POSITIVE THINGS IN THIS DRAFT

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/11
Posted in: Draft. Tagged: . 9 Comments
Image courtesy of nbcphiladelphia.com

Image courtesy of nbcphiladelphia.com

THERE are things I liked about this Draft, and some things I didn’t like. Recently, there’s been some bellyaching about Eagles fans not showing enough positivity. So I’ll start off with things I liked about the 2014 Draft:

 1)     We entered the Draft with 6 picks and ended up getting 7 players, by trading back 4 spots in the 1st and gaining an extra pick.

2)     6’3” 212 pound WR Jordan Matthews. Every indication so far says this was a not just a solid pick but a good one. This team has NEVER drafted a WR with these physical attributes, this high. Instead of seeing (and coveting) T.O. and Larry Fitzgerald type WR’s from other teams, now we’ve FINALLY drafted one of our own.

3)     I like the Jaylen Watkins (CB) pick, more than I like the athlete himself. Where he was drafted indicates to our DB’s that he’ll have the chance to unseat them if they slip-up. Nothing improves a man faster than his own desire to work at it.

 

So that’s what I liked. Here’s what I didn’t:

 1)     Our first pick was a horrendous reach. I scoured the internet and I can’t find any place that has him rated as a solid 1st rounder. In fact the NFL’s own scouting has him rated as a 3rd – 4th rounder. We paid too much for him.

2)     WR Josh Huff may be a fine addition, but A) Right after we’d just picked a WR? And B) Here’s a guy who was rated as a 5th – 6th round talent (also by NFL Draft Scouts), but we took him in the 3rd.

3)     Taylor Hart and Beau Allen. Look at the game tapes and find ANYTHING that says they belong in the NFL.

4)     S Ed Reynolds. Why draft a S who can’t tackle? You’d think that would be the first thing you’d look for in a last line of defense.

5)     The apparent favoritism of Oregon players by Chip Kelly.

6)     Drafting for a reason other than pure merit. The evidence? “We’re putting the family back together,” Hart said Kelly told him when he called to inform him of the pick.

 

I’m not a “hype guy” by nature, but honestly, I’ve been looking for something to crow about for weeks now. I make the site where you post your own articles. Yet I see no one putting out the vibe they claim to want to see.

If my stuff is negative, speak up. But so far when I do see comments on here, I don’t see many that disagree with what I’m saying. So I apparently can’t be saying anything you aren’t already thinking.

This site averages hundreds of hits per day, and for all the positivity fans may say they want, they A) Don’t put out any when they’re here; and B) They apparently don’t think what I’m saying is wrong. If they did, they’d say so, because Eagles fans aren’t a shy bunch.

 That’s not negative or positive. That’s just being real. 

FINALLY A DEFENSIVE BACK!

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/10
Posted in: Defense, Draft. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

player-jaylenwatkins.570px.

WHILE not a world-changing pick, Jaylen Watkins should be at least good enough to push the veterans at both CB and FS.

This pick is at least a sane investment in the developmental aspect of the Secondary as a whole. Whether this guy pans out as a HOF player,  or he doesn’t make it past first cuts, his presence alone means others have to step it up in camp this year. So from that standpoint alone it’s good pick.

From what I’ve read about this guy, so far he doesn’t sound all that impressive as a player. He’ll tackle, but he’s fragile. He can run, but he has poor ball-skills. He can cover, but he’s grabby. It’s a mixed bag.

In all truth he sounds like a default Special Teamer. But that’s at least something.

Very interested in what we do with both of those 5th rounders.

TWO?! REALLY?!

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/10
Posted in: Draft, Offense. Tagged: , . 2 Comments
Image courtesy of fishduck.com

Image courtesy of fishduck.com

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 Kelly did 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.

I hope these WR’s can pass protect.

