A big win was necessary, but we do need to remember that the Chiefs are a terrible team. They have now lost twenty-six of their last twenty-eight games.
The defense looked great against a pretty bad offense.
Excellent tackling this week to rebound from last week’s poor display. Especially impressive was Quintin Mikell who had several nice open field tackles
Cole is becoming a really impressive player. He’s already better than Hugh Douglas was, since Cole’s as explosive in the pass rush while being a much better run defender. He really can't be run at. Meanwhile, Abiamiri was much improved in run defense after a week in which the Saints exploited Abiamiri’s gimpy groin (can a groin be gimpy?) in the previous week.
McDermott dialed up some real intense blitzes. They had more zero-coverage blitzes (no deep safety) and single safety looks then I can remember in a long long time. Anyone afraid that McDermott would be timid in replacing Johnson should feel quite reassured.
Gocong has been panned lately by local sports writers, but I noticed several times where he looked good on the blitz and helped provide the pressure that prevented Cassel from rolling away from pressure up the gut. He got beat for an eleven yard play by a TE in man to man coverage midway through the second on the Chiefs’ first TD drive.
On the touchdown two plays later, it was just an incredible throw and catch by Cassel and Bradley taking advantage of the height differential between KC WR Mark Bradley and Ellis Hobbs who actually had Bradley covered like glue (my apologies for mixing metaphors). Gocong remains who I thought he was—unspectacular, but serviceable—a better fit for this defense than Dhani Jones definitely and a much better value than Takeo Spikes at the SAM position.
The interior of the defensive line was impressive as well. Bunkley and Patterson repeatedly disrupted the Cheifs’ efforts to get the run game going and played a big role in Gaither’s highlight reel game.
Great game by Gaither, helped by great line play. The line played strong against the run , so that Gaither could come free many times to the ball-caririer and a bit at the qb as well, which brings us to the newest piece of news at the MIKE position.
I really don’t know what to make of the Trotter signing. He obviously gives them a great run-stopper for plays straight up the middle. The man can shed blocks and tackle—that we know. But when we last saw him, he couldn’t do anything else. He couldn’t flow to the ball on runs much outside the guards and he certainly couldn’t cover most rb’s or te’s in the pass game. Consequently teams routinely exploited this weakness, most notably when the Patriots did this with numerous screen plays across the middle, many of them to MVP WR Deion Branch in the Eagles loss in Super Bowl XXXIX, and Trotter was five years younger then. But the Eagles have worked him out, so they seem to think he can play. Another interesting twist in a season which has had more bizarreness in three weeks than most have in seventeen. I guess at a minimum he may know some stuff about Tampa’s defensive scheme from his season there two years ago.
Which do you think you could have gotten highest odds for four months ago, Maclin on the Eagles, Vick on the Eagles, Garcia on the Eagles, or Trotter on the Eagles—I’d probably say Trotter. All I know is if I could have bet a parlay on all this, I’d probably be in the market for an NFL team of my own. The Los Angeles Eagellectuals? The London Pints?
Anyway, on to the offense.
Great play on the DeSean TD. It was just a quick slant that D-Jax made into a big play. That’s what’s so impressive about DeSean Jackson. He has the speed and elusiveness to make any routine play into a gamebreaker. Kolb took a quick three step drop and made a perfect timing throw to Jackson, and kudos also to Nick Cole and Peters for clearing a huge throwing lane for Kolb. There was no one between Kolb and Jackson once Peters pushed his man outside and Cole forced his man towards the A-Gap (and Jamaal Jackson).
Celek looked great too. He has really gotten good at using his body to shield defenders from the ball, and then his power when running with ball makes him a real threat for major yac. Nice blocking too. He looks like he could be on his way to developing into the best Birds TE since Keith Jackson (apologies to Chad Lewis)—let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Still, I think we need to take the success of the Eagles’ passing game with a grain of salt. It was amazing to me how softly the Chiefs played the Eagles receivers. Jackson actually saw a bunch of single coverage early in the game, before the 64 yard touchdown. The Chiefs defense is seriously bad.
