Josh McCown

All posts tagged Josh McCown

EAGLES TRADING FOR NICK FOLES.

Posted by The BEAST on 2020/03/05
Posted in: Conspiracy Corner, Conversations, Draft, free agents, Front Office (F.O.), Offense, Players, playoffs, Roster, trade. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

QUARTERBACK Nick Foles is up for trade by the Jacksonville Jaguars. The two questions I keep hearing and reading are “Should we trade for Nick Foles?” and “Do you want the Eagles to trade for Nick Foles?” Funny thing is, many fans treat those like they mean the same thing, but really those two questions are a million miles apart.

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Should we? Yes. The Eagles need a back-up QB with Josh McCown unlikely to be back. If we bring in another QB, it should be someone who fits the system, and culture. Someone the roster can rally behind, if our starter gets hurt. Foles meets those qualifications better than anyone else we could put in that #2 slot. In fact, Foles meets those qualifications even better than QB Tom Brady could. And I dare you to argue with that.

Do I want it? Yes. I want anything that obviously helps us be stronger. In January, we watched McCown get hurt and still keep the Eagles in a playoff game. Given that McCown was able to do as much as he did, there is no way that you can convince me that

A) if QB Carson Wentz doesn’t get cheapshot, we still lose that game.

B) if Foles (being more familiar with the roster) stepped in instead of McCown, that we still lose that game.

2019 Josh McCown

Eat a dick Clowney.

NOTE: This is not to say that McCown lost that game for us. Far from it. The guy was a gamer for us, and was a hell of a teammate. It would do me proud to see him in midnight green in 2020.

That all having been said, Foles coming here is out of the question, right? We can’t afford him, right? Sit. Have some tea. It’s Blood Orange. Outside the box tea, for outside the box thinking.

The deal that he’s on in Jacksonville? He was never going to be a Jaguar past 2021. Media types were saying that while the ink was still drying on the contract. Only 50 of the 88 million was ever guaranteed, and after 2020 the Jags can either cut Foles and eat 12.5M in dead money, or pay Foles the remaining 53.875 million over two years.

Bottom line: After 2020 Foles is owed just 12.5M if he’s cut. Letting him keep his roster spot exposes the Jags to owing him more money. So he won’t be there under any circumstance in 2021.

Just over a year ago (2/21/2019) I wrote “WHY NOT KEEP NICK FOLES?”. In that article I proposed 50M over 5, with 3 years guaranteed. Putting my GM hat back on a year later, I’d up that ante. 50 over 5, with every red cent guaranteed, with retirement being the only caveat language. If he (or his wife Tori) wants a no-trade clause, add it.

Next to the CBA (whenever it gets done) that’s an easy lift for a ringer in the #2 slot. It guarantees Foles stays until he’s 36 – 37, and basically retires him as an Eagle. A quick call to his agent Justin Schulman, will determine if Foles is amenable to reworking his deal. If so, we need to make the trade.

Wentz Foles

What about Carson!? (Shrug) What about him? If he and Foles truly have a great relationship, he should welcome it. If he secretly doesn’t want Foles to steal his spotlight, then the next time he volunteers to go into a tent, there should be s’mores involved. “With your shield, or on it.”

But what do we trade them? Hold on. Let’s understand the terrain before we travel any further. Trading Foles is a salary cap purge for them. As I outlined in that article from last year, most teams already have their prospective QB of the future. Thus, trading for Foles is asking for a back-up with an eight figure per year, price tag. Throw in a decent QB Draft pool, and the trade partners get really slim for Jacksonville.

How about we dangle DE Derek Barnett? Unless he has a monster 2020, we’d be silly to pick up his fifth year option after 2020. With them possibly losing DE Yannick Ngakoue, this patches a hole for them, with youth that may have more upside in their system, than in ours.

In fact, since they lost CB A.J. Bouye, I’d sweeten the pot by offering Barnett and CB Sidney Jones. I think Jones has more upside than most fans here do, but I think his confidence will always be an on/off switch. Better to broom him before we have to make any sort of tough financial decisions regarding him.

FAP DUDE

Admit it. You LOVE the idea.

So we offer something we can’t use, for something they can’t use. We do it before the Draft, so everyone knows what they need to replace as early as possible, and in the process give each other some cap relief, in the time-frames where we each need that space. Afterward, we rework Foles deal to be worth 50M not just 12.5.

0-card.nick.foles.SBMVP

Like I wasn’t going to include this.

As I said, these are two very different questions. BTW: If we don’t get Foles, it would be wise to make a push for Jacoby Brissett, and offer him that same 50 over 5 deal. 

