especially with little to no depth behind him. I’ve said as much, RIGHT GODDAMNED HERE  and HERE  as well. Oh yeah, and here as well. This was too easy to see coming.

Kelly came to the NFL (like Steve Spurrier), determined to teach everyone a lesson, and he did. What he taught us all was that he’s a one trick pony who can’t hack it at this level. He has a winning career record but it’s meaningless considering that he can’t beat decent-to-good teams for the most part.

Simply put, the Eagles have regressed because our coach can’t coach.

That being said, the organization has painted themselves into a corner with him, making it where firing him now would hurt us. Possibly for a very long time. That means we have another year of him to look forward to. So buckle in for a not so great 2016 season.

Unless he does us all a favor and runs back to college.

FIRING KELLY NOW WOULD BE STUPID

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/27
Posted in: Coaching, Conversations, Front Office (F.O.), NFL, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . 8 Comments

ck

FIRING Chip Kelly now would be one of the worst moves that Eagles team owner Jeffery Lurie could possibly make. If Kelly decided to quit, that would be awesome. I’d be totally on-board with that, since I felt his hiring was a mistake to begin with. But firing him now could set the Eagles back for years, and maybe even decades, if Lurie (now 64) owns the team into his 80’s or 90’s.

Step back a second and don’t see it like an Eagles fan. Imagine you were a highly sought after head coaching candidate doing interviews with several teams. Not just the Eagles, but several teams. You have your pick of jobs, so why go to the place where the owner will fire you for having a down year after two straight 10 – 6 seasons? Why go to the place that fired it’s All-time best coach for a down season, the year his son dies?

Many of you may not remember this, but when we were looking to replace Andy Reid, most top candidates didn’t even stop here. There were a couple of place holder interviews, but Lurie gave Kelly a contract worth 32 million over 5 years (6.4 py) which was more than the 3 year, 16.5 million dollar (5.5 py) extension Lurie gave Reid in 2011. And this was after Kelly initially turned the Eagles down.

In a nutshell: No one wanted to come here and so Lurie had to beg and overpay to get Kelly. For Lurie to run Kelly out of here AT THIS POINT, would show everyone who avoided coming here that they were right to do so. It would also signal to future candidates that the smart ones among them should do the same. That would only make finding a GOOD replacement even harder this time around.

As a long-time follower of the Oakland Raiders organization I can tell you how hard it is to find a good coach when the owner is perceived to be the organizations biggest problem. Former Raiders owner, the late Al Davis, (always a control freak anyway) realized there weren’t many days ahead of him, and he wanted to see the Raiders on top again before he passed away.

That removed any sense of patience Mr. Davis had, so he’d hire a new coach who wanted to take the team in a new direction, the rebuilding team wouldn’t do well so early, Mr. Davis would get impatient, fire the coach, hire a new one and the cycle would begin again. Serious candidates wouldn’t even interview there after a while. It got to where even though Raider fans love Mr. Davis, they knew the team wouldn’t see greatness again until after he died.

This is what is beginning to happen with Jerry Jones in Dallas; and if we aren’t careful, this could be also be the Eagles.

Don’t look at it like a fan. See it as a business. The handling of Andy Reid is already seen as a black mark on this organization by other NFL coaches. To compound it with firing Chip Kelly AT THIS POINT only makes working for Lurie seem like a pointless endeavor. Better to just go where you’ll be appreciated.

I’m not saying that Kelly won’t be fired, since reports of him losing the locker room, and his apparent inability to make in-game adjustments seem taking on a life of their own. What I’m saying is that firing him before the end of 2016 would be a tactical error for the long term picture. I would much rather see the Eagles suffer for another season than suffer through a decade of Kotite/Rhodes level coaching talent.

If Kelly wants to quit, I say let him. In fact, I’ll take him anywhere he wants to go so long as it’s a minimum of 500 miles away from my football team. But firing Kelly would be stupid. Particularly at this point.

EAGLES/LIONS PREVIEW

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/25
Posted in: Coaching, Defense, NFL, Offense, Players, Preview, Roster, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Wk12-11-26-15

THURSDAY         1:00         Ford Field         Detroit, MI

IF we don’t move to 5 – 6 tomorrow it’s time to pack the season in and start doing some house-cleaning. Detroit is a 3 – 7 team on a 2 game win streak (both 18 – 16 outcomes). They’re pretty bad at pretty much everything; and a loss to them would pretty much be the ultimate humiliation.