I’m still unconvinced that Kolb is an NFL starter. Not saying he can’t be but I don’t think we’ve seen enough to feel comfortable with him. Kolb still seems to rush decisions under pressure
Kolb made a few really good throws this game, much more so than in the previous game. Especially notable was in the 3rd when Kolb whizzed an eleven yard out to Maclin where only he could catch it before going out of bounds.
Kolb’s reads on many plays seemed to be simplified. He often looked like he was only reading half the field. Whether this was his own failing or Andy’s intentions to make things easier for Kolb against a defense that was going to leave more than one guy open on many plays, I don’t know. I will say though that there were several plays on which he did not seem to see the most open or deepest open receiver. Kolb missed a few plays and threw a few balls behind his receivers. Against a better defense some of these balls are possibly intercepted. Kolb especially seems to have trouble reading defenses on the run. Too often he tossed passes to covered receivers once he began moving out of the pocket. Hopefully we won’t have to see Kolb in meaningful playing time again this year, and I’m not sure how much we’ve learned about his future, but we now definitely know for the present that he is an effective spot-duty backup, and for that at least we should be glad.
As for Vick, I thought he looked good on a couple pays and rusty on a couple others, but I also think we must reserve judgment on the wildcat. As Eagellectual reader Ron the Doctor pointed out, Andy Reid is probably approaching this new formation like a chess master. The point is not what happens on any given play, but rather how it sets up potential opportunities to observe holes in the defensive tactics that will ultimately, hopefully, open up chances for big big plays later on.
McCoy, I thought, looked great. He looked quick, fast, and tough, and had some nice blocks in blitz pick up, including a crucial one on the first quarter 43 yard pass to DeSean. A great route combo on that play by the way, where the Eagles exploited the holes in the Chiefs' zone by running Maclin on a deep route and Avant shallow on the same side, enabling Jackson to cross towards their side at an intermediate distance able to grab the ball in stride and turn up field before anyone could hit him.
Love the play call of a QB sneak on the Eagles’ 2nd TD. Great play by Jamaal Jackson to push forward and let Kolb dive right over him. Good play also to have Nick Cole fill in Jackson’s hole as Jamaal pushed forward. A well-designed QB sneak. Let’s run this every time we have goal to go from inside the one. How ‘bout it Andy? Instead, though, when we had 4th and one later on in the first half, Andy inexplicably lined up with an empty backfield. I loved the call to go for it, and I’m even ok with throwing it, but at least make them have to defend the run. Line up with a back in these situations, please!
Justice continues to look strong. Clearly he has turned a corner and may be beginning to realize his second-round potential. In general the offensive line is really protecting well. It will be interesting to see if this holds up against better defenses. We’ve got two chances to see the O-line against decent pass defenses (the Raiders and the Redskins) before the real challenge against the Giants on November 1 at the Linc.
Definitely some C-grade announcers on CBS. First time I’ve ever heard the Linc described as being in downtown Philly.
Also, notice how fear of Jackson’s return prowess led the chiefs’ punter Colquitt to punt a bit shorter to get the ball high enough up to prevent a return. Not as good as a D-Jax return TD but still helped our field position all day (plus it’s harder to get a special teams penalty when there’s no return—so in that sense they’re doing us a favor.)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
"Aboslutely Horrendous"
- Andy Reid
First of all, let's not panic. Our defense laid a huge egg week 2 in Dallas last year, and went on to be the third best D in the league. That said, this was a frustrating performance, and now on top of that we have injury questions about Westbrook, Samuel, and Jackson as well as lingering issues for McNabb, Curtis, and I'm assuming based on his play Abiamiri. I'm worried, but I believe that the Chiefs suck enough that we should beat them and then hopefully get right durng the bye week.
This post may be a bit briefer b/c rewatching this game has been a lot less fun, but here's what I saw.
On the Saints opening drive, it became clear to me that we may have some coverage issues wiht our LBs this year. On that drive it was clear that Jordan can’t cover shockey. It also early became clear that our line could’t get pressure with Brees’s quick release which became a big part of the story of the game.