THE 2014 DRAFT: 1st ROUND RE-CAP

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/09
Posted in: Defense, Draft. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

AIR-RAID-LOGO

THE Eagles 2014 Draft has gotten off to a poor start. Spin it how you like, but anytime Eagles fans are walking around with an air of ambivalence you know that something doesn’t pass the smell test.

The bottom line is this guy was a reach pick. Reach picks are fine, if you’re mostly solid or if you’re swinging for the fences on a boom or bust guy who could change an entire franchise should he pan out.

This was not that situation. This is not that guy.

We needed a legit pass rusher and instead we got the standard senior performer. By senior performer I mean a guy that the school pushes or schemes to show off in order to pad his stats and get him drafted so the school can say to new recruits, “Hey, look at the percentage of our players that get drafted!”

When a guy is truly special, you can see it as soon as he gets the majority of the starts in a year. Or his improvement will be steady. With senior performers you get guys who wallow in mediocrity even as juniors and then -BOOM- numbers as a senior. It’s harder to do with guys in the Secondary, but positions like RB, WR, TE, and LB are rife with it. It’s also (I think), why so many top picks turn out to be flops.

Look, I’m not saying this guy is bad player. I’m just saying we could have had him later and not passed on players who truly deserved the spot in history that he now occupies.

I hope it gets better. 

PICKING MARCUS SMITH.

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/09
Posted in: Defense, Draft. Tagged: , . 7 Comments
Image courtesy of ogdraft.wordpress.com

Image courtesy of ogdraft.wordpress.com

MARCUS Smith. That’s the guy we picked.

My best friend and I watched the Draft at the South Philly Bar & Grill down Passyunk. I ordered a Philly Tap Water (awesome drink), 2 cheesesteaks and I gave away some EAGLEMANIACAL tee-shirts to fellow fans who also showed up to watch.

The annual strokefest that is the Draft was going according to formula, with every pick being a blah-blah “good pick” or a blah-blah “solid pick”. Mel Kiper had his poor Draft evaluation of Ray Lewis thrown in his face, with now HOF Ray sitting just one guy away. It was fun.

When the Eagles pick came in, we were all on our feet. Pryor was gone, Clinton-Dix was gone, Barr was gone, Cooks was gone, and Ford was gone. Who was left? Whoever it was, we all were expecting the pick to be a great one.

Then Marcus Smith was announced. You could have heard a flea fart from across the street at Capitolo park. I haven’t heard such eerie, dead silence in Philly since Mayor Nutter closed the city in preparation for Hurricane Irene in 2011.

Murmurs broke out and I expected full on bitching to commence in 3-2-… But it never came. It’s like the spirit had been gut punched out of the bar. People settled into drinking and a couple guys schlepped over to the beer pong table. You could hear the ping pong balls, but neither man was talking. I ordered another Philly Tap Water, my friend ordered a Pepsi. The night was over.

 

I don’t know whose idea it was to draft this guy, but barring an amazing next 2 days, that person should be out of a job come Monday. Aside from Danny Watkins, have you ever been more underwhelmed about a Draft pick?

More to the point, why did we reach so badly for this guy??? CBS Sports had a solid  2nd round grade him. Not a 1st – 2nd grade, a solid 2nd. Draft Countdown had him as a 2nd – 3rd. NFL.com Scouting had him down as a 3rd – 4th. The only thing about him that says 1st rounder, is his Draft history.

Let me go you one better. When you pick a guy in the 1st you should expect him to contribute heavily if not start, in that same year. Did anyone see anything that said “Yeah. Sit Trent Cole down, so this kid can get out there”? I sure as hell didn’t.

It’s 3:21 a.m. now. I came home and went looking for video of this guy. This is video of him in a game which was a runaway for his team. Observe how consistently dominant he is:

 

AND THIS IS HIS HIGHLIGHT REEL! So you see my frustration? This next 2 days had better be some of the most bang-ass drafting us Eagle fans have ever seen. Because between this and Jacksongate 2014©, the Front Office is looking less and less like they know what they’re doing these days. 