EAGLES

Defense

Our unit is fatigued. If you doubted me when I told you that last week, you should be fully on-board with my assessment now. Our pass rush is almost non-existent and as a result the turnovers this team needs to survive are not forthcoming. We’re at a point now where we’re going to start needing some Special Teams guys to get a shot playing more than a few downs here and there. Guys like NT Beau Allen, LB Marcus Smith, LB Bryan Braman, and CB Eric Rowe (remember him?) need to start spelling the starters for longer stretches. LB Kiko Alonso can be given more minutes inside so that LB Mychal Kendricks can be moved around the formation to maximize his effectiveness on the downs he does play.

We have too many problems with readily available solutions to them that we just aren’t instituting.

Offense

Mark Sanchez is the QB, because starting Thad Lewis is the equivalent to waving the white flag. Behind Sanchez the team can move the ball. That much can’t be disputed. What we don’t do well (regardless of QB) is move it consistently and finish drives. We need to find something to hang out hat on. We need to take the weight off of Sanchez’s shoulders. We need to lean on our run game. Specifically in the form of RB DeMarco Murray.

Fortunately we get to go against a team that’s just awful at stopping the run. If we come out (like I said last week) running the ball with an up the gut, power concept, this game should be a cake walk. If we come out trying to force 5 yard crossing routes, it’ll be a loooong day again.

Also for the last two weeks there’s been way too much of our interior Offensive Linemen (Guards and Center) being driven back into the QB/RB. This far into the year that’s not liable to stop, but I’ll have my eye on it.

Lions

Defense

They have a good pass rusher in DE Ezekiel Ansah, but they’re not much to look at besides him. They don’t top the run (24th), the pass (19th), or scoring (29th) worth a damn; so there’s really nothing here that they’re going to come in to this game hanging their hats on.

They have 4 interceptions (between 3 players) to this point in the season, but that number will likely be 6 by the end of this game.

Offense

QB Matt Stafford is the offense. Most people thing Lions and immediately think about WR Calvin “Megatron” Johnson, but injuries in recent years have added some slack to what used to be his tight game. However he’s still big and can run and can make catches,so putting a CB on him one-on-one in a Single-High coverage concept could be fatal for some poor defense out there one day.

If you’re worried about the Lions running on us like Tampa Bay did, DON’T. We may still be fairly easy to push around, but Detroit has problems already with running the ball, as they are ranked DEAD LAST (32nd) in the category. Part of it is bad scheme, part of it is injuries and part of it is that they simply lack the talent to be really good at it. Put the “Snow Bowl” out of your minds. This is indoors, in a dome.

BOTTOM LINE

The bottom line is that I hope my team doesn’t spoil my dinner. If we lose tomorrow the season is effectively over.

PREDICTION

EAGLES 18 – 16

WHY WE GOT FUCKED UP

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/25
Posted in: Coaching, Conversations, Defense, Offense, Rants, Uncategorized. Tagged: , . 4 Comments

Chris_Tucker.jpg

BEFORE moving on to Thanksgiving’s meet-up with the Detroit Lions, I wanted to revisit the game against the Buccaneers again. We got fucked up. Let’s not sugarcoat it. Let’s man-up, admit it, and start fixing what’s broken. There are a number of issues which contributed to that loss, but most people either don’t notice or don’t want to face the real issues that led to that loss and that will lead to the next few. As always, I’m here to bring you fire from the gods, and have you dismiss me as a loon, only to be proven right in the next couple months or so.

While it was the Defense that missed the tackles and dropped a couple of easy interceptions, I still don’t lay most of the blame for this game at their feet. This loss is clearly the bastard child of the Head Coach and the Defensive Coordinator Bill Davis.

Davis’s share of the blame comes from failing to make adjustments to stop TB from running straight through the heart of the Defense. Right up the gut. Like our team was a collection of punk bitches for pimp trainees to practice their slapping skills. They did to us what we should have done to them, by just running the ball down the throat of our team, Yet how often did you see us switch to a 4-3 front? How often did we get some bigger bodies in the “A” gaps to force some of those runs outside? How often did our CB’s get in the faces of their receivers to re-route them and throw off the timing of the clock in their QB’s head? It was just like Dallas Two last year, when their one receiver beat us the same way THREE TIMES, because we refused to adjust.

