Jared Goff

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FOUR THINGS: WK 1: EAGLES – LIONS

Posted by The BEAST on 2022/09/10
Posted in: breakdown, Coaching, Defense, Four Things, NFL, Offense, Players. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

LOCKED and Loaded. That’s the name of this season. We spent the offseason prepping for an arms race, while the team that won our division seemed to dismantle themselves. They however, aren’t on the menu this week. Detroit is.

Speaking of dismantle, the last time we saw Detroit we hung 44 points on them. In their house! Meanwhile, all they could do was curl into the fetal position, as their coach yelled about biting knee caps. True, they’ve made a few improvements, but c’mon, NOBODY made as many improvements as we did.

There’s a good chance that we can come out of this week, as the only team in the division with a win. While one game isn’t a large lead, it can definitely serve to help set an attitude. You wanna do something big? You start by doing something small.

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The point of Four Things isn’t to predict a winner, it’s to discuss which tactics would give our Eagles the best chance to win this game. So here are the Four Things that we need to focus on this week, versus the: Detroit Lions.

1) Run the Ball: Play to our strength, and let QB Jalen Hurts ease into having more of the game put in his hands. His perfect preseason was cute, but he’s about to face a gameplan. As for Detroit, their new 4-3 will feature five guys who our Offensive Line absolutely mauled, manhandled and fucked over, last October. Ultimately Debo-ing them for 4 rushing touchdowns and 236 rushing yards. Seeing five of the same victims, making up a front seven that we romped and frolicked through, all I see is a second helping. Run the ball!

2) Make Goff Run: In six seasons QB Jared Goff has 401 rushing yards. For comparison, through six years, QB Peyton Manning ran for 582. I bring this up to illustrate just how adverse Goff is to running. Anything that changes or challenges his throwing platform, is alien to him. So we need to disabuse him of any sense of comfort and safety. Last year we caught him in the pocket quite a bit, so if he still wants to just stand there… Okay.

Also their starting G Halapoulivaati Vaitai is out. His back-up is having back issues, and their C has a groin issue. Against this line, we sacked Goff five times last year. So their interior is weak, and we have DT’s Fletcher Cox, and Jordan Davis. Get Goff out of the pocket.

3) Challenge Their Receivers: We’ve been hearing about WR D.J. Chark for years now, based solely off of his 2019 season. In the last two seasons, he has just 60 catches for 860 yards, and a 52% catch rate. On the other side is WR Amon-Ra St. Brown. (Love the name. I had a cat named Amon-Ra. Golden tabby with gold eyes.) He’s a bum. Not the cat, the WR. He’s one of those “12 targets, 8 catches, for 73 yards” type of receivers.

Unleash CB’s Darius “Big Play” Slay and James Bradberry! Mug these chumps and get us a pick six. Okay, maybe that’s asking too much, or being too specific. More generally, don’t let either receiver see 100 yards. That sounds about reasonable.

4) Get ‘im!: Wherever CB Jeff Okudah is, that should be the receiver who gets the ball. At least 10 passes have to go to who he’s covering. During his two year career, he’s played a total of 9 games, and ended both years with season-ending injuries. Last year it was his Achilles, and now he gets to try it out vs WR Devonta Smith’s route running, or WR A.J. Brown’s explosiveness. Pick on him. Hound him! Harass him! Make him Vontae Davis 2.0!

Remember when Vontae Davis retired during halftime?
Just said “NOPE!” and grabbed his car keys.

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If the Eagles do these Four Things, then we’ll be virtually impossible to beat. That being said…

I want to give the Lions some benefit of the doubt, but the more I look at this game, the more it looks like Mike Tyson vs Queen Eliz- (Nope! Gotta change that now. Wrote that joke nearly two weeks ago and now… You really committed to ruining my joke, Liz! Just leaned all the way in.) Ugh! It looks like Tyson vs Skip Bayless. Yeah. We like that imagery, right? Let’s go with that.

I can’t believe the NFL is going to sanction this match-up. Everything about it is all wrong for the Lions. It’s as if Roger Goodell wrote “SQUEAKY TOY” on a baby, and handed it to a pit-bull.

It’s madness! Their offensive line can’t protect their over-drafted QB. Their defensive front is an affront to the idea of defense. Their WR’s would be average vs an average secondary, and our’s is a shark tank. They have one dangerous CB, and the other is practically wearing a bull’s-eye! But the NFL is going to let this happen anyway? It’s madness!

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Prediction: EAGLES 30 – Lions 10

WARNING: I don’t have the faintest clue as to what a point spread is, and I know even less about how it works. I know football and that’s IT. If you use Four Things as a gambling tool, you are trying to lose your money, and will deserve it when you do.

Check back in a couple of days for Four Things Reviewed, and we’ll discuss how this game went.

CARSON WENTZ DISRESPECTED

Posted by The BEAST on 2017/06/10
Posted in: Conversations, Fans, NFL, Offense, Players, Rants, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

CARSON Wentz was just “dissed” by the national media, yet again. The other day, the NFL released a story asking whether last year’s number one overall pick, Rams QB Jared Goff, could catch up to Cowboys QB Dak Prescott. Observe:

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Instead of complaining immediately, I gave it a day or so, first. Just to see if the league’s scribes would show Wentz some love in a separate or subsequent article. Two days went by, and the only mention of him is in relation to whether or not the Eagles have a playoff chance this year.

