The Eagles Still Aren't Great, But That's OK

Before the season started, I set my expectations for 2013 at a reasonable level: an improvement from last year's disaster squad and a foundation built for future growth. As I said then, most teams as bad as the Eagles improved, on DVOA terms, by an average of about 12%. I anticipated something along those lines, with a slight record improvement but certainly no mention of playoffs.

Obviously, I was wrong. Before Sunday's loss, the Eagles had improved by nearly 33% in DVOA, one of the best turnarounds ever. That will cool slightly this week, but the team still has the inside track on a playoff spot, something most people (including Jeffrey Lurie) never expected to happen so soon.

But Sunday's game reminded us that this squad -- or at least half of it -- is still a work in progress. Chip Kelly's offense is gangbusters, even if it can sputter out for stretches. On a "bad day," Nick Foles threw for 428 yards on 30 for 48 attempts, 3 TDs and 1 INT. Plus he ran the ball 5 times for 41 yards to boot. LeSean McCoy only got 8 carries, but still finished with over 100 yards from scrimmage. DeSean Jackson had nearly 200 receiving yards plus an end-around touchdown called back due to penalty. Oh, and rookie tight end Zach Ertz ended the day with 57 yards on 6 receptions, including a one-handed TD grab. No big problems here.

The defense is still messy, though. As I've said before, you don't have to be an elite quarterback to find the holes in Billy Davis' scheme (Hint: look for the safeties). A smart, patient, accurate player will pick this secondary apart. That's what happened when the Eagles D was skinned alive during the three-game stretch against Philip Rivers, Alex Smith, and Peyton Manning. Since then, during the team's 7-2 run, opponents never scored more than 21 points. 

The great nine-game run leading up to Sunday seemed to be the defense gelling, but most of it was the horrendous, mistake-prone quarterbacks the Eagles faced. Only two of the QBs the Eagles faced in that span have positive DVOA on the year, and they played one of those in a blizzard. Matt Cassel could easily have been another one of those lightweights, but he did his best 2008 impression, throwing for the 4th-most yards of his career. That came despite the Eagles front seven holding the Adrian Peterson-less Vikings to just 2.4 yards per carry.

Worth noting: Football Outsiders never bought into the Eagles defensive turnaround. While they were bend-but-not-breaking their way to sub-22 point totals, the defense allowed over 350 yards in all but two of the last 9 games. Coming into Sunday, the team ranked 22nd in defensive efficiency, versus 3rd on offense. Even with Denver and Kansas City as past opponents, the Eagles faced the 27th-weakest schedule and registered the highest level of inconsistency in the league prior to this week. Including week 15, the Eagles have the lowest point differential of any division leader.

So again, the Eagles aren't great. If their schedule weren't so easy, including six games against the criminally ugly NFC East, I imagine the team would have finished closer to my "return to 1999" prediction than their current possible outcome of 8-10 wins. If the Eagles win the division, which I now expect them to do either against Chicago with the Cowboys losing again, or in Dallas the week after, they will have vastly overperformed -- despite being only a mediocre overall team.

But that's OK. Even if the Eagles get rolled over by a better wild card team like San Francisco, Carolina, or New Orleans, the season will have been a smashing success, and one to build on in 2014. Kelly's offense still has room to grow next year, and the defensive reconstruction will continue. Until then, enjoy this #housemoney season.

Let's Party Like It's 1999

In 2012, according to Football Outsiders, the Eagles ranked 25th in offensive DVOA, 26th in defensive DVOA, and 23rd in special teams DVOA. That's remarkably bad. Some people, like Brent Cohen, have projected a big turnaround for the team this year that leans heavily on wishful thinking, Chip Kelly instant results, and large regressions to the mean.

I wanted to try to figure out what the chances of such a rebound season are, so I went through the Football Outsider archives and looked at every squad that, like the 2012 Eagles, finished 20th or worse in both offensive and defensive DVOA. Taking the overall adjusted DVOA for all 113 teams, I recorded how much it changed the next season.

