Can LeSean McCoy Carry the Eagles in 2011?

Fans have always wanted Andy Reid to run the ball more, but those calls were especially loud last season when LeSean McCoy was tearing up field in his first season as the starter. On Monday I examined the striking similarities and subtle differences between McCoy and former Eagle Brian Westbrook. Those statistics showed that McCoy may be an even better runner than Westbrook was at the same point in his career.

Yet even if McCoy is a better runner than Westbrook, he still may not be able to handle the bigger workload that many fans want him to take on. Last year he only averaged 13.7 carries per game, surpassing the 20 carry mark only once — in a week six win over Atlanta.

That’s not surprising. Westbrook himself only rushed more than 20 times twice in his first four and a half years in the NFL. And, to be fair, there just aren’t many running backs left in the NFL who can handle the ball all the time. In fact, only six players had over 20 carries per game in 2010, and none averaged higher than 22 carries.

But could McCoy handle a bigger workload than the one he was given last season? Let’s look at his number of carries and yards per carry in 2010 on a game by game basis:

So the blue is carries, corresponding to the left axis, and red is yards per carry, measured on the right axis. Over the season, McCoy’s workload and effectiveness varied substantially.

In the first half of the season, McCoy was being used a lot; he had 16 or more carries six times in the first eight games. Yet his production was actually down. McCoy had only three games during that stretch in which he averaged above five yards per carry and also had his two least effective games, in weeks six and seven.

Then things changed. McCoy only carried the ball an average of 12 times a game after week nine, but posted some of his best performances. While his yards per carry was a respectable 4.8 in the first half, it rose to 5.5 over the last eight games.

We can also separate McCoy’s performance by carry:

Through the first 15 carries, McCoy was consistently great, averaging over five yards per carry. And while it’s a small sample size beyond that, McCoy experienced a significant drop off when the Eagles kept feeding him the ball last season.

Eagles fans will never stop calling for the team to run the ball more, and McCoy’s talent only makes that prospect even more tantalizing. But the truth is that McCoy might look much less special if he had to take on a huge workload. The Eagles may be better off limiting his touches, at least for now, and keeping McCoy as a fabulous second or third option — rather than the focus on offense.

Originally published at NBC Philadelphia. Photo from Getty.

Who's the Better Back: McCoy or Westbrook?

Recently, free agent and former Eagle Brian Westbrook said that he would like to return to Philadelphia. While such a move might make sense if Andy Reid wanted a veteran back-up, the truth is that Westbrook is a forgotten man in Philadelphia, where LeSean McCoy’s stellar 2010 campaign wiped away any doubts that he could fill his mentor’s big shoes.

When the Eagles let Westbrook walk last offseason, many people wondered if McCoy was ready for the starting job. His rookie season showed promise, but McCoy was still raw. He danced too much before hitting the hole, hadn’t mastered blocking assignments, and couldn’t be counted on in the passing game. But after changing his uniform number and physique in the offseason, McCoy was stellar in 2010. In fact, McCoy was one of the most consistent offensive leaders, racking up big numbers despite injuries at quarterback and holes along the offensive line.

However, one question remains. Is he better than Westbrook? That’s an easy answer regarding the 2010 versions of each, but we have to compare apples to apples. As I did early last season, I’m going to look at Westbrook’s 2004 season and McCoy’s 2010 — both seasons being the running back’s first as the unquestioned starter. Here are the stats:

I broke down the numbers by rushing and receiving, so let’s examine them in that order.

Westbrook and McCoy had a shockingly similar number of carries in the same 16 games, including playoffs. Yet see who was the more efficient runner? Looks like Shady has a leg up on his predecessor at this point in his career. McCoy averaged half a yard more per carry and scored four more touchdowns. He also scored big DVOA points compared to Westbrook and had a higher Success Rate, another Football Outsiders stat that measures consistency. McCoy did benefit from a slightly better run-blocking offensive line, according to FO’s Adjusted Line Yards, but the difference was marginal at best. McCoy, in his first season as the feature back, was clearly the better runner.

Then, when you look at the receiving numbers, the paradigm shifts. Westbrook had a significantly higher Yards per Reception figure and scored eight huge touchdowns. Plus, while McCoy’s DVOA is solid, Westbrook’s is incredible. Number 36 was simply a better receiving threat.

What does this mean? Putting it simply: McCoy is a better rusher, but a worse receiver than Westbrook was at the same time in his career. That redistribution of talent fits perfectly with the rest of the Eagles current roster, which is already bursting at the seams with explosive outside threats. There’s less of a need to design pass plays for the running back when DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin are on the outside (not that Terrell Owens was a slacker).

