Post-Draft Position Breakdown: Cornerback

What the Eagles did: Cornerback was a mess last year. We’ve been over that. You can’t just throw three Pro Bowlers with different styles together and expect things to work out of the box. Thus, the inevitable happened: Asante Samuel was shipped out of town.

What the loss of Samuel means to this defense is tough to gauge. On one hand, he’s still a great cornerback. While his interceptions were down in 2011, other stats showed that Asante was as good as ever. On the other hand, his limited style of play clearly forced running mates Nnamdi Asomugha and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie into suboptimal positions. Asomugha has historically shined when he locks on one of the opposing wide receivers, and Rodgers-Cromartie’s closing speed makes him a better fit on the outside.

Now they can play the way they want, and it’s up to new secondary coach Todd Bowles to make them comfortable. So far the talk has been that the coverages are simpler, which should be a relief to fans. The numbers (re-posted below) show that Nnamdi and DRC can both be very effective starters — as long as they’re playing in the right spots.

Another downside to losing Samuel, however, is that the depth behind the Eagles two starters is relatively murky. Who are the backups on the outside if either player gets hurt? Curtis Marsh, second-year player out of Utah State, is athletically gifted, but is a relative newcomer to the cornerback position. He played a grand total of 13 snaps last season, and still needs to shed the “project” label. Brandon Hughes is entering his fourth year, but hasn’t proven he can even be Dimitri Patterson yet. Then you have a wasted 2010 fourth-round pick in Trevard Lindley, as well as undrafted free agent and apparent head case Cliff Harris.

Inside, in the slot, we have an interesting battle shaping up. Joselio Hanson, the designated nickel corner in this defense since 2007, I believe, was cut last year before being re-signed at a lower price. Clearly the Eagles think he’s replaceable. And they brought in his replacement, or at least heir apparant, in Brandon Boykin, the fourth-round pick. Boykin has all the physical skills except height going for him, and he already gained some experience in the slot at Georgia.

What I would have done: The way Howie Roseman handled the Samuel trade situation was appalling. A player of that caliber should have been worth more than a seventh-round pick, but by the time he pulled the trigger the Eagles had no leverage. That said, he had backed himself into a corner (haha). Trading Samuel was the only possible solution to a problem Roseman created in the first place.

Way-too-early prediction: Based on Rodgers-Cromartie’s stats above, I’m optimisic that he will be a solid outside cornerback this year. Actually, it seems prudent to lock up DRC at this point in order to grab a little bit of discount. And I’m only slightly worried about Asomugha losing a step in 2012. He should still have at least another good year or two left in the tank.

The slot battle is Boykin’s to lose, and I doubt he will. After that, it would be nice to see one of the other young corners step up. Bowles coached bigger, athletic corners in Miami. Hopefully he can use that experience to mold Marsh into an NFL player.

Photo from Getty.

On Mike Caldwell's Culpability

Sorry, Les, but this just isn’t true:

From Caldwell’s perspective, obviously, you’re a position coach, you don’t pick the players. You didn’t tell anybody the Eagles would be just fine with fourth-round rookie Casey Matthews opening last season in the middle. Your job is to do the best you can with what they give you.

Of course the buck stops up the line with Juan Castillo, Andy Reid, and Howie Roseman. But you don’t go into the season with just a fourth-round pick as your starting middle linebacker unless the position coach either thinks it can work or shuts his mouth and nods whenever a higher-up tells him what’s what. In either case he is at least partially responsible for the resulting disaster.

After all the time spent discussing the sway that guys like Jim Washburn, Howard Mudd, and Ted Williams have on evaluating and teaching players, how can we wipe away any culpability that Caldwell has when his unit fails so miserably?

Post-Draft Position Breakdown: Safety

What the Eagles did: Did you notice that safety was the only defensive position the Eagles left alone this offseason? They didn’t sign any free agents. They drafted no one to compete, not even a late round pick. The front office clearly trusts the young players already there. Whether that trust is warranted is a whole different matter.

At linebacker, which was probably the bigger disaster last year, the Eagles elected to try to replace two-thirds of its starters. That plan may or may not work, but the team certainly wasn’t content to wait and see if Jamar Chaney, Brian Rolle, Casey Matthews, and others could improve. The team took the opposite approach at safety though. The plan appears to be giving third-year players Nate Allen and Kurt Coleman every chance to improve from last season.

This decision seems at least partially justified. Unlike the linebackers, both Allen and Coleman have had multi-game stretches of solid play. After falling out of the starting lineup completely in training camp while suffering lingering effects of his 2010 torn patellar tendon injury, Allen bounced back at the end of the year. While not a dominant athlete, Allen has all of the physical and mental tools necessary to be an above-average safety. Hopefully a healthy offseason will finally be the springboard to be that consistent in 2012.