What I found is that most of those teams did, unsurprisingly, improve. In fact, 79.6% of all teams in this group had better DVOA scores in year N+1, and 57.5% improved by at least 10 percentage points. The average delta was +11.9%.

This makes sense. Teams sink to the bottom of the heap for all sorts of reasons, including poor coaching, quarterback play, defensive failures, injuries, turnovers, and more. The Eagles had all of that. Just keeping the offensive line healthy, improving the defensive tackle rate, and recovering a few more fumbles should help this team get better. But the 2012 Eagles ranked 28th in overall team DVOA, at -22.4%. A +11.9% bump is average among the set I examined, but that only gets you to -10.5% -- good enough for a mere 25th place and only 6-7 mean wins on Football Outsiders' 2013 projections.

So if this year's Eagles improve at the average of their predecessor bad teams, we're still looking at a subpar squad. It's possible they improve more, though. 26.5% of all teams I looked at increased their DVOA by at least 20 percentage points. Beyond that, only 8.8% of teams jumped by 30 percentage points or more. That means there's approximately a 1/4 chance that the Eagles get back to what is essentially league-average form and less than 1/10 chance the team approaches the land of the top 10-15 NFL teams.

You can find hope or despair in these numbers. A (minority) chance to rebound to league average is appealing to root for on its own, although there's almost as large of a chance that the team's performance actually declines.

My takeaway is that improvement is likely, but a big swing isn't -- and that shouldn't be surprising. This is a long term rebuilding process, as Jeff Lurie indicated in his interview this Sunday with Zach Berman:

"I just think it's not in wins and losses... It's absolutely instilling a culture in the program that he brings to it, a sense of preparedness, a pride in being the best you can be for the fans and the team, and winning every day - winning the day, each day. And whatever happens, happens."

The Eagles probably won't win tonight in Kelly's debut. Nor are they likely to win many games the rest of the season. Lurie knows what's important is establishing a foundation for success going forward, the way Andy Reid did in 1999.

I don't remember much about the 1998 season (seeing as I was only 10 at the time), but the year the wheels came off the Ray Rhodes express was about as pretty as 2012. The 3-13 record reflected a horrible quarterback trio and 25th-or-worst DVOA ranks in all three phases.

Reid wasn't going to turn that mess around immediately. In 1999 he improved the team's overall DVOA +23.6% (from -34.6% to -11%). That's in the 23rd percentile of best turnarounds in the aforementioned group. The result was only a modest increase in wins, a 5-11 record -- but it laid the building blocks for what was to come.

With the important exception that the team doesn't have a quarterback of the future yet, 2013 is shaping up to be 1999 all over again, or at least I hope it does. Because wins matter much less today than that the losses fuel wins tomorrow.

Eagles Almanac 2013 PDF On Sale Now!

If you missed out on the Kickstarter pre-ordering process, now's your chance to get the Eagles Almanac 2013! Stuffed to the brim with nearly 100 pages of pure Eagles content, the Almanac tells you everything you didn't know you needed to know about Chip Kelly and the future of the team. Download it now for just $10. 

And check back soon for the paperback copy to go on sale.

It's Nice To Be Wanted

Les Bowen:

This is not 1999. Back then, the Eagles' job was not considered attractive, even though the Birds had the second overall pick in that year's draft, mainly because the team was playing and practicing in dilapidated Veterans Stadium, a tough sell to free agents and not a great setup for financial success. In 2012, the Eagles have first-class facilities, a stable, passionate fan base, and a history of recent success.

Lurie, whatever fans think of him, is not a Jerry Jones-level meddler or a guy who might be looking to move the franchise to Los Angeles because he can't sell tickets. He's a solid owner who has shown he's willing to spend money on coaches and players; when Andy Reid needed him to open up the checkbook to entice Jim Washburn and Howard Mudd here, Lurie did that. (Yes, I'm aware those hirings haven't turned out well. The point is, when the head coach has wanted to spend money, Lurie has spent it.)

