Still working on my final 53-man roster prediction (spoiler alert: Darryl Tapp is gone baby, gone). Until that's ready, please enjoy this vintage Brian Westbrook, in honor of his retirement with the Eagles this season.
Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
Tommy Lawlor wonders if Dion Lewis might be the guy to break Marty Mornhinweg's constant dependence on a single running back:
Dion Lewis could be the RB to change all of this. The key is that he’s not just a runner. Dion, based on this summer, looks like he could be a weapon in the passing game as well. He must show that he can be counted on as a blocker. For those who might compare him to Ryan Moats because both guys are small, don’t. Lewis is already an infinitely better blocker than Moats was.
I agree with Tommy that the Eagles need to spread the load around where possible. Running backs just don't last long in the NFL, and the more you can rest them, the healthier they'll be. However, the problem with Lewis is that he's essentially a (very) poor man's version of McCoy. Even if he's as good as recent reports out of training camp suggest, Lewis will always be worse than McCoy at pretty much every phase of the game. Thus, having him replace McCoy is always a loss for the offense.
I think one of the reasons Correll Buckhalter was a good complement to Brian Westbrook is that he could do many of the same things, but had a different style and different strengths. It's (similar to) a comparative advantage problem.
Harmony at Eagles Training Camp
All rookies and veterans reported to training camp at Lehigh this year. That makes it only the third time in the last decade that the Eagles have had everyone show up.
A brief rundown of your holdouts and no-shows:
2012: —
2011: DeSean Jackson
2010: Brandon Graham
2009: Jeremy Maclin
2008: Shawn Andrews
2007: —
2006: Broderick Bunkley
2005: Brian Westbrook*
2004: —
2003: Jerome McDougle
*Terrell Owens actually reported on time. But it was worse than if he hadn’t.
Is LeSean McCoy Better Than Brian Westbrook?
Thank you everyone who has already bought the Eagles Almanac 2012! I’m really proud of the work we’ve done on this book, and I hope you all enjoy it.
This week, I’m going to share a series of smaller graphics and other posts based on the work in the Eagles Almanac. For those of you who bought it, hopefully this will provide an opportunity to discuss some of the findings (since that’s difficult on an ebook). And for those who haven’t, you’ll see what you’re missing.
Below is a simple chart from my article, which was a detailed examination of LeSean McCoy’s running style and the areas he can still improve. The question this chart poses, as the title suggests, is whether Shady is a better back than Westbrook, using Football Outsiders’ year-by-year rushing plus receiving DYAR (defense-adjusted yards above replacement). Your answer probably varies from “so far” to “not yet.”
Westy Talks Shady
Eagletarian:
Westbrook took to Twitter today to gauge the fans’ views on McCoy’s contract situation, and add his own.
“So basically everyone feels that he should get paid??,” he tweeted…
“Like Arian Foster? I think he is definitely if not the best, at least the second best back in the league right now and deserves it #payMccoy”
“The only leverage players have in this situation is to hold out! Unfortunately its still not a lot of leverage!! #payMccoy”
“Players dont want to have to worry about their contracts during the season which is why the off season is the time to get it done”
This probably isn’t true, but I like the idea that McCoy is speaking through Westbrook here. Arian Foster money, here we come.
Room to Improve for LeSean McCoy as a Receiver
LeSean McCoy had an All-World rushing season last year, racking up 1300 yards and 17 touchdowns, good enough for best in the NFL in DYAR, by far. McCoy is also a more complete player than most other backs. His pass blocking has, by all accounts, improved significantly since he entered the league. And out of the backfield, McCoy has caught 166 balls over the last three seasons — third-most among all running backs.
Despite all those catches, however, there still seems to be room for improvement in the receiving department. While McCoy has already met or surpassed his mentor’s rushing ability, Brian Westbrook was a much more natural receiver. In fact, he was probably the best wideout the Eagles had for a number of years there.
At a basic level, Westbrook averaged 8.9 yards per catch over his entire career. McCoy has only managed 7.3 yards. That’s a large difference, although it’s hard to tell exactly why McCoy is deficient in that area.
One way to get a second-level look at McCoy’s receiving stats is to look at his receptions by distance. Pro Football Focus tracks passes thrown by direction, including whether those passes were thrown behind or in front of the line of scrimmage. Here is McCoy’s receiving production by year, delineated by passes thrown behind the line of scrimmage and past it:
For starters, McCoy has always been targeted more in the backfield. Most of those are swing passes, screen passes, and shovels. However, at least until this year, he was also turning those passes into bigger gains. There’s an interesting trend, which may or may not be significant, where McCoy’s screens have become less effective each season while his receptions on pass routes past the line of scrimmage resulted in bigger gains.
(Note that YAC, yards after catch, include yards gained behind the line of scrimmage.)
So that’s interesting. But in order to get any context for those numbers, we have to compare them to other running backs. I averaged the 2011 reception figures for five comparable backs: Darren Sproles, Ray Rice, Chris Johnson, Arian Foster, and Matt Forte.
In many ways, these backs had the opposite production of McCoy. Most of their receptions came from routes past the line of scrimmage, not screens and swing passes. They were also more effective running those real pass routes than McCoy, with an average of 10.8 yards per catch beyond the line of scrimmage.