The other story was poor tackling, the likes of which it's hard to remember from an Eagles D. Issues just across the board. Everyone was missing tackles—Jordan, Gaither, Harris, Samuel, Hanson, ... it goes on. Perhaps Cole and Sheldon Brown and maybe the starting DTs can be exempted from this criticism, but everyone else on the D, including normally excellent tackler Quintin Mikell. I’m not quite as down on Samuel as most other people are, but it was not a good game for him. He played too far off of Devery Henderson on a big play, and his tackling could definitely be better, but I still think we’ve seen much worse from the corners who’ve worn green and silver (Bobby Taylor anyone)—when no one else tackled either I think it actually magnified Samuel’s flaws. Abiamiri looked bad on multiple plays. I don’t know if some of this is his injury, but I’m still real concerned about that LDE spot and our apparent inability to generate much of a pass rush without blitzing, and this week Abiamiri also struggle in run defense, which is supposed to be his strong suit.
I saw one great play from Trevor Laws, muscling through a double team early in the first half (I mean literally just being stronger on that particular play than both the fat guys blocking him combined) to force Brees back into Trent Cole’s bone-crushing sack. It will be interesting to see what we get from Laws going forward.
Kolb was better than I anticipated, but that’s not saying much since I kind of expected old man river Garcia to be playing by the end of the game. The TD to Jackson was a beauty and he made a couple nice intermediate throws, especially to his road roommate Brent Celek--maybe they read the playbook together for bedtime stories. Kolb rushed some throws when the pressure wasn’t there, perhaps b/c his reads were oversimplified. Most egregiously, this happened on Kolb’s backbreaking INT early in the 3rd quarter. Kolb zeroed in on the out route on that play even though the slot receiver (I think it was either Celek or Alex Smith) was much more open because Saints LB Scott Shanle had already committed himself to jumping DeSean Jackson’s outside route. Kolb also seemed to struggle throwing the ball on the run, including not only numerous incompletions but also on the nasty bailout catch by Jason Avant in the end zone. Kolb did a good job of not taking sacks, but he has a lot to work on before he can be called a legitimate NFL starter, not least being his accuracy while running from pressure. I also wonder a bit about his arm strength on some of his sideline throws. Whether he continues to develop remains to be seen, but right now he’s looking to me like a very serviceable backup, but not the answer for the future—but of course, the jury is still out and will be for awhile.
As to the wildcat, I’m basically cool with it (although I’m a bit uncomfortable with the formation where the tackles were split out wide—a play that should have been a disaster without D-Jax being a superfreak … superfreak, he’s superfreaky!). In general though it put the ball in the hands of Westbrook and Jackson and they picked up some nice yardage, so I have no problem with it, and it will get a bit more interesting once Vick is back there—for example maybe he throws Weaver a bit more catchable ball than Westbrook does in the red zone late in the 3rd—so that maybe teams can’t commit to a Vick run as much later on. I would, however, have liked us run to the ball not in the wildcat, with Weaver blocking, a bit more. The Saints’ run defense was excellent last week against Detroit but it was pitiful for most of last year, so I would have hoped to try to establish the power run a bit and let our big boys get out there and bang on their linebackers to try to wear them down (and believe me it was HOT in the sun on Sunday, just ask Eagellectual readers Meredith the consultant and Alison the teacher, the first person I've ever sat with whi ran to buy ice cream during a time out).
Special teams sucked—too many penalties, two devastatingly lousy punts by Rocca, one of which only happened b/c of an illegal shit punishment shift penalty (Freudian slip), and poor ball security by Ellis Hobbs—a veteran like him should realize that after bouncing around traffic, someone will be coming up from behind, and I didn’t like the way he was holding his ball on the last kick return of the first half either.
I thought the protection Kolb got was pretty excellent. I’m starting to feel good about the Winston Justice Experiment Part Deux (a.k.a. playing his natural position on the right side).
First of all, let's not panic. Our defense laid a huge egg week 2 in Dallas last year, and went on to be the third best D in the league. That said, this was a frustrating performance, and now on top of that we have injury questions about Westbrook, Samuel, and Jackson as well as lingering issues for McNabb, Curtis, and I'm assuming based on his play Abiamiri. I'm worried, but I believe that the Chiefs suck enough that we should beat them and then hopefully get right durng the bye week.
This post may be a bit briefer b/c rewatching this game has been a lot less fun, but here's what I saw.