After that game Davis gave his reasons for not adjusting, and he did the same thing after this debacle; saying that they couldn’t blitz or press much due to the size and athleticism of TB two WR’s. He said “If you’re going to blitz, your coverage had better be solid on the back-end.” I guess he doesn’t think our coverage is very good then. Dear Billy: I AGREE!

Kelly’s share of the blame has to do with Mark Sanchez. Sanchez’s most successful stint of his career came as a Jet, with him riding shotgun on a team driven by a strong run game and a strong defense. He was at no point asked to win games, just manage them. Early in this game Kelly dialed up a lot of passes, and we saw all too much of RB Darren Sproles. Particularly on runs up the gut and in pass protection when the game was still well in contention. Why have a 42 million dollar RB if you’re going to keep him on the sideline, instead of playing him like the workhorse that he should be and wants to be? Instead what Kelly did was put this game on the shoulders of a top-shelf back-up (but still a back-up) who hadn’t started a game since a garbage game to end last year. Sanchez may be the Eagles best option at QB, but that doesn’t mean you can treat him like he’s Phillip Rivers.

Where Kelly really shoulders the blame however, is in his unwillingness to adjust the Offense so that his defense can get more rest during games. For the third straight year, our Defense is wearing down noticeably as we enter the home stretch and it’s getting easier to push our players around as the fatigue grows deeper.

There are things he can do to help those guys out, but he does none of them. He could let the Offense use more of the clock between plays. He could run on first AND second down more frequently to set up more 3rd and manageables. He could call 2 to 4 designed QB runs per game to pick up a cheap 4 or so yards. That would help move the chains and make opponents honor the back door, which in turn opens up room for RB DeMarco Murray to run inside. There are solutions we could institute as soons NOW, without signing/benching/cutting a single player. All he has to do, is do it. It doesn’t have to be like this Eagles fans.

This isn’t the most talented team. Our GM has made sure of that. However, in a year with the division being this bad, we either need to make a sincere effort to win it, or send a clear signal that we’re tanking for better Draft position. If our coach is as all in as he like to SAY he is, then his ass needs to stop focusing on proving how good his football philosophy is, and start showing the NFL how good his football coaching is.

EAGLES/BUCCANEERS PREVIEW

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/20
Posted in: Coaching, Defense, Offense, Players, Preview, Roster. Tagged: , , . 7 Comments

Wk11-11.22.15

SUNDAY        1:00           Lincoln Financial Field         Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

SINCE the giants are off this week, a win by us and a Redskin loss puts us in 1st place in the NFC East. So we’re still talking playoffs around here; and as long as QB Sam Bradford isn’t around to hold us back anymore, we may actually have a shot at qualifying for them.

EAGLES

Defense

The pass rush is back and we don’t allow a lot of points, but the fatigue factor is clearly catching up to us. Last week we had no business allowing the Dolphins to come back from a 16 – 3 deficit, but that’s what happens when fatigue sets in. When you dig down to find a little more to keep going, you find that the well has run dry. The Defense is playing way too many minutes- (sorry Chip) too many snaps out there, and it’s starting to show up (for the third year in a row) on the opponents score boards.

Offense

Same system, new sheriff. QB Mark Sanchez doesn’t have as talented an arm as Bradford, but he has more mobility, more of a “push the ball” mentality, and is more of a vocal leader. Sanchez isn’t likely to give you a 4 TD performance, (more like 2 TD’s and 2 Ints), but with him you’ll move the ball and 3rd down will likely stop being a point of ruin. That will allow the Defense to get more rest than they’ve managed so far in games this year. Especially early in games.

As long as the Eagles are willing to stay in RB DeMarco Murray‘s wheelhouse and run mostly between the Tackles or tosses, he’ll be productive. If they keep running him on sweeps and stretches, we’re gonna miss RB Ryan Mathews. Be nice to see Darren Sproles get a couple of those actually.

