McNabb Phones in Response to Trade Rumors

Donovan McNabb didn’t stay quiet for long on Andy Reid’s announcement that the Eagles are listening to offers for him and the rest of the Eagles quarterbacks. In a statment released to the media, Donovan said:

“My position hasn’t changed. I’ve said all along that I’d like to win a Super Bowl and finish my career in Philadelphia. I understand the situation well, and just hope, whichever direction the Eagles decide to go in, they do it quickly. I think that would be best for Kevin (Kolb), Michael (Vick), the Eagles and any other teams involved. No matter what happens, I’ve already begun preparing to have an outstanding season in 2010.”

Tough to tell whether Donovan has talked to Reid about his future and knows something the rest of us don’t (i.e. “understand the situation well”), but he really doesn’t sound like someone who expects to be around a month from now, let alone next season.

Looking at the statement a few times, I think you can also read it as a warning to the Eagles brass. He’s saying, “Either commit to me or commit to Kolb. But don’t bring us both back to training camp.” Not sure what the implied “or else” would be, but it probably won’t matter.

Update: Jeff McLane cites multiple sources saying that Reid “hasn’t spoken to his first ever draft pick in months.” Guess McNabb doesn’t have inside information then. Although the fact they haven’t talked isn’t a great sign for McNabb staying in Philly either…

Reid, Eagles Flinch First on McNabb Trade Talks

Big news from the NFL Annual Meeting: Andy Reid says he’s “listening to offers” for all three of the Eagles’ quarterbacks.

On the surface this seems kind of obvious, but up to now Reid has always reiterated that the Eagles aren’t looking to trade McNabb, Kolb, or Vick. By saying the team was happy with its quarterbacks and would rather go into 2010 with all three than accept less than a specific price, the Eagles obviously were trying to keep those price tags up.

Being able to walk away from the table is one of the most powerful bargaining chips in any negotiation. To my mind though, Andy’s admission today that they are considering trades is a red flag that the team really isn’t willing to walk away from discussions. The front office seems to have decided they need to trade McNabb, and probably Vick too. Otherwise, Andy probably never comes out and says these things for the first time.

Sometimes it’s hard to separate the fluff from the real nuggets of insight. Let’s put Andy’s words through a little CoachSpeak Translation:

“We think we have a great situation. That’s where we’re at. That doesn’t mean we’re not entertaining calls of anything. But right now, we feel very good about our quarterback situation. Very fortunate really.”

Translation: “We like these quarterbacks. Some more than others. It’s great to have them though because they might net us some draft picks pretty soon. And we’re not desperate. But the Chargers got the equivalent of a 2nd round pick for some guy I never heard of. Why won’t someone pony up a 1st for Donovan?”

“I wouldn’t say [the QBs] are on the market. I’d say I’m listening (to offers).”

Translation: “I’m not saying Donovan’s on the block. But I’m putting it out there that he’s going to the highest bidder.”

“We’ll go back and look through those [offers] and think through them a little bit, away from this situation here. There’s (no offer) right now that I’d jump up and down about. But there has been some interest.”

Translation: “Brad Childress prank-called me the other night about trading his #1 pick for Vick. Almost crapped my pants. Outside of that though, Mike Singletary was talking to me earlier. If the Niners want in they’re going to have to gimme some of that sweet 1st round action.”

“I’m keeping my ears open.”

Translation: “Call me, Buffalo.”

Alright, so Andy was a little more tactful in his responses. But overall I think what other teams are going to hear is closer to the translation. Stating publicly that the Eagles are listening to offers is as good as saying the players are on the block. Clearly the front office hasn’t gotten any offer they’re looking for, and have decided to broadcast their willingness to talk a little bit more.

Coinciding with that, there are now multiple reports out there that the Eagles have lowered the asking price for McNabb. Ashley Fox has “a league source with knowledge of the team’s thought process” who says Eagles now want “a second-round pick or combination of high picks.” A leauge source told Derek Gunn the Eagles have “reduced their price from a first-round pick and a third-round pick to just a third.”

I’m not sure how much the Eagles have actively lowered their price, since a lot depends on what high draft picks the interested parties have, what other players the Eagles might be interested in, etc. And it sounds like Andy actually got a few offers over the last couple days that they’ll look at when they get back to Philly.