Even with these differences, it’s fascinating to watch McCoy follow in Westbrook’s footsteps, performing the same dual-threat running back role. Already, McCoy lived up to Westbrook’s example and has surpassed the 31 year-old in some areas. Only thing to see now is if McCoy can sustain it into the future.

Originally published at NBC Philadelphia. Photo from Getty.

How to Kill the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs

If you haven’t been following the NFL labor saga, or if you have and still can’t figure out what’s going on, let me break it down for you in really simple terms:

No one in this whole debacle — not the players, not the owners, not the commissioner, or anyone else — cares one iota about the fans who have become rabid consumers of the NFL.

They only care about lining their own pockets, and can’t come to a single reasonable compromise that would split the rapidly expanding pie of billions of dollars among themselves. Because of this, the owners and players have spent weeks posturing through meaningless negotiation sessions and will now likely spend months attacking each other in court, putting at risk the entire future of professional football for the fans who have made the league so successful in the first place.

No matter what happens, whether there’s football in 2011 or not, this entire affair has only served to show how easily reckless greed can destroy a great thing.

It’s a disgrace.

Vick Signs Franchise Tag, Akers Declines

Two Eagles players were tagged with guaranteed contracts to keep them with the team through next season. Today, Michael Vick said he will sign his franchise tender, while David Akers indicated he would turn down his transition tag.

Vick signing his approximately $16 million one-year contract isn’t surprising. He has expressed on multiple occasions his desire to stay with the Eagles, and the franchise tag seems like only an intermediate step before he and the team work out a long term contract extension. Team President Joe Banner said recently, “We wouldn’t be sitting here and putting a franchise tag on him if he’s somebody that we weren’t very excited about.”

By assigning the franchise tag to Vick, the Eagles will pay him the average of the top five players at his position — money that will certainly help the quarterback as he extricates himself from his bankruptcy requirements. The tag also prevents any other teams from even trying to talk to Vick during free agency.

During the current labor talks, the NFL Players Association has argued that the tags are invalid if the collective bargaining agreement expires on Thursday. That’s the argument Akers’s agent Jerrold Colton made when he said the kicker would not sign the approximately $3 million dollar offer sheet. Colton has suggested that his client is “disappointed” with the tag, even though he still wants to return to the Eagles on a multi-year deal.

However, it’s unclear what, if any, leverage Akers has in negotiations. His transition tag allows him to talk with other NFL teams (with the Eagles having the power to match any offer), but is any team willing to spend top dollar on an aging player who’s no longer an elite kicker?

Originally published at NBC Philadelphia. Photo from Getty.

How Much is Kevin Kolb Worth as a Backup?

One of the more frequently-argued points in favor of keeping Kevin Kolb for 2011 is the “We need him if/when Michael Vick gets injured” meme. The idea here is that Kolb could rescue the team’s Super Bowl hopes if Vick has to miss significant time, and that without him the Eagles would be dead in the water.

That got me thinking, how much is a backup quarterback really worth? The argument being made here is one based on fear — fear of a catastrophic season-ending injury that derails a magical season. But from a statistics perspective, we can eliminate that emotional component and focus on the facts.

Let’s start from the beginning. How likely is it that Vick will get hurt? While Vick takes a lot of hits, there’s no guarantee that he’ll miss time. In fact, like Donovan McNabb, he has shown that he can play through a number of injuries. So what about across the NFL — how often do starting quarterback get hurt?

During the 2010 season, backup quarterbacks started 101 games out of a combined 512. Twelve NFL teams never had to start a backup, but that means that the majority did. Overall, teams averaged just over three games started by backups over the course of the 16-game season. Although some of these backups replaced demoted starters rather than injured ones, we can take the three game rule on the whole to be an appropriate approximation of the likely number of games the Eagles won’t have Michael Vick under center next season.

Next, we have to figure out how much worse the backups are than the starters, and how much less likely a team is to win with the second-string quarterback making the throws. I compared the win percentages from the games started and completed by starters with those by backups, eliminating the teams who avoided the injury bug all year.

What I found was that the average win percentage by team with their starter was 50 percent, an even split. However, the backup-led teams only won 32.7 percent of their games. That’s a sizable difference. When we apply the win percentages to the three game expected injury time, where the starter would win 1.5 of those games, the backup only would win .98 of the three.

By this logic, the drop off to the backup quarterback was worth, on average, about .5 wins over the course of the season.