CLINTON-DIX WANTS TO BE AN EAGLE

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/08
Posted in: Draft. Tagged: , . Leave a comment
Image courtesy of thefootballeducator.com

Image courtesy of thefootballeducator.com

SAFETY [Ha’Sean Clinton-Dix] wants the Eagles to move up to get him. His exact words were: “I told him to tell them to come get me, please,” Clinton-Dix said Wednesday, per CSN Philly. “Whatever it takes.”

That’s an interesting statement. Come get me please. It sounds like he knows he won’t slide to us, which says he knows he’s getting Drafted early regardless.

But he wants to be here.

I’m a huge fan of moving up to grab [Anthony Barr], but if we elect to get this Clinton-Dix instead, at least we know he personally wants to be an Eagle.

I played semi-pro for 3 years and I know what it means to get to pick the symbol on your helmet. I know the pride it inspired in me to do that logo justice. I remember pushing myself, shattering old limits, and the rapid rate I improved at as a result.

If we don’t get Barr, then we need to lay hands on Clinton-Dix, because there is NO substitute for commitment when a man had truly made it in his heart.

This I know first-hand.

PRE-DRAFT TRADE-UP A MISTAKE?

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/07
Posted in: Draft. Tagged: , , . 2 Comments

bad-choice

OUR Eagles may be about to give up the 22nd pick and our 2015 first rounder, to move up into this year’s Top 5 to take [Sammy Watkins] or [Mike Evans]. I’ll root for whoever we pick of course, but I pray my team does the right thing. Given our defensive needs I hope this is just a rumor and a smokescreen.

Normally I would dismiss such a thing as bored reporters speculating, but this thing has bounced around from ESPN’s Sal Paloantonio, to 97.5 The Fanatic, to NJ.com. So there may be some fire to all this smoke.

My hope is that if a move up is made, it would be to take a defensive player. Preferably a LB. Specifically [Anthony Barr]. Afew Mock Drafts have him going to Dallas, and we can’t allow that. Secondary problems be damned, if the Cowpies can grab Barr and play him at rush OLB in a 4-3, it could tip the balance of power in the NFC East.

At one point I wanted Barr because his game is a natural fit for the 3-4 scheme we use, and players like that are in short supply this year. Now I also want him because it keeps Dallas from using him on us for years to come. It would help us, and hurt them, by helping us.

What do you think? What should we get if we move up. Better still, where should the line be drawn at what we give up to do so?

SO WHO WILL WE PICK FIRST?

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/05
Posted in: Draft. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

player-mychalkendricks.facebook

BEFORE anything else let’s look at what we have to work with:

1)     We pick 22nd in every round except the 6th because we have no pick in that round.

2)     We only have 6 picks total.

3)     There are no rounds in which we have 2 picks.

That’s stuff we can ALL agree on, because it’s fact. Now that we know what we have let’s look at what we need. For example these are 3 lists that seem to reflect the consensus:

1)     S, LB, DL

2)     OLB, WR, S, CB, ILB

3)     CB, OLB, WR, G, ILB

Notice how regardless of how they stack up, LB pops up early every time? 

 

Pass rush is our team’s biggest need. Regardless of what you think of the Safeties or Corners, a better pass rush than we’ve had these last 2 years will make everyone back there immediately better, by rendering the opposing offense immediately worse. Can we agree on that?

Did anyone notice how we aggressively pursued pass rushers in Free Agency? What’s that? You say we didn’t chase or sign a pass rusher? However we made sure WR’s got paid, we added a FS, and even some ST players, but again…no pass rusher.

It’s that more than anything else that says we’ll use the Draft to address an apparent need that we totally ignored in Free Agency. My thinking is we’ll grab an OLB. While I’d prefer for us to trade up to grab [Anthony Barr], it seems a lot more realistic that someone else will beat us to him. A trade up will cost us big, and we’ve already confirmed that we’re short on trade bait.