On the Saints opening drive, it became clear to me that we may have some coverage issues wiht our LBs this year. On that drive it was clear that Jordan can’t cover shockey. It also early became clear that our line could’t get pressure with Brees’s quick release which became a big part of the story of the game.
The other story was poor tackling, the likes of which it's hard to remember from an Eagles D. Issues just across the board. Everyone was missing tackles—Jordan, Gaither, Harris, Samuel, Hanson, ... it goes on. Perhaps Cole and Sheldon Brown and maybe the starting DTs can be exempted from this criticism, but everyone else on the D, including normally excellent tackler Quintin Mikell. I’m not quite as down on Samuel as most other people are, but it was not a good game for him. He played too far off of Devery Henderson on a big play, and his tackling could definitely be better, but I still think we’ve seen much worse from the corners who’ve worn green and silver (Bobby Taylor anyone)—when no one else tackled either I think it actually magnified Samuel’s flaws. Abiamiri looked bad on multiple plays. I don’t know if some of this is his injury, but I’m still real concerned about that LDE spot and our apparent inability to generate much of a pass rush without blitzing, and this week Abiamiri also struggle in run defense, which is supposed to be his strong suit.
I saw one great play from Trevor Laws, muscling through a double team early in the first half (I mean literally just being stronger on that particular play than both the fat guys blocking him combined) to force Brees back into Trent Cole’s bone-crushing sack. It will be interesting to see what we get from Laws going forward.
Kolb was better than I anticipated, but that’s not saying much since I kind of expected old man river Garcia to be playing by the end of the game. The TD to Jackson was a beauty and he made a couple nice intermediate throws, especially to his road roommate Brent Celek--maybe they read the playbook together for bedtime stories. Kolb rushed some throws when the pressure wasn’t there, perhaps b/c his reads were oversimplified. Most egregiously, this happened on Kolb’s backbreaking INT early in the 3rd quarter. Kolb zeroed in on the out route on that play even though the slot receiver (I think it was either Celek or Alex Smith) was much more open because Saints LB Scott Shanle had already committed himself to jumping DeSean Jackson’s outside route. Kolb also seemed to struggle throwing the ball on the run, including not only numerous incompletions but also on the nasty bailout catch by Jason Avant in the end zone. Kolb did a good job of not taking sacks, but he has a lot to work on before he can be called a legitimate NFL starter, not least being his accuracy while running from pressure. I also wonder a bit about his arm strength on some of his sideline throws. Whether he continues to develop remains to be seen, but right now he’s looking to me like a very serviceable backup, but not the answer for the future—but of course, the jury is still out and will be for awhile.
As to the wildcat, I’m basically cool with it (although I’m a bit uncomfortable with the formation where the tackles were split out wide—a play that should have been a disaster without D-Jax being a superfreak … superfreak, he’s superfreaky!). In general though it put the ball in the hands of Westbrook and Jackson and they picked up some nice yardage, so I have no problem with it, and it will get a bit more interesting once Vick is back there—for example maybe he throws Weaver a bit more catchable ball than Westbrook does in the red zone late in the 3rd—so that maybe teams can’t commit to a Vick run as much later on. I would, however, have liked us run to the ball not in the wildcat, with Weaver blocking, a bit more. The Saints’ run defense was excellent last week against Detroit but it was pitiful for most of last year, so I would have hoped to try to establish the power run a bit and let our big boys get out there and bang on their linebackers to try to wear them down (and believe me it was HOT in the sun on Sunday, just ask Eagellectual readers Meredith the consultant and Alison the teacher, the first person I've ever sat with whi ran to buy ice cream during a time out).
Special teams sucked—too many penalties, two devastatingly lousy punts by Rocca, one of which only happened b/c of an illegal shit punishment shift penalty (Freudian slip), and poor ball security by Ellis Hobbs—a veteran like him should realize that after bouncing around traffic, someone will be coming up from behind, and I didn’t like the way he was holding his ball on the last kick return of the first half either.
I thought the protection Kolb got was pretty excellent. I’m starting to feel good about the Winston Justice Experiment Part Deux (a.k.a. playing his natural position on the right side).
