From Jeff McLane:
"I don't think people fully understand the schemes and what we're trying to do and blocking assignments and who is responsible for who," Watkins said. "Some of these bloggers you read about, I don't think they have a clue what they're talking about."
First of all, oops? Second, why is Watkins reading "about" bloggers? That's quite meta.
At 6-0, Atlanta is the only undefeated team left in the NFL. At least on the scoreboard, that's perfection. The Eagles, with their 3-3 record and series of close games, are far from perfection. So should we just chalk Sunday's game up as a loss and move on?
I wouldn't. For an undefeated squad, the Falcons look relatively unimpressive. Not bad, for sure, but nothing special. Football Outsiders ranks Atlanta 8th in overall DVOA., with the 10th-best offense and 11th-best defense. Why the difference between performance and record? Look no further than the teams they've beaten:
Not a single team above .500. It's been the 29th-most difficult schedule by DVOA in the league. You go through the numbers and nothing really stands out as being special about this squad, other than their ability to avoid turnovers. The passing game looks dangerous with Roddy White and Julio Jones, but it ranks below both the Giants and Steelers. Run game isn't going to frighten anyone. On defense, the pass coverage looks solid (Vick: beware Asante Samuel), but they are suspect against the run.
Plus, I have a reasonable amount of confidence in Andy Reid after the bye. I know there are other factors at play, but his record with two weeks to prepare is untouchable. He's won every game after the bye for 13 years, plus all three division playoff games where he also had the extra week. That's a full season of undefeated post-bye play. Tough to ignore.
On top of that Reid preparation time, the Eagles also have the addition-by-subtraction in the defensive coaching ranks. Todd Bowles has pledged to be less predictable in his play calls than Juan Castillo. I like the sound of that coming out of a bye. Matt Ryan is going to have a tough time preparing for coverages he can only guess are coming at him.
All in all, I'm surprisingly optimistic about the inconsistent Eagles potential to upset the Falcons.
Photo from Getty.
There's a growing chorus of voices in Philadelphia who aren't satisfied with Juan Castillo's ouster. They want more. Specifically, they want Nick Foles to play.
The sentiment is easy to understand. Michael Vick was supposed to improve in 2012. Instead, he regressed. The high-flying days of 2010 have long passed. People see a flawed quarterback who throws too many interceptions (3.5% of pass attempts), fumbles the ball too much (16% of all runs/sacks), and can't find the open receiver (59% completions). His touchdown percentage has plummeted along with those mistakes (3.5% of attempts), and at 32 years old, there's not much upside to look forward to.
Foles, on the other hand, represents hope. He's young and unproven, and every mistake Vick makes causes people to think it's time to give the rookie a chance. Perhaps the best example of someone laying out a case to ditch Vick and start Foles is friend of the blog Jimmy Kempski. He wrote an extended breakdown of Vick's failings, many of which I agree with. However, this part stuck out to me:
In other words, playing behind a bad offensive line, and playing well behind a bad offensive line, is nothing new to Nick Foles. Obviously, there’s a big difference between the Pac 10 and the NFL, but at least Foles knows a thing or two about the value of getting the ball out quickly when you don’t have ideal protection up front. At this point, I trust Foles to get the ball out quickly far more than I trust Michael Vick, even without having seen Foles play a single meaningful NFL snap.
A switch to Foles would almost force the Eagles to transition to more of a short to intermediate passing attack, which has actually been more successful when they’ve gone that route with Michael Vick this season. In theory, the Eagles could just move to a short or intermediate passing attack with Vick, although I see that development as an unlikely one. But even with a shorter passing attack, again, I trust the rookie to make better pre-snap reads than I do the 32 year old vet who still has “potential.”
Frankly, I don't buy Jimmy's analysis. To me, it reads as overly hopeful and even naive. Jimmy says that the Eagles would change the offense, something that Marty Mornhinweg has already done. And as bad as Vick has been, it seems unlikely that a rookie could step in and immediately do better just because he played with a bad line in college. He's going to survive an offensive line that often looks like the worst of Andy Reid's tenure? Vick has difficulty making pre-snap reads after a decade in the NFL, and a rookie right out of a college spread system known for simple reads is going to pick that up immediately?
