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!