FOUR THINGS REVIEWED – WILD CARD ROUND – SEAHAWKS

Posted by The BEAST on 2020/01/06
Posted in: Coaching, Defense, Four Things, NFC East, NFL, Offense, Players, playoffs, Reviews, stats. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

NOBODY quit. No matter how bad it got. No matter who was hurt, no matter what the situation was when they got injured. The fight never left this team.

I feel pride and anger for this bunch. Obviously, I’m proud of what they accomplished in winning the division. I’m angry because they deserved a better ending than the one they got. It’s funny. I wasn’t angry during or immediately after the game. But now? As I sit here and do the autopsy, I see the scars, and the wounds, and the sacrifices laid bare before me. This isn’t anger. This isn’t anger at all. It’s sadness.

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EAGLES 9 – Seahawks 17

We lost QB Carson Wentz (1/4 – 25.0% – 3 – 0 – 0) nine minutes into the game, to a helmet-to-helmet hit, where the defender then dropped all of his weight onto Carson, driving his head into the turf. That means there were two penalties on a play that could have resulted in an ejection. No one so much as reached for a flag.

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Enter QB Josh McCown (18/24 – 75.0% – 174 – 0 – 0 / 5 – 23 – 4.6 – 0 – 0), playing in the first playoff game of his career. Given the situation and the lack of weapons at his disposal, he acquitted himself well. He showed more poise than leadership, and a great deal of plucky gamesmanship.

It bears mentioning that TE Zach Ertz (2 – 44 – 22.0 – 0) played through a broken rib and lacerated kidney. He wasn’t just a decoy as he was targeted 4 times in this game.

2019 Fletch Cox.jpg

The Defense played as well as they did during the season, but with no offensive support, you can’t expect miracles. DT Fletcher Cox (3 – 0 – 0 – 0) played a far more dominant game than his stat sheet reveals. He spent all day running over, through and past Seattle’s interior linemen. If we understood the concept of contain, the defense could have won this game singlehandedly.

I hear you asking, “What about all the stuff that stats don’t reveal?” Well, that’s the reason for these “Four Things” articles. We introduce an idea of what needs addressing BEFORE the game, so that fans have to honestly answer questions about those things, AFTER the game. This helps to get us, and keep us, all on the same page.

So, of the Four Things we were looking for in this last game, what exactly did we see?

1) Keep them in their base: This happened, but I’m not sure if we triggered it, or their injury issues helped them play into our plans. In any case, they stayed in a defense that we had a legitimate chances against, all game long. (DONE)

2) Keep contain: HA!!! This, even more than Wentz’s injury, is what cost us the game. Their QB is at his best, when he can get outside of play design, because free-form offense breaks down defenses. Our DE’s were far too inconsistent with their rush depth and rush angles, which allowed Seattle to convert long third downs all game long. (NOT DONE)

3) Be the aggressor: That went up in smoke when the playbook had to be simplified to accommodate McCown. We leaned heavy on a handful of plays, where the only times it seemed the ball was in the air for more than 8 yards, was on a few passes to TE Dallas Goedert (7 – 73 – 10.4 – 0). Everything else was dink and Dak. (Sorry, force of habit.) (NOT DONE)

4) Cover more, don’t blitz: Don’t use the Safeties to blitz. Our only sack was from SS Malcolm Jenkins (7 – 1.0 – 0 – 0), who was sent after their QB a few times. Usually resulting in a big play. (NOT DONE)

This game’s Four Things score is 1 of 4. Thus players clean out their lockers tomorrow. Some for the last time.

2019-Kelce and Peters.jpg

On The Whole:

If we were blown out after losing Wentz, it would be understandable. But we weren’t. If we lost to a far superior team, it would be understandable. But we didn’t. (I mean, you can’t look at the score, and think that if Wentz were in, it ends the same way.)

With the Eagles it’s a number of small things. And we saw them made manifest on the field in this game. Things like a lack of contain, receivers schemed to run free in our Secondary, the lack WR help in a passing league. There are a number of things that need to get cleaned up on this team.

Not going to get into that yet. Instead, I’m going to put out a LONG overdue Rivals Report this week. Then I’ll take a couple weeks off, to start formulating my offseason outlook, and do some general site maintenance.

 

FOUR THINGS REVIEWED – WK PS3 – RAVENS

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/08/23
Posted in: Coaching, Crazy Talk, Defense, Four Things, NFL, Offense, Players, Reviews, Roster, stats. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

2019ps McCown and JJAW.jpg

TOLD you that it could get ugly early. This is what happens when you don’t rehearse. Nothing about that game indicated that the Eagles are ready for Week One. By the way, if you were embarrassed with last nights first half, imagine opening the season with a home loss to the Redskins.