For his part, I’m sure that Wentz would say that he doesn’t pay attention to such things, that his focus is on getting better to help this team win, blah blah, and boilerplate. Personally I think that’s a load of horseshit, but Wentz is is trying to be a class act, publicly. So I’ve decided to be publicly pissed on his behalf. I’m hoping more Eagles fans will join me on this one.

I don’t want to downplay, minimize, or take away any credit for Dak Prescotts’s fluke rookie season. While being carried by a very good run game, he managed to do some nice things until the stage got too big for him. I can fully and freely acknowledge that. It’s only natural that the league would want to compare other young QB’s against him.

What has me steamed is that the guy held up as competition for Prescott, is Goff. Wentz started 16 games last year, to Goff’s 7. Wentz won 7 of his starts, while Goff won none of his, and even managed to get blown out in 4 of those games. Wentz looked like a guy becoming a franchise QB, while Goff looked like…

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However, the national media did what it’s used to doing, and skipped completely over the Eagles. In most cases it’s hard for me to get mad over it. Being honest here, since the days of Ray Rhodes, we rarely have had many players on the roster who fans outside of Philly felt like talking about.

Ricky Watters, Donovan McNabb, Terrell Owens, Jevon Kearse, LeSean McCoy, Brian Dawkins and Jeremiah Trotter. Those were Eagles that you could expect fans of other teams to not just know, but possibly bring up themselves. Not just sports reporters, but actual fans.

Guys like Brian Westbrook, Corey Simon, Sheldon Brown, Jon Runyan, Trent Cole, and Jason Peters, are all guys Eagles fans think highly of, but if you run these names by (for example) the average Jaguars fan, you’ll probably get a blank stare.

Wentz on the other hand, was picked number two overall last year so that already puts him on the national stage. He then played circles around the guy picked a spot ahead of him. Given that most think Wentz will become a legit franchise QB, there is no way he should be an afterthought in this discussion. As I said, I can generally understand it when Eagles players get overlooked, but this oversight was nothing short of egregious. This was practically a deliberate snub.

As I said before, Wentz is too classy point out, or seriously acknowledge this insult. A fist fight in mud isn’t how he conducts himself publicly. But I’m an Eagles fan. That’s just my game.

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So if you’re mad about our QB being slighted, join me in telling the NFL to go blow a cactus. Get your friends involved. Stepping over our QB for a half-wit like Goff? That shouldn’t go unanswered.

TRADING UP FOR CARSON WENTZ

Posted by The BEAST on 2016/10/01
Posted in: Conversations, Draft, Front Office (F.O.), NFL, Players, Roster, trade. Tagged: , , , , , . 1 Comment

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REMEMBER back in May when I said that GM Howie Roseman got hosed in the trade with the Browns? That trade was made so we could move up from 8th to 2nd, and select QB Carson Wentz in the 2016 NFL Draft. We also gave up our third and a fourth-rounder in 2016, a first-rounder in 2017, and a second-rounder in 2018. Again, does everyone remember when I said that we overpaid?

Good.

Because we still overpaid, but now there’s more evidence to support the claim.

Wentz is 3-0, well respected, and seems to have a very solid grasp of the system he’s running out there. Clearly he will only get more comfortable, and more savvy as he gains experience. Also, Roseman’s fleecing of Minnesota took much of the edge off that Cleveland trade.

However, we still overpaid for Wentz.

This is not to under-value what Wentz has done, but really, look around. There are later selected rookies showing as much poise, awareness, and play-making ability as Wentz. They too will only grow more savvy and comfortable with experience.

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Jacoby Brissett

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Cody Kessler

When I look at Wentz, or Dallas’s 4th round QB Dak Prescott, or New England’s 3rd round QB Jacoby Brissett, or Cleveland’s 3rd round QB Cody Kessler (who is the highest rated QB on his team), it’s clear that spending a high pick means less than having a coaching staff devoted to player development.

 

Here are two examples of what I mean. Did you see this year’s number one overall pick QB Jared Goff win that game last week? No. Of course not. Because he was drafted by a shitty Los Angeles coaching staff. He was expected to be great from Day One, and when he wasn’t, they found him a bench, a baseball cap, a clipboard and a dog house. There was no attempt to develop him first. They threw him out there, then threw him under the bus.

On the other hand, most of the other rookies I mentioned, were pressed into starting due to injury. None of them was supposed to be a starter. They were slated for developing, but circumstances shifted and they had to grow up in a hurry. So far, each of them has performed better than could be expected. Regardless of how high or low they were taken.

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Look at his eyes…

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See his eyes?

Looking around at what is actually happening in the NFL this year, looking at how these guys are actually playing, I see nothing that says the Eagles wouldn’t be just as good with any of these other rookie QB’s. Which only puts a larger spotlight on the incongruity of Wentz’s price tag.

Fans will say that as long as Wentz wins, it doesn’t matter what we gave up to get him. Sounds neat until you realize that next year we could have had two 1st rounders. It would have given us the option of infusing a big dose of young talent next year, or parlaying one of the picks into multiple future picks. That sort of thinking however, is specially reserved for those of us who remember that there’s a future, and not just a present.

Look, unless those other young QB’s start playing like shit, or unless Wentz continues to average 256 passing yards per game for the duration of his career, it still looks like we paid double retail price for the same product everyone else got on sale.

Wentz is 3-0, well respected, and seems to have a very solid grasp of the system he’s running out there.

But we still overpaid.