What would really be nice is to see a WR not named Jordan Matthews catch 4 or 5 balls this week. Not 4 or 5 catches by the WR’s, but one guy (I’m looking at YOU Nelson Agholor!) catching 4 or 5. That would be sweet.

.

Buccaneers

Defense

This group can get after the QB with different players and even scarier, their two best pass rushers are defensive lineman led by DE Jacquies Smith and DT Gerald McCoy. That means those aren’t scheme sacks, they’re “defeated the blocker” sacks. Those sacks contribute to a league leading 14 FF (Forced Fumbles). They allow a ton of points (26th in the NFL allowing 26.3 per game) but they’re a stingy bunch when it comes to giving up yards (7th place, at only 334.2 per game).

If they have a weakness to exploit it’s that they’re a very “quick” front seven. Quick in this case is code for small. S-M-all. Seriously, their MLB is 227 pounds, and they have a 238 pound back-up DE (Howard Jones, 3.0 sacks so far). If a team committed to a power run concept, they’d have the Bucs gassed by the half, open mouth huffing for air by the end of the 3rd, and by the mid 4th quarter, they’d be trying not to flinch (pre-snap) from the coughing fits that result from gagging on spit when you gulp air too fast.

This is a game for “Big people beat up little people.”

Offense

This is a uhhhhhh…..Let’s call the Bucs a work in progress. This team can run the ball, but they still have a rookie at QB in Jameis Winston. His performances are still all over the map, but that’s not all on him. From what I see it has a lot to do with the one-dimensionality of the passing game. His top two WR’s are big physical guys who’s game is largely devoid of fine-point craftwork. As a result they’re an easy read for defenses and it makes the QB look worse than he is.

Stopping them won’t be hard since most of their problems are built into their own concepts.

.

BOTTOM LINE

I will always have a sore spot in my heart for Tampa for the way they bragged “We tore down the Vet” (I couldn’t find the video anymore, just that reference). It was the NFC Championship game where Joe Jurevicius scarred Levon Kirkland for life on a crossing route that Kirkland shouldn’t have been covering in the first place.

Needless to say I harbor an ocean of personal animosity for this team because of that, and so a loss to that logo is unthinkable for me. This is only intensified by the fact that they suck right now. We can’t lose to these hapless bastards. And now that we have a QB, we won’t have to.

PREDICTION

EAGLES 28 – 13

 

EAGLES SEASON JUST STARTED

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/18
Posted in: Conversations, Offense, Players, Rants. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

EAGLES

NOW that Quarterback Sam Bradford has had his inevitable injury (told you), this team has a chance at winning this loaded diaper of a division. It was hard for some to hear me over all the noise of people rubbing their faces on Bradford’s jockstrap after just 15 preseason passes. However now that we’re 4 – 5 behind his starts, and now that he’s injured again, Eagles fans are looking to hear a voice of reason. You’re looking for a reason to believe our season isn’t over. Well relax. Our season just got started.

Mark Sanchez is by no means a great Quarterback. No one would ever confuse him with a (healthy) Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, or even Phillip Rivers. (Deflators don’t make my list.) However, what Sanchez is, is the best QB the Eagles currently have under contract; and yes, by that I’m saying he was the best QB we had on Opening Day.

Despite having a year’s experience in this system, there were a number of factors that led to Sanchez riding pine behind a guy who struggled with executing the offense. Between not trusting his body and not being comfortable with his players or the system, Bradford kept looking to take the easy way out, time and time again. As a result the Offense stalled and sputtered under him.

Say what you want about the red zone interception that Sanchez threw last week; the Offense hummed with him out there. There was no hint of the typical falloff that happens when a back-up comes into a game with only a few warm-up throws under his belt, 9 games into the season. Imagine next week with a week of first team reps under his belt.

No one is predicting that we’ll put up 30 points per game under Sanchez, but don’t expect us to dip far below the 25 per game we averaged under Bradford. Then again….Hell maybe we will post 30 per game under the Sanchize. In Sanchez’s 8 starts (4 – 4) last year, the Eagles averaged 30 points per game. In fact we hit that 30+ mark, 4 times. In Bradford’s 9 starts we’ve done it all of twice, one of which required Overtime. Would an additional 5 points per game help us out? That spread would have helped us defeat the Falcons, Redskins and Dolphins, and would have us running away with the East at 7 – 2 instead of down third at 4 – 5. (But I’m just saying is all.)