It's true that if Nick Foles isn't any better than he looked in Washington Sunday, the Eagles are going  to have to draft a franchise quarterback, and that's a daunting task. It's also true that teams with head coaching openings tend not to have franchise quarterbacks sitting around. Funny how that works. It's almost like there might be some sort of connection there.

100 percent agree. Even without a franchise QB, the Eagles job should be the top destination for any free agent coach. 

Time's Up

I'm not going to crucify Andy Reid for still playing LeSean McCoy late in the game Sunday, even with the score out of reach. His concussion, in hindsight, was avoidable, and Reid's rationale for keeping him in was ridiculous. But benching McCoy would require that your coach give up on the season and start building for 2013.

That's not Reid's job. He's been here for 14 years and is about to be fired. Why should he coach for a future that doesn't exist for him? Why should he care?

I said last week that the Eagles shouldn't wait until after the season to fire Reid. The McCoy injury now sets that idea in sharper context. This season is lost. There's no salvaging it. Even a respectable finish at this point is unlikely and undesirable. All that's left is to play for 2013: lose as many games as possible, evaluate your players for next season, and keep your confirmed stars from serious injury.

It's time for Jeffrey Lurie to step up. He's in control. He needs to fire Reid, promote Marty Mornhinweg to interim head coach, and finish out this sad season with an eye toward the future. Kick-start the coaching search. Evaluate players and plan the cuts you are going to make. Make the decision on what to do with Michael Vick, who's owed $3 million just a few days after the Super Bowl.

There's nothing admirable about letting this play out for the next six weeks. And, as McCoy shows, there's actually a tremendous downside to doing so. Time to move on.

Photo from Getty.

This Is A Three-Year Job

I was trying to think of a worst case scenario for the Eagles reboot in 2013. And besides some sort of "one more year" scenario, I think the worst thing that could happen to this team is for the front office to decide they really only need to reload rather than rebuild.

There will certainly be the temptation to avoid the hard choices that come with committing to a full purge. Even with Andy Reid gone, Howie Roseman and Jeffrey Lurie may look at the large complement of veteran players that they've shelled out big money for and decide to hire someone promising a quick fix. Whether or not the hire would actually be him, Jon Gruden provides the inspiration for this selection. He went into Tampa Bay and in a year turned the Bucs from consistent contenders to Super Bowl winners. (Honestly, the outgoing coach in that scenario, Tony Dungy, makes a lot of sense in this role as well.)

On paper that sounds great. Why waste a year or two rebuilding the team when you can hire someone who promises to get you right back into the hunt? But to go this route would be to ignore the large structural problems this team is loaded with. You would be giving the Titanic a new coat of paint rather than addressing the larger concerns.

What are those concerns? How about a team that has far too many players in critical positions who are on the downhill slope of their careers. Players like Nnamdi Asomugha, who Todd Bowles is now blitzing on third down, and Michael Vick, who isn't getting any better. There's also an over-reliance on rookies and second-year players, some of whom are talented but all are inexperienced. There's a complete lack of depth at, really, every position, most notably offensive line.

Reid built the most sustained period of success this franchise has ever seen, but he didn't do it overnight. He came in with a three-year plan, and he executed. He cleaned house, picked the right quarterback, made a few key free agent signings but mostly built through the draft. This Eagles squad has been without that hard reboot for years -- and delaying it will only prolong the inevitable.

Just another reason to start rooting for losses...

Photo From Getty.

Which Eagles Are Keepers For 2013?

I hope we're all on board with the fact that there's going to be regime change in 2013. To that end, I'm pretty disinterested in the results this year — excepting what we can learn that will help the Eagles move forward into the next era. A large part of that is discerning which players are expendable and which are the cornerstones for a new foundation.

When Andy Reid arrived in Philadelphia in 1999, he made those hard choices. He picked the players who would make the transition. That included stalwarts like Tra Thomas, Duce Staley, Brian Dawkins, Jeremiah Trotter, Troy Vincent, and Bobby Taylor. They helped form the backbone of a team that would reach four straight NFC championship games. Most of the rest of the roster, however, was gutted and rebuilt through the draft and a few key free agent signings.