Friday, September 18, 2009
Correction on Reggie Brown
Because next year is scheduled to be an uncapped year, all of Reggie Brown's prorated signing bonus would be accelerated onto this year's cap if we cut him, which would add about four million dollars to the Eagles' current cap number (7.3 million in bonus minus 2.35 of which is already allocated to this year and 844,000 of base salary that the Eagles would no longer be on the hook for). With a reported 9 million dollars left in cap space, the Eagles seem reluctant to give up almost half their remaining cap space just to unload Brown--or to maintain a spot for Baskett, apparently.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Crazy Week 1
I had originally intended to post yesterday, but so much has ahappened in the last fifty or so hours that I had to delay. On the Shawn Andrews move to IR, I just have to say wow. The Eagles, I think, are just giving up on him. Hard to know whether it’s mental or physical with Shawn, but it seems plausible that he just has a gimpy back from which he’ll never recover. A doctor who spoke on 610 WIP explained how he tells people with that sort of chronic back pain that they have to totally avoid heavy lifting (which means pushing up against on 280 pound DEs 70 times every week is probably not advisable). Now the reason this happened yesterday is because the Eagles signed Jeff Garcia. This combined with the decision to bring Michael Vick back before the end of his suspension so he can practice suggests some real concerns at the quarterback position. I think it’s fairly likely that we won’t see McNabb until after the bye week. He seemed to be in A LOT of pain on Sunday afternoon, although he did play with a broken ankle against Arizona in . By the way, what’s the deal with the Panthers being allowed to take cheap shots at McNabb. They did it without a penalty in the NFC championship game in 2004, ultimately forcing McNabb to leave the game (which the Eagles lost 14-3) and then again last sunday McNabb got landed on after his play was over. When the league reviewed it they claimed it was all good. The play should have been a penalty. Whether it was intended to be dirty or not, the lineman clearly did not leave his feet until after McNabb was down in the end zone. I don’t understand why the Eagles so rarely seem to get these sorts of personal foul calls.
I just don’t get it.
So assuming McNabb is out, then we have to think about Kevin Kolb’s abilities, and I’m not at all optimistic. The fact that the Eagles dumped Baksett and activated Vick to start practicing during a week when they won’t be implementing any wildcat plays specially for Vick tells me that they are envisioning a real possibility that Vick could be the every down qb sometime soon here. Consider this Sunday as very possibly Kevin Kolb’s last tryout. If he looks bad, I’d yank him for Garcia at half.
As for the move to dump Baskett, I think that is a bit of a head-scratcher, especially in light of his activation on Sunday while Brown and Gibson were healthy scratches. Cutting Reggie Brown would cost the Eagles 2.7 million dollars in a cap acceleration for the prorated portion of his signing bonus, but that doesn’t seem like enough to determine the Eagles decision, since I think they still have ample cap room. The Eagles must feel like Gibson can contribute on special teams enough to replace Baskett and that Reggie Brown will do at least as well as a replacement receiver in the case that Curtis or Jackson goes down and Maclin is not yet ready to step in. Still, I think we may miss Baskett’s blocking abilities.
I’ll touch next week on the changes in Westbrook’s contract—just too much going on for the first regular season practice week.
To the game. Since McNabb’s and Shawn Andrews’s injuries have trained our attention on the QB and RT positions, I decided to focus on Winston Justice and Kevin Kolb when I re-watched the game against the panthers. Here’s some of what I noticed.
There were a lot of questions about Justice coming into his first start since Osi Umenyiora debacled Justice (wonder why Emmit Smith no longer commentates?) on the last day of the 2007 baseball season (I remember watching the Phils winning and Mets choking on two computer screens earlier that day). The difference though is that now Justice is back on the right side—his natural position. In college at USC Justice was one of the best blindside blockers int eh nation, and for this reason the Eagles made him the second tackle selected in the 2006 NFL draft, but Justice blocked for a left-handed quarterback, so playing the blindside meant playing on the right, but the Eagles nonetheless assumed he could protect McNabb’s back on the other side of the line. Most, but not all, tackles can make that transition, but Justice failed miserably as a left tackle. I’m hoping he really can play as long as he stays on the right. On two key third downs early, the Eagles’ first two third downs actually, Andy Reid left Winston Justice alone on the outside. Justice blocked very well on the first third down, which resulted in an 18 yard completion to Avant. On the next one, though, Justice totally missed his Peppers which may have forced McNabb to rush in a tight throw to Celek which he dropped (but probably should have caught), instead of getting off a swing pass to a wide open Brian Westbrook.