The final piece of the puzzle addresses the Eagles specifically. During the Andy Reid era, has the drop off from Donovan McNabb to his backups been similar to the NFL average? During seasons in which McNabb missed at least one game, his win percentage was 61.3 percent. His backups came in at 50.5 percent. Obviously, since the Eagles have produced better teams than average over the past decade, their win percentages are going to be higher. Thus, in the three game average backup window, where McNabb would win 1.8 games, the backups averaged 1.5 victories.

That the difference for the Eagles has been only .3 wins rather than the .5 NFL average in 2010 could be the result of a number of factors, including random luck, better backups than average, or better coaching. While Jeff Garcia was a revelation in 2006, I tend to think the truth falls more into the first and third categories.

Either way, whether you look at the league average or the Eagles, a half victory here or there likely doesn’t make the difference between a Super Bowl season and another disappointment. Even if Kolb came in and played at exactly Vick’s level, the difference (on average) is relatively minor. Obviously there are scarier scenarios where Vick gets injured for six, eight, or ten games instead of three. But we must keep in mind (a) that it’s just as, if not more, likely that Vick doesn’t miss any games, and (b) that there’s no guarantee Kolb would provide any more than the standard backup .3-.5 win drop off we’d expect from any other free agent the Eagles brought in. If he were as good as Vick the Eagles probably wouldn’t have demoted him in the first place.

After all that, it’s clear to me that the argument for keeping Kolb as a backup “just in case” has little going for it besides fear of circumstances beyond anyone’s control. If the Eagles aren’t still contemplating keeping Kolb long term, sending him off for a first round draft pick seems like the smart move.

Originally published at NBC Philadelphia. Photo from Getty.

Should the Eagles Pursue Nnamdi Asomugha?

Perhaps the biggest hole in the Eagles defense right now is at right cornerback, opposite Asante Samuel. Ellis Hobbs, Dimitri Patterson, and Joselio Hanson all got the chance to start in 2010 but none could even consistently play at an average level. So going into 2011, fans have been clamoring for the team to add perhaps the biggest star on the free agent market — Raiders cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha.

Asomugha is often touted as one of the best, if not the best cover corner in the league. The three-time consecutive Pro Bowler doesn’t come up with a lot of interceptions, but quarterbacks notoriously avoid his side of the field. Last year, according to Pro Football Focus, receivers Asomugha covered were targeted only 29 times for 3.7 percent of his snaps, by far the least in the NFL (Samuel was second with 41 targets and 6.1 percent).

Asomugha would fit perfectly at right cornerback with the Eagles, where his size (6’ 2” 210 lbs.) and athleticism could balance Samuel’s ball-hawking skills. And it doesn’t appear that Asomugha is losing any of his game. One of the best wide receivers in the NFL, Larry Fitzgerald praised him last year: “The thing you see on tape for a man of his size, he has incredible hips and amazingly quick feet, and that’s just God given ability to be that tall and be able to move and cut and drive on balls the way he’s able to.”

Certainly on talent alone, the Eagles have to be interested. They’re used to making big splashy free agency moves and have the cash to do so. Plus, considering the cornerback spot is a pressing current concern, the team likely won’t try to look to the draft for a remedy.

But the main question mark with Asomugha is his age. The All-Pro will turn 30 on July 6th, and giving a long-term contract to a cornerback (or any player) at that age is risky business. As you can see from the table at right, Asomugha would be the second-oldest big-time acquisition the team has ever made.

Additionally, consider recent Eagles history with cornerbacks. Troy Vincent stayed with the team through age 33, then switched to safety to prolong his career. Bobby Taylor had injury problems that preceded being let go at age 30, after which he only played one more year. Sheldon Brown lasted until just after his 31st birthday before he was traded last offseason to Cleveland. And while we might lament that decision now, keep in mind that quarterbacks throwing Brown’s way in 2010 had a 114 passer rating, third worst in the NFL among starting cornerbacks.

The broader trend among 30-plus year old cornerbacks isn’t particularly golden either. A free agent deal for Asomugha would have to include at least four years, if not more. But can he produce at a high rate for that long?

My analysis shows that among cornerbacks from the last 15 years who started at least one game after turning 30, less than 40 percent of them started the equivalent of two full seasons in their thirties. Only 21 percent managed to start three full seasons. Unfortunately, the vast majority of players are not Eric Allen, Ronde Barber, or Charles Woodson. They slow down, they get hurt, and they drop out of the starting lineup before you know it.