As of the middle of the 2012 season, this is how I analyze the roster for the future:

Building Blocks: Players who the next coach should build the new era around. Use a scheme that plays to their strengths. 

• LeSean McCoy. Shady should be the crutch for the Eagles' new quarterback.
• DeSean Jackson. New contract has re-energized him. Hasn't dropped a pass all year.
• Brent Celek. Turns 28 in January. Has taken a lot of hits, but keeps on getting up.
• Fletcher Cox. Still adjusting to the NFL, but early results look great.
• Mychal Kendricks. See above.
• DeMeco Ryans. Glad to be wrong about him. Has provided leadership and consistent play in the middle of the defense. Only turns 29 in July.

Keepers, With A Caveat: Players who could be building blocks, but we need to see a little bit more. In other words, hold that contract extension for the moment.

• Jason Kelce.  Potential as rookie starter, but need to see recovery from injury. Also, may only fit certain schemes.
• Brandon Boykin. Upside less than other defensive rookies, but has held his own so far.
• Nate Allen. May have reached ceiling of "solid player."  Worth something in NFL, but how much?
• Jeremy Maclin. Lots of talent, but Reggie Brown-esque career arc so far. Lackadaisical effort, annoying complainer. Might want more money than he's worth.
• Alex Henery. Still haven't seen that huge leg we were promised. But young and accurate from short distances.
• Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. Top talent and style, but questionable dedication. Can be shut-down guy outside when he wants to be.

Tryout Candidates: May have shown some flashes, but nothing special yet. Have to play their way onto the roster in 2013.

• Nick Foles. Keep your expectations low. Up to him to show he deserves a shot at  starting job.
• Bryce Brown. Has all the athleticism to be a NFL back. Needs sophomore jump.
• Stanley Havili. Better than anticipated this year in limited action.
• Riley Cooper. Special teams performer, but rarely shows up on offense.
• Damaris Johnson. Exciting jitterbug who needs to play with more smarts.
• Clay Harbor. Looks like a fine backup tight end. That's not worth much.
• Brandon Graham. Great pass rush in limited snaps this year. Hasn't lived up to 1st round pick status.
• Philip Hunt. Great preseason, disappeared when the lights came on.
• Cedric Thornton. Clearly some potential. Can he perform in a different scheme?
• Vinny Curry. Rookie hasn't gotten on to the field.
• Akeem Jordan. Backup linebacker, special teams starter.
• Brandon Hughes. Played OK for a backup. That's probably his ceiling.
• Kurt Coleman: Perfect third safety. Limitations (athletic and otherwise) make him a below average starter.
• Colt Anderson: Kick coverage star looks lost on defense.

The Oldies. These players are riding close to the expiration date. May be starter-quality now, but will they be when the rest of the team is ready to compete again?

• Michael Vick. Will be 33 before next season. We've seen the limits of his game. Time to find a new franchise QB.
• Jason Avant. Turns 30 in April. Numbers are down this year.
• Jason Peters. Turns 31 in January and recovering from major injury. Elite athlete could shore up LT for a few years, or he could be done.
• Todd Herremans. Will also be returning from injury. At 30, his play dipped this year.
• Evan Mathis. Best remaining lineman for the Eagles doesn't mean much. 31 years old.
• Jason Babin. Production fell off a cliff. Will be 33 in May.
• Trent Cole. After contract extension, only has 1.5 sacks so far in his age 30 season.
• Mike Patterson. It's amazing he's even playing after brain surgery.
• Cullen Jenkins. Salary cut last offseason. Little reason to keep him this time.
• Nnamdi Asomugha. Can't cover deep. Period.
• Jon Dorenbos. He is only the long snapper, so I guess this isn't such a problem. Free agent in 2013, though.

Get Out Of Town: I actively don't want to see these players next year.