Again, I understand the hope. Foles played very well in the preseason. He completed 40 of 63 passes for 553 yards, 6 touchdowns, and 2 interceptions. I praised him heavily at the time:
I was particularly skeptical on draft day, but in two games Foles has looked better than any Eagles backup since Kevin Kolb's two starts in 2009. I'm no quarterback guru, but one of the things that stands out about Foles is his complete lack of fear (something that seems to be dooming Kolb in Arizona). His pocket awareness, perhaps aided by his 6'6" frame, is fantastic, which enables him to move around fluidly and deliver crisp passes into tight spots. If he can keep this up, there's no question he's a better option than Mike Kafka.
But if preseason results were everything, Philip Hunt would be leading the NFL in sacks right now. I went back and pulled the preseason numbers for the 5 rookie quarterbacks who have started for their teams this year. As a group, they did fairly well: completed 58% of their passes at 6.8 yards per attempt, throwing TDs 3.8% and INTs 1.7% of the time. Most of the numbers are middling, but the interception percentage is especially good. For reference, that's about where Vick was in 2010.
So how did those preliminary results translate into the regular season? Completion percentage and yards per attempt weren't affected, even ticked up slightly through 7 games (59% and 7.1 yards). That's pedestrian at best, but could be acceptable if they weren't making mistakes. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Interception percentage spiked to 3.0% once the curtain was lifted, while the touchdown percentage fell to 3.2%.
No one should be surprised by the drop off. (And, in fact, it would be much bigger if not for Robert Griffin III's rapid ascension to greatness.) In the preseason, these rookies face vanilla defenses, often strewn with back ups. When the games start to count, defensive coordinators can dial up all sorts of coverages and blitzes that the QBs have never seen before. Over the last five years, rookie quarterbacks have completed just 57% of their passes for 6.6 yards per attempt, with a 3.2% TD rate and a 3.6% INT rate. They've had an average DVOA of -20.3%. Not good.
Does any of this mean that Nick Foles can't be good? Not at all. You can find examples of rookies, like RGIII, who excel from the start. But that's the exception rather than the rule. When he was drafted, no one expected Foles to get anywhere close to the field this year. He showed up big in the preseason and obviously the coaches were convinced enough to give him the backup job. But one good preseason does not an automatic QB upgrade make. Fans should temper their enthusiasm for Foles and assume, until proven otherwise, that he would suffer through a mostly mistake-prone rookie season.
That's the bottom-line, but it's not the end of the argument. There is a case to be made for swapping Vick out for Foles—just don't predicate it on Foles being some sort of miraculous upgrade because he played behind a bad line in college. The real case has to be made based on Vick's play, going back to those numbers I cited at the top. Vick is still better than the average rookie QB at pretty much every metric, but the difference is diminishing. That's the line you should keep your eye on:
Photo from Getty.
Derek Sarley:
Let's look at every passing play in the Lions game and see why those statements carry so much meaning.
Wait, every Detroit passing play? Every Eagles coverage? You can't be serious.
Must read, obviously.
Jonathan Tamari, taking a break from his new job as the Inquirer's Washington correspondent to weigh in on Juan Castillo's firing. This nugget stuck out:
So when Reid asked him to become the Eagles’ defensive coordinator after more than 20 years teaching offense, Castillo agreed, never mind that his last experience on D was at a Texas high school in 1989. (Apropos of his maniacal work ethic, the interview was at 4 a.m.) Castillo said this was what he always really wanted.
When was the last time anyone made a good decision at 4 a.m.?
And so, the Juan Castillo era ends.
In what was perhaps the most surprising, previously-expected coaching move, Andy Reid yesterday ended "the offensive line coach?" experiment. People are looking at this move a lot of different ways, but I want to examine it from Reid's perspective.
Let's go back to the end of 2011. After such a disappointing season, it was obvious to everyone that Castillo's time as defensive coordinator had been a disaster. It was the main stumbling block over which the Eagles staggered to an 8-8 finish. Jeff Lurie said publicly that such results were unacceptable, implicitly placing Reid's job on the line if he couldn't deliver changes.
My impression is that overall, that message never sunk in for Reid. I don't blame him entirely. 14 years is a long time to stay in any job, and a certain sense of complacency likely developed. Behind closed doors, considering their friendship, Lurie probably conveyed the ultimatum in the most apologetic and equivocal manner possible. Moreover, the person most likely pushing for a Reid exit, Joe Banner, was instead the one who left.
So while I doubt Reid needed anyone to tell him the problems Castillo had last season, he only half-heartedly tried to replace him. There were rumors about the job being offered to Steve Spagnuolo and others, but Reid could have found someone to replace Castillo if he really felt it was essential. After all, he could have made Todd Bowles that replacement in the offseason.