Coleman has much more meager physical skills. He’s smaller and slower than Allen, which is why he was only a seventh-round pick in the same year. Overall, Coleman’s ceiling just isn’t very high. That said, he can be an average, or even good safety at times. He had eight or more tackles in four games last year (although that may speak more to LB quality) and, of course, his three interception game against the Redskins. Unfortunately, as Tommy Lawlor detailed a few weeks back, Coleman frequently screws up in the mental part of the game.

Jaiquawn Jarrett’s name should probably come up here. The former Temple product has his backers, although there’s little evidence the coaches are enamored with him at all. Despite being a second-round pick in 2011, Jarrett hasn’t even been in the conversation to start in 2012.

After that it’s unclear who will make the Eagles roster. Colt Anderson was a Pro Bowl-caliber special teams player last year but tore his ACL in December. Tom Nelson took his place and didn’t show much in the last few games. Philip Thomas, two-year starter at Syracuse, is an undrafted free agent the Eagles took a flier on. Nothing to count on.

What I would have done: Was there no veteran capable of competing with these players? Yeremiah Bell? Anyone?

Right now the Eagles have two players who have never demonstrated they can consistently start and three more who haven’t proven they even belong in the NFL (plus one injured special teams maven). That doesn’t inspire confidence.

Way-too-early prediction: Despite the fact that the Eagles have completely ignored the position, I still feel relatively optimistic. The assembled group is probably the weakest unit on the team (not counting fullback?), and I’m not expecting either Allen or Coleman to be world-beaters. In fact, I’m resigned to them both being below average. So how is that optimistic? Only because I think improved units in front of them and (hopefully) less convoluted coverage schemes will make their coverage screw-ups and poor tackling less noticeable.

As to Jarrett, I’m starting to wonder if he might not be around in a year’s time. The coaches have demonstrated absolutely zero faith in his abilities, and reports are that he has failed to bulk up like the team wished. Even more disturbing is that Jarrett couldn’t play special teams last year. He has time to turn things around and there’s quite a low bar of competition in training camp, but the signs thus far have been disconcerting.

Photo from Getty.

You Gotta Believe

Everyone lapped up the “I’d take a bullet for Andy” quote, but to me, this one from Juan Castillo is more ridiculous. Per Jeff McLane:

Asked what he thought was the biggest thing he learned last season, Castillo answered in true form, “That when you work hard, and you believe in something, and you don’t change no matter, that good things do happen.”

Do you believe? Oh please, please believe. If you believe, wherever you are, clap your hands and she’ll hear you…

Willing to Walk Away?

Jonathan Tamari pens an excellent mini-profile of Trent Cole:

“I might play into another contract,” Cole said. He added that he hopes to finish his career as an Eagle - “When they cut me, I’m, ‘OK. I’m ready to retire,’ ” - but then hedged when asked if he could ever play elsewhere.

“No,” he said, “unless the money’s right, for real.”

That’s a strange quote Tamari picked up, about being willing to retire when the Eagles let him go. Cole gives the money qualifier after, but it’s still an odd insight into the mindset of the Eagles’ stellar but typically reserved defensive end.

Asante Samuel, Secondary Coach

Les Bowen:

Asomugha said he isn’t sure the corners will play strictly man, but he does think that if they play zone, it will be a type of zone most players are familiar with.

“There were more unique types of coverages that we were doing last year,” Asomugha said, struggling to put it diplomatically. Remember, he is the guy who told us toward the end of last season that one of the struggles the Eagles went through was Castillo learning what could actually work in the NFL. Now, Asomugha said, “even if you came from college or from a different team, there are similarities with the stuff we’re doing now that you might have done there, whereas last year, there weren’t many.”

Just how screwed up were the coverages last year that a three-time Pro Bowler had trouble mastering them?

On a related note, from Jeff McLane:

“And Asante would basically be my coach and Dominique [Rodgers-Cromartie’s] coach throughout the week,” Asomugha said. “There were certain things that I would be like, ‘Oh, OK, so we’re going to play this way,’ and it was the way that he would play it, which is a softer-type of reading game. And he’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s not easy.’ “

Stroke of Genius

Don Banks:

Every coach’s intelligence level is tied to his team’s win-loss record to some degree, but the wisdom of moving Castillo from offensive line coach to defensive coordinator last year in Philadelphia was thought one of the all-time dumb moves — at least during the Eagles’ dismal 4-8 start to its “dream” season. Funny, but the risky manuever got a little smarter looking when Philly finished the year with four consecutive victories to even things out at 8-8.