Still, this is a huge move. The Eagles have committed to trade talks. It’s only a matter of time before another team offers something reasonable. I now fully expect McNabb to be gone by draft day.

The Updated Odds on McNabb Destinations

A lot of quarterback moves in the NFL since free agency began. The Seahawks got themselves a new, if unproven, quarterback of the future. The Browns exchanged two mediocre quarterbacks for two more. In fact, 15 of the league’s 32 teams have made some sort of change at the position.

So with all that change, some have suggested that the market for McNabb is drying up. Maybe to a degree, but there are still a number of teams who still seem like they would be interested at the right price. It’s been awhile since we last examined the options. Let’s give them a quick look, in rough order of likelihood:

• San Francisco 49ers — I still think the 49ers repesent the most likely destination for McNabb. They have the need, the means, and a demonstrated interest. With Kurt Warner’s retirement, San Fran is a good quarterback away from being the class of the NFC West. The defense is solid, the offense has talented playmakers from Gore to Crabtree to Davis. Last year, the Niners made a strong push for Warner — and despite their declarations of support for Alex Smith and commitment to David Carr as a back-up, McNabb would be a huge upgrade. Additionally, the team has two first round picks (13 and 17), which makes McNabb’s price tag feasible. Even McNabb would probably be happy there. The only big question I have is how their chaotic front office situation will affect their decision-making process.
• Buffalo Bills — I can see where McNabb would be hesitant to go up to moribound Buffalo, but the Bills are one of the few teams actually broadcasting a need for quarterback. Coach Chan Gailey and company have been open to the idea of a trade, and the team has already been burned twice by mediocre draft picks.
• Jacksonville Jaguars — Jack Del Rio has not been quiet about his disappointment with current starter David Garrard, and McNabb would be a big step up. He (or Michael Vick) would also boost attendance figures.
• Carolina Panthers — While the team is outwardly fine with going into 2010 with Matt Moore as their starter, that still would be a large risk for a coach and front office on the hot seat. Also, Moore is the only quarterback with any experience on the roster. Trading for Vick as a back up and possible challenger might make more sense, but McNabb could immediately put them back into playoff contention. They don’t have a 1st round pick, which hurts their chances at McNabb, but also at getting a QB of the future.
• Minnesota Vikings — Only jump back in to this discussion if Favre decides he’s not coming back, which seems like a longshot from here.
• Cleveland Browns — They’ve got two veterans for back-up/keep-the-seat-warm duty while they groom a mid-round QB prospect who catches Mike Holmgren’s eye.
• Seattle Seahawks — Found their guy in Charlie Whitehurst, apparently.
• Arizona Cardinals — McNabb’s dream destination appears to be a competition between Derek Anderson and Matt Leinart.
• Denver Broncos — Kyle Orton is the present. Brady Quinn (gag) is the future.
• Oakland Raiders — Don’t really see McNabb ever approving a trade to Oakland.

Certainly there are a lot of teams now out of the running. Sound off in the comments where you think McNabb will end up, if anywhere.

A Deadline for McNabb Trade Emerges

I said yesterday that fans need to chill out, that there’s no reason to panic and that there’s plenty of time for trades to still happen.

However, it seems there is a pretty hard deadline for any trade for Donovan McNabb. According to Adam Schefter, McNabb is due a $6 million roster bonus on May 5th.

While we assumed any action on McNabb would probably happen before or during the draft anyway, this sets a pretty clear end date for talks only two weeks after the draft. No team — especially one as cost-conscious as the Eagles — will pay that much (Eaglescap calls it 6.2 million), only to have the player not suit up for them.

If McNabb is still an Eagle on May 5, expect him to play out 2010 in Philly.

Stop Worrying: Still Lots of Time for Trades

There’s been plenty of fatalistic whining from the Philly fan base recently. “What are the Eagles doing?” “How have they done nothing to improve the team?” “What about Julius Peppers? Aaron Kampman? Somone?” “Why do they still have all three quarterbacks?” “They need to get rid of [McNabb/Kolb/Vick] asap!”

Let’s all cool down. The (ridiculously weak crop of) top-tier free agents may be long gone, and the Eagles may have done little to drastically reshape the team. But to worry that nothing will get done is silly. There’s still plenty of time.