In run blocking I though Justice looked pretty damn good. He was able to get his pad level low to drive defensive linemen on multiple plays, and he also showed he could get out and run.
Later I tried to observe Justice when playing in front of Kevin Kolb. Initially Andy seemed to want to run a lot with Kolb or give him some short passes, but even some of those plays were near disasters. On the sack which Kolb fumbled, Justice was entirely responsible though (smoked by Peppers—a.k.a. chipotle’d).
In the 4th quarter, Andy briefly took the handcuffs off Kolb and let him try to toss one deep toward Jackson. On that play Justice received blocking help, ensuring plenty of time for Kolb to throw, but he still made a terrible throw that came up short of Jackson and was nearly intercepted. Kolb followed that misfire up on 3rd and 3 with another poor throw but then he converted on 4th and 3 with an easy sideline throw to Celek out of a five step drop. Andy’s playcalling after that Kolb deep miss suggests some lack of confidence in Kolb, although it’s hard to diassociate that from the conservative playcalling that normally goes hand in hand with a 28 point fourth quarter lead. Later in the 4th quarter Kolb was sacked because he held onto the ball for way to long, even with a max protect scheme.
I’ve been pretty underwhelmed with everything I’ve seen from Kolb so far. Andy claims that everything will be different once Kolb gets to spend a full week practicing with the first team, but I’m skeptical, and the moves made this week tells me that folks who eat lunch a lot closer to Jeffrey Lurie’s office than I do share my concerns. Hopefully we’re wrong, but there’s a reason this team went from carrying 2 QBs to 4 QBs in the last three days.
As for the rest of the game, first of all, I’ll state the obvious: a great performance for the Defense, especially against the pass. McDermott’s blitz packages were an impressive homage to his late mentor’s strategy of attacking protection schemes in ways designed to confuse blockers. McDermott did a great job attacking the interior pass blocking through the a-gaps, including the in the fumble TD on which the linebackers cleverly switched place with the DEs and on the 3rd and 5 Akeem Jordan sack in the middle of the 2nd quarter, wherein Jordan and Gaither both attacked the center. On that play the Eagles brought six against five blockers, but I love that the overload was in the center of the line, so that the guy who got through was in the qb’s face as soon as he broke down the protection, especially against a fairly immobile qb like Delhomme, who is unlikely to scramble away from a head-on blitzing linebacker. Certainly, though, McDermott mixed the blitz packages up. On the sack of Delhomme for 10 yards in 3rd quarter, Gaither and Gocong both attacked over the late side, one with a brief delay so that both ended up coming right at the running back in blitz pickup—it was impossible to block both. On the third interception of Delhomme (by Akeem Jordan), there actually was no blitz on, but McDermontt confused the hell out of the Panthers blockers with a well designed play. Chris Clemons lined up as a linebacker over Cole’s shoulder as Cole played end on a three man line. Clemons engaged the tackle and then Cole ran a twist over a guard who had already left to block for a screen that Akeem Jordan had sniffed out and covered up. Cole hit Delhomme and then Jordan caught Delhomme’s ill-advised pass. The defense was just stellar and credit the secheme all you want, but our guys made plays. Still, we have to give a shout out to the Rajun Cajun qb that the Panthers just guaranteed 20 million dollars. This guys stinks. Even when he took the Panthers to within 3 points of a super bowl, I’ve never believed he was any good. His mechanics and decision making both suck. Nice to see the Eagles help expose him. Boy are the Panthers feeling bad about that contract extension. Nonetheless, credit the Birds for holding on to his ducks, and the first Sheldon int was a truly amazing catch.
And here’s a few quick observations on some of the Eagles other TDs:
On the D-Jax return TD there was excellent blocking, including a great downfield block by Juqua Parker. Great speed on Jackson, all he really ends up having to do is make the gunner and the punter miss him, no problem!
Great playfake on the first offensive TD (9 yard pass to Celek). Everyone on the line, including Celek, did a great job of selling a run to the left before he released to the right and was instantly open.