Castillo will be accorded even smarter status this year, and if the revamped Eagles defense starts quickly, don’t be surprised if the words “stroke of genius” are employed at some point to describe his 2011 promotion.

I try hard to keep the words “Castillo” and “genius” at least three paragraphs apart, lest anyone get the wrong idea.

Post-Draft Position Breakdown: Linebacker

What the Eagles did: I’m not sure I’ve seen a worse group of NFL linebackers than the ones the Eagles employed last year. The position was an incompetent game of musical chairs. If the defense has any hope of rebounding from that, they’ll have to get a major upgrade from their two newcomers.

DeMeco Ryans comes to the middle of the defense with lots of hype. He was a two-time Pro Bowler in a 4-3 defense in Houston, and will certainly be a huge upgrade. Simply having an experienced veteran leader and sure tackler in the middle will boost the Eagles defense significantly. The question of whether he can return to his elite pre-injury self does remain, though.

The second newcomer upon whom much relies is second round pick Mychal Kendricks. The former Cal star has already been slotted in at the strongside linebacker spot, and so far in minicamps the reports have been nothing but positive. There’s a definite danger in projecting Kendricks to start as a rookie, as Eagles fans know all too well. Still, his pedigree is significantly higher than Casey Matthews — and any other current linebacker on the squad not named Ryans.

After that, all we have is a host of unreliable youngsters — the same players who played so poorly last season. As long as the two newcomers work out, this won’t be too much of a problem. Surely one of the bunch can be adequate enough in the weakside job.

The frontrunner for that spot seems to be Jamar Chaney, a player the Eagles coaches must love, because he’s shown next to nothing on the field. Chaney has the athleticism to be a great linebacker, but he’s a poor tackler and worse at finding the ball-carrier in the first place. A strong coach might be able to get something out of him, but Mike Caldwell and Juan Castillo probably aren’t the men for that job.

Brian Rolle is the opposite of Chaney, smaller but smarter and a better tackler to boot. He held the weakside job last year and was the most consistent of any of the young players. Still, I don’t know that many people would hold Rolle’s overall performance in particularly high esteem. He didn’t embarrass himself, as some of the others did, but judging from his frame and rookie play, Rolle’s ceiling is not particularly high. In the long run, he would be best suited for a backup and special teams role.

Next comes Casey Matthews, who was unfairly thrown into the fire at middle linebacker last year. To my eyes, though, his play improved when he returned later in the season, and reports this year say he put on significant weight, from 230 lb. up to the 250 lb. range. That raises questions about whether he has become too big to compete on the weakside, although getting the best three linebackers on the field should always be the priority. Matthews, despite his disastrous rookie season, seems to have the most upside between him, Rolle, and Chaney.

Finally, there’s Keenan Clayton, Moise Fokou, and Akeem Jordan. Clayton, the LB-safety tweener, has shown nothing in two years that justifies keeping him around (plus he just had sports hernia surgery). Fokou played so poorly last year that he took only seven defensive snaps after week nine and none after week twelve. Jordan filled in at strongside linebacker in his place, proving that he could at least be an adequate stopgap. His best play comes out on special teams, though, as the latest Football Outsiders report details.

What I would have done: On paper, if everything goes right, this linebacker corps can be solid. The problem is, everything doesn’t always go as planned. With some luck, Kendricks will grab hold of the strongside job and prove his worth. But it’s just as likely the rookie will need time to adjust to the faster professional game. And while Ryans has all the talent, he’ll need to prove he can rebound from last season’s down year with the Texans. If anything goes wrong with either or both of the Eagles newcomers, you’re immediately back to where you were in 2011.

With that in mind, I would have been more aggressive in trying to add one or two more potential veterans and backups. Someone like Dan Connor would have made a nice Plan B, or even a lesser free agent. Chaney, Matthews, and Rolle should have to fight to make ther roster, let alone the starting 11.

Way-too-early prediction: I think Clayton gets cut, barring some miraculous display of talent we have so far missed. The fact that he barely found the field last year was not a good sign. Fokou’s fall from grace doesn’t bode well for him either. Greg Lloyd, the middle linebacker prospect drafted in the seventh round last year, and the other camp bodies are at best practice squad fodder. Unless one of the other guys can show their worth there, Jordan could retain his roster spot based solely on his special team play.

As to the rest, I’m optimistic but realistic about both newcomers. I don’t expect either to set the world on fire, just hopefully be above average. The trio of Rolle, Chaney, and Matthews will be where the competition lies during training camp. I’m anxious to see which, if any, can prove their worth.

Photo from Getty.