The NFL draft is one month away. Lots to do between now and then. The NFL Annual meeting over the next few days brings together a lot of coaches, GMs. There’ll be lots of chatter there and it will kick off conversation between teams for weeks.

Remember — the big trade to get Jason Peters (after long talks) didn’t finally happen until a week before the draft. In fact, as we get closer, the more drafts boards solidify, the more teams call each other, and the more likely something is to happen on the quarterback front.

Asked by Dave Spadaro how active the phones are at NovaCare, Howie Roseman put on a knowing smile and said:

It’s, it’s active. You know, I think I said this last time we were here. Every day we come in trying to execute something and sometimes some things take longer than others but, um, I do not think this will be the last move here, that we make here, before the draft.

That sounds as close to a guarantee as we’re going to get. Stay tuned.

Thoughts on Quarterback Moves Around the NFL

So the big quarterback news of the past couple days in the NFL (alright, other than Tim Tebow’s new throwing motion) was the trade of 3rd-string Chargers QB Charlie Whitehurst to the Seattle Seahawks. According to ESPN, the Seahawks:

agreed to move down 20 spots in the second round and part with a 2011 third-rounder to acquire Whitehurst from San Diego.

According to the NFL Draft Value Chart, that package was worth about the last pick the in second round. In addition to that high compensation, Peter Carroll and Company promptly awarded their new acquisition with a 2 year, $10 million contract.

Second round pick, large contract. Sounds like an investment in the future starting quarterback. So what’s the catch?

Oh yeah: Whitehurst has never attempted a single regular season pass!

It’s obviously very surprising that Whitehurst could command such value. Sure, any quarterback drafted by Seattle would also be an unproven commodity, but that seems like a lot to give up for a guy who’s been in the league for 4 years and hasn’t shown anything.

I have mixed feelings about what this move means for the Eagles’ QB trade hopes.

• First, Seattle has pretty much taken themselves out of the quarterback market with this move. Whitehurst seems like he’ll be the quarterback of the present and future, with Matt Hasselbeck probably looking to the exit. Seattle was a hot possibility for one of the Eagles QBs, and this move makes some sense since they were rumored to be more interested in Kevin Kolb than Donovan McNabb. Whitehurst is basically a less talented, less accomplished version of Kolb.
• And while Seattle is no longer calling the Eagles front office, they are also probably not looking to spend more money on another unproven quarterback early in next month’s draft. That means one less suitor for the Eagles and one more prospect who might fall to another team (the Bills?), eliminating them from trade contention as well.
• However, the high price Seattle was willing to pay for an unproven commodity (and supposedly hot market for Whitehurst) shows that the Eagles aren’t necessarily overvaluing their quarterbacks. If Whitehurst is worth a #2 and $10 million, anyone interested in McNabb, a proven Pro Bowl QB, has to start talking about giving up at least a 1st rounder.

* * *

The Cleveland Browns were another team interested in the Eagles QBs. Over the last week, though, they’ve completely retooled that position. Mostly they kicked out two bad quarterbacks (Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson) and replaced them with two who don’t look a lot better (Jake Delhomme and Seneca Wallace).

It seems like Mike Holmgren, Tom Heckert, and Eric Mangini are willing to let those two veterans battle it out for the starting role next year, although they haven’t really endorsed either one as a long-term solution. Holmgren said about Delhomme:

“My own belief is this team needs an aging veteran. They need a guy that is going to grab everybody by the throat and say, ‘Follow me through that door.’ I don’t look at him as an aging veteran, I look at him as the leader I wanted.”

That reads to me as though Cleveland still really wants to take a quarterback in the draft. And with two mediocre quarterbacks to take snaps during the rebuilding process, maybe the team could take a chance on a project like Tebow.

I’m not sure Cleveland was ever really a great spot for McNabb or Kolb. When two teams make a deal for a player, you need a certain amount of imperfect information. In other words, the two teams have to value the players differently, and therefore both think they’re getting a good deal. In theory, Heckert and Andy Reid know the Eagles QBs so well, they won’t be able to make a deal they’re both happy with.

* * *

The Browns’ moves have other, reverberating effects throughout the NFL.

• Derek Anderson signed with the Cardinals to back-up and/or challenge Matt Lienart, eliminating Arizona from any McNabb discussion.
• Brady Quinn to the Broncos means Josh McDaniels has found his long-term quarterback. Doubt Denver will be looking at guys like Jimmy Clausen with their 1st round pick.