I won’t even go into the differences in their mobility.

I will bring up something else I like about Sanchez over Bradford, and it’s not something that shows up in a box score. If you screw up, Sanchez will get in your face about it. As a former player I love that. When it’s you that screwed up you don’t always like hearing it; but being immediately accountable has a way of waking you up and making you assess yourself faster. If you give a damn about being better,

You saw what happened out there earlier this year when WR Riley Cooper and Bradford were on different pages with a routes and the ball was thrown near no one. Bradford had nothing to say to Cooper on it. Even if all he did was jog over and say “My bad.” Instead there was nothing. Meanwhile the miscues mounted. Sanchez on the other hand, you will immediately hear from. Players know that bad play will not be shrugged at with Sanchez out there. They now know that they can’t “dog it” anymore, and in that we have a leader who makes everyone around him better. From Bradford you get a guy sitting by himself on the sideline and on the field doing shit like this.

Sadford

and this

done

If this is your idea of a leader, you probably get off on being disappointed that we don’t win the Super Bowl every year. Bradford couldn’t lead stink to shit. Mark Sanchez on the other hand, say what you want about his shortcomings, this team now has an actual leader out there.

EAGLES/DOLPHINS PREVIEW

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/15
Posted in: Coaching, Defense, Fans, Offense, Preview. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

1eb

SUNDAY             1:00                              Lincoln Financial Field                     Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

THIS is a dangerous game. The Eagles need this game. Don’t lie to yourself and tell yourself that this game is anything less than must-win. Right now we sit solidly outside of wild card contention so our best shot is to win the East outright. The problem is at 4-4 we’re a win behind the 5-4 giants. Before you get your hopes up about the Patriots helping us by beating the giants this week, keep in mind we still have to face New England ourselves. So the favor they do us this week they could hand back to the giants in few weeks.

EAGLES

Defense

You may not recognize the Defense this week. Our top four active tacklers are all players in the Secondary. I say “active” because our #2 tackler was rookie ILB Jordan “Cowboy Killer” Hicks, before he was lost of the year with a pectoral injury that even he didn’t think was so bad at first.

The upshot of this is that our ILBs will be DeMeco Ryans and Kiko Alonso. After weeks of not really playing together in live-fire since Week Two, the communication and depth in the heart of our Defense will be seriously tested.

Offense

The rankings say that we’re in the top third of the NFL, but when you watch all those quick three-and-outs, and our 30.8% 3rd down conversion rate, you know our ranking is owed less to our own excellence, and more to a creeping mediocrity throughout the NFL.

We can run the ball pretty well as long as we rely more on a straight ahead power concept and less on the zone-read stuff that worked better when LeSean McCoy was here. Our top WR Jordan Matthews has 48 catches. The next most catches by a WR? …15 by Josh Huff. There is no balance here.

Our Offense needs our QB like a kayak needs a 65 pound anchor. He’s just as likely to throw a pick as he is a touchdown, and his target selection is a huge part of our awful 3rd down performance. But as long as this team treads water around the .500 mark, fans will hem and haw that “maybe he’s beginning to come around”.

.

Opponent

Defense

They suck vs the run, and were middle of the pack vs the pass. I said “was” because 7 of their teams 13 sacks just tore his Achilles tendon and is out for the season. So like last week against the Cowboys, we just got a big, fat softball, slow-pitched to us.

There really isn’t much to say on this one. There’s a small handful of household names (Ndamukong Suh, Koa Misi, Brent Grimes, Kelvin Sheppard) making tackles, but not really making plays. When your SS is your leading tackler by 20+ tackles, and you still have the leagues 31st ranked run defense, your unit is not pulling it’s weight.

Offense

What they aren’t is prolific, but this unit is conceptually well balanced and has the appearance of being in a learning phase with their offensive system which is pretty much the same Spread concept that we run. Despite canning their head coach a few weeks ago, the Fish stuck with former Eagles assistant Bill Lazor as their Offensive Coordinator. They’re onto something and they know it.