Good audible by McNabb to the shovel pass to Westbrook that made it 31-7. There was especially great blocking by Leonard Weaver on that play. Weaver really was stellar—what a great addition—it may turn out to be one of our most important offseason moves (says the man who loves loves loves a powerful fullback).
Looking forward to see what happens Sunday, although it will be a tall order. We’ll need similar defensive production against what figures to be one of the league’s most prolific offenses this year. Unfortunately the suspensions for use of a banned supplement that saints starting DEs Charles Grant and Will Smith have been postponed pending a review by a Minnesota court of the appropriate punishment for Pat and Kevin Williams. Profootballtalk.com has been all over this story but the upshot is we don’t get any breaks there since both Saints starters at end will play. Their starting OT Jamaal Brown, however, is injured, but their offense didn’t miss a beat last week. We just have to hope that our defense can continue to create crazy turnovers and that Westbrook and Shady can cut up a mediocre linebacking corps. Go Eagles!
I just don’t get it.
So assuming McNabb is out, then we have to think about Kevin Kolb’s abilities, and I’m not at all optimistic. The fact that the Eagles dumped Baksett and activated Vick to start practicing during a week when they won’t be implementing any wildcat plays specially for Vick tells me that they are envisioning a real possibility that Vick could be the every down qb sometime soon here. Consider this Sunday as very possibly Kevin Kolb’s last tryout. If he looks bad, I’d yank him for Garcia at half.
As for the move to dump Baskett, I think that is a bit of a head-scratcher, especially in light of his activation on Sunday while Brown and Gibson were healthy scratches. Cutting Reggie Brown would cost the Eagles 2.7 million dollars in a cap acceleration for the prorated portion of his signing bonus, but that doesn’t seem like enough to determine the Eagles decision, since I think they still have ample cap room. The Eagles must feel like Gibson can contribute on special teams enough to replace Baskett and that Reggie Brown will do at least as well as a replacement receiver in the case that Curtis or Jackson goes down and Maclin is not yet ready to step in. Still, I think we may miss Baskett’s blocking abilities.
I’ll touch next week on the changes in Westbrook’s contract—just too much going on for the first regular season practice week.
To the game. Since McNabb’s and Shawn Andrews’s injuries have trained our attention on the QB and RT positions, I decided to focus on Winston Justice and Kevin Kolb when I re-watched the game against the panthers. Here’s some of what I noticed.
There were a lot of questions about Justice coming into his first start since Osi Umenyiora debacled Justice (wonder why Emmit Smith no longer commentates?) on the last day of the 2007 baseball season (I remember watching the Phils winning and Mets choking on two computer screens earlier that day). The difference though is that now Justice is back on the right side—his natural position. In college at USC Justice was one of the best blindside blockers int eh nation, and for this reason the Eagles made him the second tackle selected in the 2006 NFL draft, but Justice blocked for a left-handed quarterback, so playing the blindside meant playing on the right, but the Eagles nonetheless assumed he could protect McNabb’s back on the other side of the line. Most, but not all, tackles can make that transition, but Justice failed miserably as a left tackle. I’m hoping he really can play as long as he stays on the right. On two key third downs early, the Eagles’ first two third downs actually, Andy Reid left Winston Justice alone on the outside. Justice blocked very well on the first third down, which resulted in an 18 yard completion to Avant. On the next one, though, Justice totally missed his Peppers which may have forced McNabb to rush in a tight throw to Celek which he dropped (but probably should have caught), instead of getting off a swing pass to a wide open Brian Westbrook.
In run blocking I though Justice looked pretty damn good. He was able to get his pad level low to drive defensive linemen on multiple plays, and he also showed he could get out and run.
Later I tried to observe Justice when playing in front of Kevin Kolb. Initially Andy seemed to want to run a lot with Kolb or give him some short passes, but even some of those plays were near disasters. On the sack which Kolb fumbled, Justice was entirely responsible though (smoked by Peppers—a.k.a. chipotle’d).