Exploring the "Why" of Donovan's Decline: The Running Game

This is the second post in a series examining the possible explanations for McNabb’s decline from the performance of his peak years (2004-2006).

Read the first part of this analysis: The Offensive Line.

* * *

Running Game

Let’s move on from the big uglies. Want to set us up, Derek?

And it’s not like McNabb got any help from the running game.  The addition of Weaver kept it from being a complete loss, but I again think it’s funny that people expect McNabb to not be the least bit affected by Brian Westbrook going from “pretty much the entirety of the offense” to “he’s out again this week, isn’t he?”

This is a relatively easy narrative. Everyone’s been calling for a more balanced attack since Andy arrived in Philly, and recently the running game hasn’t even been any good.

DVOA, a Football Outsiders stat, shows the effectiveness of the running game. Clearly that effectiveness has trailed off drastically over the last two years. Possible easy explanation for that: Brian Westbrook no longer being Brian Westbrook.

DYAR shows the actual production, rather than just the effectiveness, of the running game. This is normally an individual stat, but I ran the numbers for all running backs to calculate total production from all backs with 20 or more rushes in a season.

The more Andy dials up running plays, the higher the DYAR. You can see, for example, that while the effectiveness of the running game (DVOA) went up slightly from 2008 to 2009, the rushing attack was actually used less last year — lowering the overall production from backs.

Another statistic from Football Outsiders, Power Success, calculates the rate of success of short yardage runs. This one includes all rushers, including quarterbacks, which makes it a little less dependant on running backs and more dependant on the offensive line’s ability to get that 1-2 yard push. And Power Success tells a similar story to the others: great year in 2007, fall off to 2008.

Now that we’ve seen the raw numbers, let’s put all of these stats together by analyzing how the Eagles perform against the rest of the league in all of these statistics:

Here you go. DVOA (rushing efficiency) rank, DYAR (total RB production per team), and Power Success (rate of success in short yardage) showing the Eagles against the rest of the league. Plus, to see if we can spot any trends, I threw the previously-derived McNabb performance trendline is thrown in as well.

Initial observations:

• You can read this graph to some degree as an analysis of Brian Westbrook’s time as an Eagle. The running back groups he led for the last 7 years only once dipped below average in either DVOA or DYAR, and 2006 to 2007 was his heyday as one of the best runners in the NFL.
• The DVOA and DYAR ranks generally run together, which makes sense since they’re measuring similar things. If you take Andy Reid’s run-pass ratio into account as a given, production is mostly going to fluctuate based on how good/efficient those runners (and the offensive line blocking for them) are.
• However, 2009 shows the first sharp deviation from that trend. Total RB production stayed even with 2008, but the effectiveness of the individual runs was actually way up. It’s easy to deride the running game for poor production last year, but overall effectiveness was up from 12th to 5th in the league.
• Power Success highlights something that we as fans often noticed: the 2008 Eagles offense (also known as Year of No Fullback) could not buy a first down. The uptick last year didn’t put the team into the top half of the league, but the addition of Leonard Weaver clearly made a big impact nonetheless.

I think if McNabb’s production only fell from 2007 to 2008, you could make a solid case that the decline in the running game was directly tied to, if it didn’t cause, McNabb’s average to slightly above-average play.

But the problem is that the large drop-off occurred for the 07 season, followed by 2 more plateau years. 2007 was the height of Westbrook’s powers, but McNabb’s production hit a 4-year low — and then didn’t decline further as a result of the rapid decline of the rushing attack (especially in short yardage) during 2008. Donovan’s been constant while the running game bounces around. Clearly there’s still more at play here.

* * *

Stay tuned. An analysis of receiver talent and performance is coming soon.

Want Another Place to Sound Off About McNabb?

Need another place to voice your opinions about McNabb? Don’t like the options you have to comment at Philly.com, or the numerous Eagles blogs out there? Think your voice isn’t worthy of the pristine conditions presented here? Or just can’t get enough amateur opinions?

Well there’s hope for you yet.

Sound off on basically all the questions we’ve been talking about here for a while now at Football Outsiders:

-What do you think the actual trade value is of each quarterback?
-What do you think the Eagles will end up doing with the three quarterbacks this season?
- What do you think Philly should do?