Eagles 15 – Ravens 26

QB Josh McCown (17/24 – 70.8% – 192 – 2 – 0) came in and looked better than most would expect, with less than a week to pick up the Offense. I say most, because I’m not most. A 17 year vet, playing against second stringers (albeit with second stringers), managed to make solid reads, in a game with no defensive game plan. While others see two touchdowns, I see fewer than 200 yards on 24 attempts.

2019 JJAW.jpeg

WR J.J. Arcega-Whiteside (8 – 104 – 13.0 – 1) caught all but one ball thrown his way, and looked strong after the catch. The run game still remains difficult to gauge.

Defensively, we didn’t seem to want to tackle, or cover anybody. CB Jeremiah McKinnon (0 – 0 – 0 – 0)

Mike Bolton Office Space disgusted

may have made found his way onto a poster or two last night. He’s that guy reaching for the ball, during someone else’s highlight.

While we were mounting a comeback of sorts, the game was (mercifully) ended early, due to a lightning hazard during last night’s storm.

I hear you asking, “What about all the stuff that stats don’t reveal?” Well, that’s the reason for these “Four Things” articles. We introduce an idea of what needs addressing BEFORE the game, so that fans have to honestly answer questions about those things, AFTER the game. This helps to get us, and keep us, all on the same page.

So, of the Four Things we were looking for in this last game, what exactly did we see?

1) Root for your guy: WR Greg Ward (4 – 45 – 11.2 – 0) caught 4 of 5 passes thrown his way. I like his chances this year.

2) Hassan Chop: The stage was set to see if DT Hassan Ridgeway (1 – 0 – 0 – 0) could make his presence felt, and put clear distance between himself and DT Treyvon Hester (1 – 0 – 0 – 0). He didn’t. The result was a pretty mixed bag, as the Ravens run game was contained, but there wasn’t much serious heat put on the Ravens QB.

3) Starter Watch: For the most part our Starters started. And they looked awful! But wait. That’s not really a bad thing. Well, looking awful is bad, but finding it out now is a blessing. Had none of them played, we’d have seen last night take place vs the Redskins in a couple weeks.

4) Staying focused: I watched on auto-pilot before leaving for work. I was less interested in the game than I was in making sure I didn’t have another splinter in my sock, like I did Wednesday night. Discovered that fucker while walking across the air field! Not exactly a place where you can stop, take off your shoe and tend to your feet. Hit me in that soft spot on the side of the toe, next to the big toe. Lots of cursing and sudden limp, followed by picking at my foot in a men’s room. All that before my shift started. So yeah, the preseason game was barely registering.

On The Whole:

We were getting killed out there, when God said:

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Hopefully this will serve as a lesson for not blowing off rehearsals next preseason, since this one is beyond salvaging.

FOUR THINGS – WK PS3 – EAGLES-RAVENS

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/08/19
Posted in: Coaching, Defense, Four Things, NFL, Offense, Players, Preview, Roster, Special Teams. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

PS3-BAL

APPARENTLY the preseason is no longer a period for Starters to knock off rust and sharpen edges. That leaves as it’s only function, to serve as an elimination chamber for the bottom 24.6% of the roster.

Seriously, of the 53 man roster to assemble, 40 of them (75.4%) started OTA’s as locks to make the team. That means only 13 spots were EVER up in the air. Six of those now look to have been locked down by, WR J.J. Arcega-Whiteside, T Halapoulivaati Vaitai, G/C Stefen Wisniewski, DE’s Daeshon Hall and Shareef Miller, and LB L.J. Fort.

So over these next two weeks, this team will play two games, to decide on 7 players. Most of whom will spend much of the season not being among the 46 who actually dress.

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These next two games basically seem like “Change my mind” games for players like RB’s Wendell Smallwood and Josh Adams; WR’s Marken Michel and Mack Hollins; OL Matt Pryor and Jordan Mailata; DL Josh Sweat and Treyvon Hester; LB T.J. Edwards; SS’s Andrew Sendejo, and Johnathan Cyprien. (I think we all have always known who our 6 CB’s will be.) Basically this is the week that Special Teams gets built.

Those players need a strong showing over these next two weeks, to create a numbers crunch on another part of the roster.

So let’s talk about the Four Things we need to focus on this week versus the Ravens:

1) Root for your guy: If you have a pet long-shot that you’ve been rooting for, now is your time to shine baby! Send some psychic vibes out, and if your guy gets makes the cut, you can claim credit for helping. My pet long-shot: WR Greg Ward. It would have been TE Will Tye, but with TE Richard Rodgers missing so much time, and Tye playing well, it’s unlikely that Tye needs any help.