Instead, Reid kept Castillo and tried to fill in around him. He added talented young defenders in the early rounds of the draft, traded for a top-notch middle linebacker, and brought Bowles on as shadow-coordinator. Without feeling the urgency of his job on the line, Reid convinced himself that those moves were adequate. And through the early part of this season, he could find reasons to believe that.
The defense, overall, wasn't the Eagles' biggest problem through 5 games and 3 quarters. There were too many turnovers. The offensive line, because of injuries and no depth, was awful. Play-calling was an issue, too. Special teams difficulties exposed Bobby April as not being the genius coach everyone expected.
With five minutes left in Sunday's game, I bet Reid was feeling relatively optimistic. The team was poised to go 4-2 into the bye, having survived early struggles. The idea that his job is one the line was undoubtedly far from his mind. But things can change quickly. My hypothesis is that Reid took that late-game collapse harder than anyone. Suddenly, staring down the barrel of 3-3, 2011's issues didn't look so far away, and finishing 8-8 again and losing his job suddenly loomed large.
You could see this idea play out in Reid's press conference yesterday, when he said:
"I thought we were making progress, I saw us making progress. We made progress through the last four games. I kinda liked the direction we were going. I thought we started off pretty good, and then I started seeing some trends come back that I wasn't real happy about. So I just wanted to make sure that we — I'm not going to go into detail on it, but there were just things that I saw that I didn't want to go in that direction."
Where complacency had reigned, desperation and determination set in. There is no margin of error for Reid this time, and he finally realized that. Firing Castillo doesn't fix every problem the Eagles have. Not even close. But it was the biggest change Reid could make overnight -- and it sent a strong message to the rest of the organization, coaches and players alike.
Castillo wasn't a scapegoat, he was a warning shot. The move said, "I'm willing to admit, for the first time, that I made a major mistake in hiring, and then retaining, Juan. That's on me. But everyone else better be on notice. Because if I can fire Juan, I can and will fire you too if you don't perform. I may go down this year, but I certainly am not going to hold anything back."
According to a source, Andy called Juan into his office this morning and dismissed him. Juan will no longer be with the team in any capacity
More to come on this, obviously.
One thing I try very hard to do after every game is approach the evaluation and apportioning of blame objectively. Rarely will you see me harping on the same thing week after week. There's a time to blame Michael Vick, for example, and a time to blame those around him. There's a time to blame Juan Castillo, and a time to give him a pass.
This week, for the first hours after the game finished, I couldn't figure out where to place blame. With 5 minutes left, the Eagles were up 10 points and had a 90 percent win probability according to Advanced NFL Stats. I'm sure I wasn't the only one anticipating a 4-2 record going into the bye, and a locker room full of optimistic players and coaches. The defense had held their ground against Calvin Johnson. The offense had started slowly but rebounded to take a commanding 4th quarter lead.
Then, almost inexplicably, the team collapsed. They had two offensive drives. Both flopped, one on a catastrophic scale. Both defensive drives were failures as well.
Plenty of blame to go around when something like that happens. Coaching, to start. Andy Reid deserves significant blame for allowing such a total failure. Castillo, who Nnamdi (Best Game As An Eagle) Asomugha seemed to point to for changing the play calling in the final minutes. Fletcher Cox for getting himself ejected. Nate Allen for getting himself hurt (kidding).
Ultimately, my ire falls on the units in the trenches. Reid has always said that you build your team from the lines outward. Somehow he's failed at that this year. The Eagles offensive line seems to be at a low point in Reid's tenure. A combination of injuries to two critical members, general lack of depth, a former first round draft pick who remains awful, and two generally solid guys having down years. Vick made two poor throws that resulted in interceptions, but otherwise played good enough to win. The offensive line nearly got him killed, though, culminating in a 3 play, -21 yard overtime opening drive.
The real head-scratcher is on the other side of the line, where the Eagles should be getting tons of pressure. As has certainly been parroted around Philadelphia by now, the defense has now gone 3 games without a sack. Just one, in the right situation, might have been enough to win yesterday's game. After the game, players like Cullen Jenkins and Darryl Tapp seemed as surprised as anyone else. They kept repeating mantras about teams using more protection, but there was little passion behind those excuses.
This team is now 3-3, which means that at least in the standings, they've made little improvement from last year's "unacceptable" performance. They better find some way to fix this, or the 2013 Eagles team is going to be the start of a new rebuilding era.
Photo from Getty.