Granted, the reason McCoy runs few wide receiver-type routes is because he’s so valuable in the backfield — even as a decoy. But that’s true about these other running backs as well.
One way McCoy can take his game to the next level would be to apply himself this offseason to becoming a better route-runner and receiver when put in motion out of the backfield. That extra element made Brian Westbrook a multidimensional threat, and McCoy would be wise to follow in his footsteps.
Photo from Getty.
Mini-Video Rewind: Eagles Offensive Highlights
Video rewinds are always fun, and a kind soul has posted a few of the Eagles vs. Rams highlights on YouTube already. Let’s break them down a little bit, shall we?
Here’s Brian Westbrook in a 2006 shovel-pass touchdown… er, I mean LeSean McCoy in an updated version of the same play. The key to this working is the offensive line. Jason Peters and Evan Mathis let their guys come up the field, while Todd Herremans, Kyle DeVan, and Jason Kelce engage forward immediately like on a run.
DeVan (the newest CamelCased addition) knocks his defensive tackle to the ground and proceeds to lie down on top of him. That Rams defender should be glad Howard Mudd likes relatively skinny linemen. Also notice the speedy Kelce run a circle around Herremans, trying to catch the middle linebacker. No way Jamaal Jackson comes close to making that play.
Above is the Quintin Mikell strip-sack. The offensive line actually does a good job here, and so does LeSean McCoy in blitz pickup. But Brent Celek had to choose between a linebacker and Mikell. Ultimately this mistake is probably on Michael Vick, who needs to see the safety blitz and anticipate DeSean Jackson getting open in the end zone. If he let the ball go instead of waiting for Jackson to get open, that would have been a touchdown instead of a fumble.
Here again DeSean lines up in the slot. I don’t remember much of this from last season, but it’s smart down in the red zone, where his quickness can still be deadly without the threat of the deep ball. And here it works again to get Jackson free. He ends up paired off with Mikell, who simply can’t keep up once he’s beat.
Rolling Vick out gives him four options: run himself, dump off to McCoy, pass to Jackson, or try to sneak one in to Celek. The Rams linebacker Poppinga reads it well and closes on Vick, almost breaking up the play.
On this one you’ll notice the Rams brought seven defenders, but the Eagles only had six blockers. Celek slips out of the backfield and is wide open underneath. But such is the downside to having a quarterback who’s only six feet tall: there’s no way Vick could see Celek in that spot.
So this is destined to be a sack. Herremans gives a weak push to the blitzing safety and McCoy struggles to pick up the linebacker coming up the middle. Meanwhile the rest of the Rams defenders are keeping pretty solid containment around the pocket. Then again, I guess no one can really account for Vick, who proved that you can trip, slip, and stumble your way to the first down if you want it badly enough.
Bring Back the Brian Westbrook Offense
I have always chided fans and commentators for calling on Andy Reid to run ball more. First of all, such pleas fall on deaf ears within the Eagles organization; Reid has his offense and it doesn’t change much. Second, Reid is right - statistics show that passing is now a much more effective way to win football games.
However, at the risk of reading too much into Thursday night’s third preseason game, it might be time to shift the scales back more to the Brian Westbrook-centered offense we saw from 2006 through 2008. It’s not that the Eagles ran so much more during that span, but their entire offense largely went through Westbrook with runs, screen passes, dump offs.
That wasn’t, I think, by choice. Reid realized that the Eagles had few other offensive weapons. Of course, that certainly isn’t the case now. But that doesn’t mean the strategy won’t still work. Here are three reasons it makes sense:
After last season’s coming out party for Vick, it seems clear to me that defenses are going to load up in the secondary to prevent the deep ball from beating them. Unless I missed one, Vick hasn’t completed a single one of his signature downfield bombs this preseason. Right now, opponents would rather let Vick complete dink and dunk passes underneath than beat them with one quick, demoralizing touchdown. And especially as Jeremy Maclin may not be 100 percent, the Eagles offense doesn’t have a full complement of downfield weapons.
The offensive line is still in a state of flux. With King Dunlap at right tackle and two rookies starting in the interior against the Browns, pass blocking was a nightmare. Unless that line improves rapidly, Vick is not going to have time to sit back and let deep routes develop. The quick passes, the dump offs underneath, and the run game will likely continue to be more consistent options.
LeSean McCoy, the new Westbrook, is making a quietly persuasive case to be the number one offensive threat. He never got the headlines last year, even though his production was very impressive for a second year running back. Recliner GM found that in 2010 McCoy became only the ninth RB to post more than 1,670 yards before his 23rd birthday. And if the preseason can be trusted for anything, it has shown that McCoy might be ready for even more now. For a player who came into the league in Westbrook’s shadow, he’s already close to surpassing his mentor.
The offense from the third preseason game wasn’t pretty, but it hinted that a McCoy-centric system could win football games. With defenses gearing up to stop the deep passing game and a leaky offensive line, why not use DeSean Jackson more as a decoy in the early going? Do the unexpected and run the football right at these over-aggressive defensive tackles. Take what they give you and ram it back at them. If you’re successful, defenses will have to respect McCoy, and the long balls for DeSean and company will surely open up.
Photo from Getty.