What does that mean for Asomugha’s chances of coming to Philly? It depends on how risk-averse the Eagles front office is right now. Giving Asomugha a rich contract with heavy guarantees — which is what it will take to get any deal done — is no safe move. Maybe he’ll buck the odds and perform at a high level for years to come, making any contract worthwhile. More likely, if the Eagles do pursue him, it would be for a contract that puts big money up front but few guarantees down the road.

At the end of the day, Asomugha is the type of player that could instantly lift the Eagles defense and conceal a number of other weaknesses. It’s worth getting excited about any potential addition of that caliber, even if some caution is also warranted.

Originally published at NBC Philadelphia. Photo from Getty.

Winston Justice to Undergo Knee Surgery Today

Eagles right tackle Winston Justice will undergo surgery today on his left knee to treat a bone chip. Depending on the results of the surgery, Justice could be riding the pine for a few weeks — or sidelined for the entire 2011 season.

It’s tough to tell exactly what will happen with Justice. A team source told Reuben Frank that the procedure was only a “clean-out” and that there’s “absolutely no reason” to believe the injury is serious. On the other hand, Geoff Mosher cites a (presumably separate) team source that told him Justice might need microfracture surgery. Microfracture surgery is the same procedure that derailed Victor Abiamiri’s 2010 season.

NBC10’s John Clark reports, “Winston tells me he hopes its nothing bad, expecting just a cleanout.”

If only wishing made it so. Either we have a reporter blowing up a report into something much bigger than it should be or the Eagles front office trying to spin Justice’s injury to deflect attention from their pursuit of a replacement. Neither party inspires much trust, so we may just have to wait for the results of the surgery to be made public.

Justice has a reasonable contract through 2013, but if his health and reliability are in doubt, the Eagles will need to bring in new players who can replace him. Presumably, that will happen through the draft, where the Eagles were already expected to look closely at offensive tackle prospects who could also contribute at guard. Backups King Dunlap and Austin Howard could also get opportunities to start in Justice’s absence.

Originally published at NBC Philadelphia. Photo from Getty.

My Worst Eagles Predictions for 2010

Sports have a way of making predictions look silly. There’s so much luck and uncertainty involved in every part of an NFL game or season that the reliability of any prediction is suspect.

But what were my worst predictions of 2010? Let’s break it down.

* * *

I disagreed with the Football Outsiders Almanac that Brent Celek’s numbers would drop from 2009, and predicted that Celek would have a monster, career year with Kevin Kolb under center:

“I look at it basically this way: by virtue of his great rapport with Kolb, Brent should exceed his great 2009 season — any numbers that suggest Celek will be worse don’t take into account the facts… My actual projection for Celek in 2010: Jason Witten circa 2007.”

That didn’t turn out so well. Celek’s production was almost cut in half from ‘09, although at least it was only because of Kolb’s benching and Michael Vick’s allergy to throwing to his tight ends over the middle.

* * *

Predicting any kind of draft strategy is probably a bad idea in general.

* * *

I thought last year’s biggest personnel blunder would probably be that the Eagles only kept three safeties going into the regular season:

“What if Mikell gets hurt? Playing two rookies at safety isn’t very “safe” at all. Or what if if Allen, talented though he may be, struggles in his transition to the NFL? Are you going to replace him with another rookie?”

Turns out, safety wasn’t the problem, but cornerback. The Ellis Hobbs-Dimitri Patterson-Joselio Hanson-Trevard Lindley group shuffled in and out as starters with equally subpar results, and when Asante Samuel went down to injury the unit devolved into complete chaos.

* * *

I argued that the McNabb-to-Washington deal couldn’t be accurately judged in 2010, with so many pieces (such as the development of the Eagles draft picks) still up in the air.

Turns out, that argument was unnecessary. Even with all of the long-term ramifications of the trade still unresolved, the disintegration of the Redskins and likely departure of McNabb from Washington this offseason proves that the Eagles “won” this deal handily.

* * *

This headline doesn’t sound so likely now: Could Nick Cole be the Eagles Best Pass Blocker?

* * *

Finally there was this gem:

“I know that if Vick starts a game in Philadelphia it means that Kevin Kolb has been unfortunately injured and the team will undoubtedly go down in a horrific display of offensive ineptitude.”

Followed by this one:

“Having Kolb go down for any extended period of time would essentially end the season.”

I’m not going to try to justify those beauties.

* * *

Make any poor Eagles predictions? Guarantee something that never came true? Let your badges of shame ring in the comments.

Originally published at NBC Philadelphia. Photo from Getty.