• Demetress Bell. No words necessary.
• King Dunlap. Allergic to finishing blocks.
• Danny Watkins. Maybe I should have put him in the "Oldies" category.
• Dallas Reynolds. Not good enough to be a backup center.
• Derek Landri. Very inconsistent player, never performed at all outside the Wide Nine.
• Jamar Chaney. My feelings on this subject are well documented.
• Mat McBriar. How hard is it to find a real punter?

Don't Care: I feel nothing toward or against these players. At most they get a tryout.

• Trent Edwards. Third QB at best.
• Dion Lewis. Hasn't shown much of anything worth hanging on to.
• Chris Polk. I don't know why he's on the roster.
• Dennis Kelly. Looks about as bad as Watkins.
• Nathan Menkin. Who?
• Matt Tennant. See above.
• David Sims. Yeah.
• Darryl Tapp. Middling veteran backup. Nothing more.
• Casey Matthews. No redeemable qualities.
• Curtis Marsh. 29 defensive snaps in one and a half seasons.

Photo from Getty.

Looking at 2013 and the Eagles Draft Options

One if the most common mistakes that fans make is assuming that the Eagles will draft a player because of immediate need. That rarely happens. Most of the time, the team papers over current roster flaws with free agent signings and trades, acquiring DeMeco Ryans being a prime example.

You should never expect even a first round pick to contribute much in their rookie year. If you end up with a quick starter, great. But relying on guys like Danny Watkins right away will disappoint you early and often.

The question of what position is ripe to be drafted early has more to do, in my opinion, with looking a year or two down the road. Where are the aging veterans? Where are the likely holes in the team a year from now? Let’s take a look at the 2013 roster as it looks right now:

QB: Michael Vick, Mike Kafka
RB: Dion Lewis, Stanley Havili
WR: DeSean Jackson, Jeremy Maclin, Jason Avant, Riley Cooper
TE: Brent Celek, Clay Harbor
OT: Jason Peters, Todd Herremans
OG/C: Danny Watkins, Evan Mathis, Jason Kelce, J. Vandervelde, M. Gibson
DE: Trent Cole, Jason Babin, Brandon Graham, Philip Hunt
DT: Mike Patterson, Cullen Jenkins
LB: DeMeco Ryans, Casey Matthews, Jamar Chaney, Keenan Clayton, Brian Rolle
CB: Nnamdi Asomugha, Asante Samuel, Curtis Marsh
S: Nate Allen, Jaiquawn Jarrett, Kurt Coleman

With the notable exception of LeSean McCoy, every Eagles offensive starter and most of the backups are signed through the next two seasons. That’s great for the team, since the offensive unit has been much more consistently good than the defense over the last few years. There’s no reason to sit on that and not draft anyone, perhaps more OL and WR depth, but there’s no major need at any of these positions.

Defense is a different story entirely; there you are more likely to need guys than not. Defensive end is probably in the best spot going forward, with two Pro Bowl starters and two players with potential already lined up. The rest is a real crap shoot.

There are only two defensive tackles signed through 2013 (although Tommy’s presumably camped out on Derek Landri’s lawn right now). Both Jenkins and Patterson are starters, but they are getting up in age, too. At linebacker there are five players but it’s tough to trust any of them, with the possible exception of Ryans. Cornerback really only has Asomugha and Marsh, with Samuel packing his bags. And safety brings us three youngsters, none of whom have proven they can be above average starters.

With all that said, I think it would be justifiable to draft any defensive position, outside of DE, in the first round. There are a couple more factors to keep your eye on as we get closer to the draft. First, will Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie get a contract extension? I already discussed this at length, but some movement there could allow the Eagles to delay drafting another corner in the first round. Second, what do the Eagles do at outside linebacker? If they obtain another starter there, they could pass on Luke Kuechly and take a flier on a second or third round LB instead.

If the Eagles take action on both of those counts, odds are that the team will be picking among the deep class of defensive tackles with pick #15.

Photo from Getty.