For a few years now the Eagles front office has argued that they can find good value in players coming off injured seasons. They have made free agent signings and draft picks that many regarded as possible steals, if the player could only rebound from a season-ending injury.
Perhaps this weekend’s release of tight end Cornelius Ingram and trade of guard Stacy Andrews proved once and for all that such a strategy is faulty.
Let’s look at all the injured players they’ve signed over the years…
Eagles Make Flurry of Moves to Reach 53-Man Roster Limit
Busy day at Eagles headquarters on this Saturday of Labor Day weekend. As teams around the NFL make final cuts to drop down to season roster of 53 players, the Eagles did so with gusto, making multiple surprising decisions in terms of keeps, cuts, and trades that no one expected.
Let’s break it down.
Stacy Andrews traded to Seattle: The Eagles received a 7th round pick for a player they expected to start at right guard this season, if not in 2009. After sticking with last year’s marquee free agent signing through one horrendous season, the Eagles hoped Stacy would finally prove worth the trouble. It didn’t happen. Thus, today the front office cut bait and unceremoniously shipped Andrews to the Pacific Northwest for pennies on the dollar. Some rough math indicates that the team wasted approximately $20 million dollars on the two Andrews brothers over the last 3 years. Good riddance…
Eagles at Chiefs: The Big Question
So going into tonight’s third preseason game against the Kansas City Chiefs, the biggest question is:
Can the offensive line rebound from a miserable game?
Against the Bengals, the Eagles’ first team offensive line had a litany of issues. To start with, multiple players were flagged for lining up incorrectly. That’s just unacceptable. Then, when the play began, the unit ceded complete control of the line of scrimmage…
Negative Plays by Offensive Line: Eagles v. NFL
We’d all love for the Eagles to have one of those dominant offensive lines, one that knocks defenses back all game. But to some degree, offensive linemen are judged more by their mistakes than their positive plays.
To that end, I put together the following charts of “negative plays” by offensive lineman, according to the stats guys at Pro Football Focus. I calculated a negative play to be a penalty, sack, hit, or pressure. Obviously these individually are not equal. A sack is far worse than a simple pressure. But overall a lineman who’s letting a lot of guys get to his quarterback probably isn’t doing such a good job, and sacks are often based on luck — who has the quarterback step toward him, etc.
I added all the negative plays up and divided them by each player’s snap count: the number of times the guy actually played. For the purposes of this exercise I also limited the players to those who were on the field for at least 25% of their team’s total snaps (except for Eagles’ linemen). Finally, to make the number a little bit more digestible, I multiplied those fractions by the average number of defensive plays in an NFL game (~62).
Behold Negative Plays per Game. Click each to see the large version in a new window/tab. Tackles on the left, guards in the middle, and centers on the right:
In terms of the NFL in general, you certainly recognize a lot of the players on the top of these lists. Clearly there’s a correlation here: great offensive linemen don’t make negative plays.
That’s not to say that the causation is total. Again, there’s more to being a lineman than NOT giving up bad plays. That may be why a number of Pro Bowl guys fall down on the lists — David Diehl, Alan Faneca, Leonard Davis, etc. Or maybe the numbers expose that they aren’t quite as good as their reputations or paychecks would suggest (see: Peters, Jason).
One other note: the Jets have a kick-ass line — dominant run blockers who don’t make many mistakes. Two top-5 tackles. A top 3 guard. The number 1 center. And their only weak link, Faneca, left in free agency.
On the Eagles:
For tackles, both Peters and Winston Justice were above average. Justice was more reliable (nothing new there), but scouts seem to consider Peters’ 2009 as a down year. If he can stay healthy and cut down on the penalties, he could jump back to the top group. Todd Herremans, when subbing at tackle, played at about an Alex Barron-level, i.e. Dallas’s potential starting LT this year. With an even smaller sample size, King Dunlap was horrible. Hopefully his newfound girth can help him improve.
Herremans was also surprisingly mistake-prone as a guard. Maybe that was rust or lingering issues from missing the first 6 weeks, but it clashed with my past perception. He earned a 1.20 score in 2008, which would have been good for 15th last year, and is about what Nick Cole got. Cole may not have been dominant at guard but he didn’t make many mistakes. Both Max (Now I Can Fit Into) Jean-Gilles and the lesser but less-crazy Andrews brother have things to prove this season.
As for centers, Jamaal Jackson was great in 2009. Nick Cole wasn’t so hot, but he was better than four-time Pro-Bowler Andre Gurode. Make of that what you may.