Our 3-4 scheme requires an OLB that will play most downs around the Line Of Scrimmage, meaning he’ll need the size to hold up to battling OT’s all day long. So we’ll need someone who’s already 265-270, or who may be able to add enough playing weight in the next couple of years to get to the 265-270  range.

That makes for a very narrow list after pick 22. In fact about the only guy fitting that bill is [Jeremiah Attaochu] out of Georgia Tech. Later on there’s guys like Arkansas’s [Chris Smith] and Alabama’s [Adrian Hubbard], but both are said to lack explosiveness, so it seems that they’re more like depth/role players than legit NFL starters.

All in all, I think OLB is who the Eagles will take with the first pick. We need an heir apparent for Trent Cole and barring an unlikely trade up, and even though he’s a reach at #22, Attaochu looks to be the guy.

Like I said it would be a reach to grab him at 22, but there’s almost  no way this guy will still be there at 54 (our next pick), so we’d have to reach a bit, or gamble on a trade down.

Anything could happen between now and Thursday, and I won’t pretend to have inside information or to be a psychic, but if I were to put $50 on the pick, I’d go with:

OLB Jeremiah Attaochu 6’3 252lb Georgia Tech.

THE EAGLES DRAFT STRATEGY

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/03
Posted in: Draft, Front Office (F.O.). Tagged: , . Leave a comment
Image courtesy of ESPN.com

Image courtesy of ESPN.com

HOWIE Roseman doesn’t think this year’s Safety crop is a good group. Read beyond the headlines and between the lines though.

You have to watch phrasing with this Front Office. Just because Howie doesn’t think it’s a good group doesn’t mean he doesn’t see a couple of standouts in that group. This is just the Eagles annual attempt at sending out fake Draft signals. It’s a longstanding part of their Draft Strategy.

I love my team, really I do, but they do such a HORRIBLE job with these smokescreens every year, it makes you wonder why they bother with them at all. You’d think with all the practice they get bullshitting us, that they’d be better at bullshitting other teams.

Be great if there was a coach or someone we fans could hire to help them improve in this area. Maybe we as fans should pass the hat and make donations to fund it.

Seriously though, everywhere you go you can find an almost identical list of “Needs To Fill” for every NFL team. Everybody knows what everybody needs, so it’s not like we have any secrets. Especially in this 24/7/365, multi-tiered media cycle. Yet there are some teams (like ours) that insist on acting like it’s still 1990. Sometimes I want to send a note: “Dear Eagles, the Internet has effectively murdered the NFL Secret, so act accordingly.”

Quick question: When was the last time a team traded up over the Eagles to grab a player at the same position that the Eagles drafted that year in the first round.

Answer: It hasn’t happened since at least 1993 (I just stopped looking after that.) The entire time Jeff Lurie has been the Owner ’94 to now (it’ll be 20 years on May 6th),  the Eagles Draft smokescreen has NEVER spooked another team into a sudden jump. Never. Not even once.

Lately you can’t get away from discussions on WR’s, pass rushers, Cornerbacks and Safeties being linked to the Eagles. Meanwhile the Eagles do their part to fan those flames by bringing in guy after guy that they have no intention and/or chance of drafting.

All this despite the fact that we all know what the most glaring need is for our team, the 2-3 guys who could fill that need, and whether they should fall to us or whether a move is needed to have a shot at them.

I’ll get into who we’re picking tomorrow, and clear away some of the smokescreen. Don’t forget to click that FOLLOW button, because you won’t want to be the one to miss it.

 

GREAT EXPECTATIONS: JEREMY MACLIN

Posted by The BEAST on 2014/05/02
Posted in: Offense, Players. Tagged: , . 2 Comments
Image courtesy of philly.com

Image courtesy of philly.com

HOLY Hell!

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.

We’ll overwork him next year. 🙂