In the 4th quarter, Andy briefly took the handcuffs off Kolb and let him try to toss one deep toward Jackson. On that play Justice received blocking help, ensuring plenty of time for Kolb to throw, but he still made a terrible throw that came up short of Jackson and was nearly intercepted. Kolb followed that misfire up on 3rd and 3 with another poor throw but then he converted on 4th and 3 with an easy sideline throw to Celek out of a five step drop. Andy’s playcalling after that Kolb deep miss suggests some lack of confidence in Kolb, although it’s hard to diassociate that from the conservative playcalling that normally goes hand in hand with a 28 point fourth quarter lead. Later in the 4th quarter Kolb was sacked because he held onto the ball for way to long, even with a max protect scheme.
I’ve been pretty underwhelmed with everything I’ve seen from Kolb so far. Andy claims that everything will be different once Kolb gets to spend a full week practicing with the first team, but I’m skeptical, and the moves made this week tells me that folks who eat lunch a lot closer to Jeffrey Lurie’s office than I do share my concerns. Hopefully we’re wrong, but there’s a reason this team went from carrying 2 QBs to 4 QBs in the last three days.
As for the rest of the game, first of all, I’ll state the obvious: a great performance for the Defense, especially against the pass. McDermott’s blitz packages were an impressive homage to his late mentor’s strategy of attacking protection schemes in ways designed to confuse blockers. McDermott did a great job attacking the interior pass blocking through the a-gaps, including the in the fumble TD on which the linebackers cleverly switched place with the DEs and on the 3rd and 5 Akeem Jordan sack in the middle of the 2nd quarter, wherein Jordan and Gaither both attacked the center. On that play the Eagles brought six against five blockers, but I love that the overload was in the center of the line, so that the guy who got through was in the qb’s face as soon as he broke down the protection, especially against a fairly immobile qb like Delhomme, who is unlikely to scramble away from a head-on blitzing linebacker. Certainly, though, McDermott mixed the blitz packages up. On the sack of Delhomme for 10 yards in 3rd quarter, Gaither and Gocong both attacked over the late side, one with a brief delay so that both ended up coming right at the running back in blitz pickup—it was impossible to block both. On the third interception of Delhomme (by Akeem Jordan), there actually was no blitz on, but McDermontt confused the hell out of the Panthers blockers with a well designed play. Chris Clemons lined up as a linebacker over Cole’s shoulder as Cole played end on a three man line. Clemons engaged the tackle and then Cole ran a twist over a guard who had already left to block for a screen that Akeem Jordan had sniffed out and covered up. Cole hit Delhomme and then Jordan caught Delhomme’s ill-advised pass. The defense was just stellar and credit the secheme all you want, but our guys made plays. Still, we have to give a shout out to the Rajun Cajun qb that the Panthers just guaranteed 20 million dollars. This guys stinks. Even when he took the Panthers to within 3 points of a super bowl, I’ve never believed he was any good. His mechanics and decision making both suck. Nice to see the Eagles help expose him. Boy are the Panthers feeling bad about that contract extension. Nonetheless, credit the Birds for holding on to his ducks, and the first Sheldon int was a truly amazing catch.
And here’s a few quick observations on some of the Eagles other TDs:
On the D-Jax return TD there was excellent blocking, including a great downfield block by Juqua Parker. Great speed on Jackson, all he really ends up having to do is make the gunner and the punter miss him, no problem!
Great playfake on the first offensive TD (9 yard pass to Celek). Everyone on the line, including Celek, did a great job of selling a run to the left before he released to the right and was instantly open.
Good audible by McNabb to the shovel pass to Westbrook that made it 31-7. There was especially great blocking by Leonard Weaver on that play. Weaver really was stellar—what a great addition—it may turn out to be one of our most important offseason moves (says the man who loves loves loves a powerful fullback).
Looking forward to see what happens Sunday, although it will be a tall order. We’ll need similar defensive production against what figures to be one of the league’s most prolific offenses this year. Unfortunately the suspensions for use of a banned supplement that saints starting DEs Charles Grant and Will Smith have been postponed pending a review by a Minnesota court of the appropriate punishment for Pat and Kevin Williams. Profootballtalk.com has been all over this story but the upshot is we don’t get any breaks there since both Saints starters at end will play. Their starting OT Jamaal Brown, however, is injured, but their offense didn’t miss a beat last week. We just have to hope that our defense can continue to create crazy turnovers and that Westbrook and Shady can cut up a mediocre linebacking corps. Go Eagles!
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