2) Hassan Chop: The Eagles coveted DT Hassan Ridgeway for years, and so traded for him during the 2019 Draft. He suffered a concussion in our first preseason game and missed the second. He’s back at practice so, it’s likely he’ll play. The question is can he legit beat out Hester? He needs to show up here.

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Never thought I’d use THIS card again. Wow. You can even see LB Mychal Kendricks in the background there. 

3) Starter Watch: Last week, a handful of starter level players (SS Malcolm Jenkins, DE’s Brandon Graham and Vinny Curry) asked Head Coach Doug Pederson if they could play at least a little. It will be interesting to see if those same players play a little this week, or if more players decide to join them.

4) Staying focused: At this point, unless you’re rooting for a guy, there are no stakes. It will be hard not to channel surf, but try not to in the first half at least. That feels weird to say, because this used to be the game where Starters played an entire half, and you got a good feel for what they were trying to hang their hat on.

If we do all these things, we’re just about guaranteed to win. Now that we’ve covered what should happen, let’s get into what likely will happen:

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The Eagles are just killing time during some league mandated games. So QB Josh McCown should make his Eagles debut, despite not really knowing the playbook yet. It’d be weird to see him start the first half, but to see him start the second half seems apropos.

Beyond that, who really knows. Expect a lot of flags as players desperate to get into the “maybe” conversation, play too aggressively or carelessly due to adrenaline and emotion. Players like: DE Eli Harold, CB Orlando Scandrick, and RB Donnel Pumphrey.

Baltimore has played their Starters in both games so far, suggesting that they follow the traditional preseason model, not the new one that we’re on. Odds are that both from a talent standpoint and a polish standpoint, they will eat us alive if we spend another game serving sheep to lion.

And it could get ugly, early.

PREDICTION: EAGLES 17 – Ravens 24

JOSH McCOWN NEEDS RIGGING

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/08/18
Posted in: Conversations, free agents, Offense, Players, playoffs, Rants, Roster, Super Bowl, The 12. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

 

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WITH the Eagles QB room turning into an infirmary, our Front Office went out and signed QB Josh McCown to a 1year, 2M$ deal, that’s worth up to 5.4M with incentives. Lots of fans seem happy with the signing. To me, he’s the Human version of the Kobayashi Maru, the ill-fated ship in Star Trek II’s ‘No win scenario” simulation. So I flat out don’t like the signing. Let me breakdown why.

First off, this signing only has real impact if QB Carson Wentz gets seriously hurt in the first three or four weeks of the season. If that’s the case then we’re fucked already. Yeah yeah, I know, 2017. I was on here making memes about believing in QB Nick Foles when most of the fan base was doubting him. Remember these:

0-post-Week 15

This was after the giants game

1wc -Nick of Time

0- W17 I believe

That said, 2017 was an anomaly, and 2018 proved it. Back-ups are back-ups for a reason. Don’t let nostalgia get the story twisted.

Speaking of back-ups, I’m hearing that McCown might be ahead of QB Nate Sudfeld on the depth chart, when Sudfeld comes back to active duty. That would be FARCE! McCown will have to be spoon-fed an Offense, that Sudfeld is already steeped in. McCown will have to develop his timing and touch with each receiver, whereas Sudfeld already has that. McCown will have to learn all the blocking protections.

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Like Pat Ryan and Mark Sanchez, McCown continues a long tradition of Jets who can to the Eagles to secure their place in the Hall Of Fame.

Unless we’re going to scale back the playbook for him. That usually makes a team predictable, no?

Some are touting McCown’s 17 years of NFL experience. However, what he has lots of experience at, is losing. His career mark as a starter is 23 – 53 (.302). No team he has ever started 10 games for, has EVER seen the playoffs. No team he has started even 7 games for, has ever finished with a .500 record. He’s everything you claim to hate about Sam Bradford. (Minus the sleeves.)

So playing McCown is essentially waving a white flag over the season. If it comes down to us leaning on a non-Wentz QB, why not lean on Sudfeld, or a QB like Clayton Thorson, whom we spent a draft pick on? If we’re just going to roll over and play for Draft position, then doesn’t it make more sense to develop our youth, so that the team has leverage in any possible holdout situation, and doesn’t end up where the Dallas Cowboys currently are?

This McCown signing make zero sense. It’d have made more sense to have WR Greg Ward take a few snaps per week at QB. He’s played the position at a high level in college and could be our 4th string/emergency QB. (It would also put us in position to do what I suggested in THE 12.)

Some look at the surface of this signing and they see a 17 year vet, with a name they recognize. They see that as a good thing. I look under the hood of this signing and I see a (well-traveled) 17 year vet, with a name I recognize (as not being good enough to win). There’s no way I can be happy with this.

Unless we can rig the simulation…