This is not a particularly explosive group, but they can create big plays, can surprise you, and can put up points. Eagles fans who don’t also play fantasy football may find themselves surprised by RB Lamar Miller, he’s not as physical as his body type would suggest, but the trade-off is that he’s much faster than his build would suggest. And he can catch. QB Ryan Tannehill (now with an OC who gets developing passers) looks to be putting it all together finally.

It’ll be interesting to see how Coach Kelly coaches against a version of his own system run by a guy who helped us be so dangerous two years ago.

BOTTOM LINE

A win says that maybe our team has enough in the tank to beat the teams they should beat. A loss says that our coach can be schooled by his own former assistant, who’s being led by a substitute teacher. But the truth is that Miami is already out of the AFC playoff picture so they may play their youth more to teach them, help with their 2016 Draft positioning, and limit playing time for vets with incentive laden contracts.

Since we need this game more than the Starkist Bunch, the Eagles should come out swinging. We can’t afford a loss here. We just can’t afford it.

PREDICTION

EAGLES 24 – Dolphins 21

EAGLES MIDSEASON REPORT: PART TWO

Posted by The BEAST on 2015/11/10
Posted in: Coaching, Defense, Offense, Players, Reviews. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

player.jordancowboykillerhicks(1)11.10.15

WITH 8 games played right now we’re sitting at 4 – 4. We’ve made it all the way to .500. (yay.) If we’re to win the NFC East (currently sitting behind the 5-4 giants), we’re going to have to get a lot better at some things. Since no one in the NFL is just standing around handing out wins, the notion that we have 4 of them in 8 tries indicates that while we aren’t a superpower, our wins aren’t flukes either. There are clearly things to work on, but as I said in yesterday’s half of the Midseason Report, there’s also good news.

We have a few things that we can build on and that sometimes has a way of getting looked past when high expectations aren’t met. So lets take a moment to put on the StewRat Bootleg of Mattison’s “Predictions” (which I added to the music playlist on the website, just click the play button), put our feet up on the ottoman, and blow bubbles with our pipe as we reflect upon things we can all collectively break out the Kool-Aid smiles over. Such as:

Our 1- 2 RB punch: There is a debate going on about whether or not Ryan Mathews is better than DeMarco Murray. Some fans think Mathews should be the starter. Some are asking if he’s better than LeSean McCoy was. Stop for a second. Isn’t this a great argument to have? Regardless of what side you’re on, no one is saying Murray sucks, just that Mathews is better. Better still, even though both have a little wear and tear on them this year, neither is nursing a laundry list of injuries. Both seemed primed to make a solid second half, and on pace to put up 1,400 yards between them without it killing either man in the process.

The Offensive Line: It’s far from what you would call “good” but it’s working better than most of us thought it would, and that part is a credit to the Coach Kelly. Relying on inside zone running wasn’t cutting it, so against the Jets he started folding in more power running concepts. Since the Jets game things have been a lot more stable as far as running the ball goes.

Duce Staley‘s rotation of the RB’s: People may lament the way it’s being done, but the truth is Murray’s inside running does a great job of gassing the opposing defense before bringing in Mathews to get them chasing him to the outside. Normally you’d use a smaller Darren Sproles kind of RB for that, but the idea that you can get that from a guy who runs through tackles is a bonus. If Mathews could catch worth a damn I’d also be saying that he should start,but since he doesn’t, I think this rotation is just peachy.

DE Fletcher Cox: A couple weeks ago I was going to say Defensive Line here, bu then I noticed something. NT Bennie Logan is different guy out there when Cox takes a breather. That’s not a shot at Logan, that’s saying that Cox is truly making guys around him better when he’s out there.

ILB Jordan “Cowboy Killer” Hicks: Right out of the box, this guy just about singlehandedly ended the Cowboys year when he took away their QB, and doomed them to a six game slide right out of playoff contention. Then the next time he sees them what does he do? He victimizes that day’s starter by taking one of his passes back for six points. When he was drafted I was confused by why the Eagles took him (read more here). I didn’t doubt him as a player, I just didn’t understand how he fit the mold of what Coach Kelly said he wanted. Regardless, this is one that GM Kelly got right.

So yeah. There’s good news to be had. There are things to build on and things we can let tear us apart. We’ll see which side we let win out.