Time to Unleash Carson

The following is a post by @sunset_shazz.

The National Football League has, over time, become a passing league. The best, most analytically sophisticated teams build around the passing game. In 2018, the final four teams in the NFC and AFC Championship games enjoyed the top 4 passing offenses, in terms of efficiency. In 2019, run-first teams are typically built by dinosaurs who can barely dress themselves.

The Philadelphia Eagles have made forward-thinking analytics a centerpiece of their strategy, and their fearless head coach is a protégé of one of the game’s great passing innovators; surely they are a pass-friendly offense?

How often do teams pass when it's up to them?

--Chiefs, Bills, Packers, Patriots all pass-heavy
--49ers and Colts very run-heavy
--To no one's surprise, Seahawks still conservative pic.twitter.com/XdnMyD00YL

— new-age analytical (@benbbaldwin) October 8, 2019

As I’ve noted before, any discussion of pass/run ratios must acknowledge the importance of game script, which is the time-weighted score differential transpiring over the course of a game. The higher a team’s game script, the greater its propensity to run in order to bleed the clock and secure the win. By the same token, a team with a negative game script is more likely to pass in order to attempt a come-from-behind victory.

Which brings us to the 2019 Philadelphia Eagles. In weeks 1-4, as we’ve been repeatedly told, this team faced a 10 point deficit in every single game. Yet, despite having fallen behind early in four of their games, the Eagles, through week 5, have been one the run-heaviest teams in the league.

Recall the Pass Heavy Index, which computes the pass/run ratio relative to expectation given a team’s average game script:

The Eagles rank 23rd in the league, passing the ball 5.5% less frequently than would be expected, given their average game script (0.5). This is their lowest rank since Doug Pederson’s first year as a head coach, with a rookie quarterback. In the last two years, the Eagles have ranked 8th and 10th in terms of situation-adjusted pass heaviness.

Moreover, the first five games of 2019 have been the second most run-heavy five game stretch of Pederson’s tenure. The last time the Eagles were this run-heavy occurred during weeks 3 – 7 of the 2017 season, after Pederson endured considerable criticism from the likes of Frank and Joe from Manayunk following a week 2 loss vs Andy Reid’s Chiefs, when the Eagles passed on 75.4% of offensive plays, Pederson’s most pass-heavy game ever, given the game script (27.8% above expectation).

Does the recent run-heavy approach portend a shift in tactical emphasis, or could it be merely statistical noise? The plot below shows every Eagles regular season game under Pederson’s tenure, with 2019 games in red, labeled with opponents. The regression line shows the league-wide average pass-run ratio; the degree to which a data point is above or below the line reflects the “Pass Heavy Index” for that particular game (positive or negative).

Week 2 (at ATL) and 5 (NYJ) were pass-heavy, when adjusted for game script. Week 1 (TB) and 3 (DET) were more run-heavy than is typical for a Pederson offense. A significant proportion of 2019’s run-heavy tilt is due to the sublime Green Bay game at Lambeau when Doug passed the ball 24.2% less than what would have been expected, given the game script. This game was, by far, the most run-heavy of his head coaching career. There was reasoning behind this anomaly: Mike Pettine chose to keep his defensive personnel in dime and nickel versus the Eagles two tight end sets, allowing Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert to run block against relatively light boxes. As Jason Kelce pithily explained to Sheil Kapadia, the objective in the game was to put the defense in a bind: “Everything’s just trying to get honest numbers out of them.”

Had Pettine loaded the box with base personnel, you can be sure that the Eagles would have been pass-heavy, particularly with Goedert and Ertz on the field. Removing the unusual circumstances of the Green Bay game, the Eagles -0.5% Pass Heavy Index would rank 17th in the league. Their current league rank, in terms of pass-run ratio, is at least partly an artifact of the game-theoretical nature of Doug Pederson’s offense, which is predicated on running versus light boxes and passing versus heavy boxes.

Per the NFL ScrapR box score app created by The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin, this tactic paid huge dividends. The Eagles at Green Bay had both a higher success rate and expected points added (EPA) per play in the running game, compared with the passing game.

Against GB, he called the most run-heavy game of his career, adjusted for situation. This tactic was successful against Mike Pettine's defense, which dared the Eagles to run. Per #nflscrapr box score app by @benbbaldwin, the Eagles had higher EPA & Success Rate running the ball. pic.twitter.com/bSxRuaqHSW

— sunset shazz (@sunset_shazz) October 12, 2019

Note that a more efficient run vs. pass game is unusual. In weeks 1 through 5 of 2019, as well as during Pederson’s prior tenure, the Eagles had a higher average success rate and EPA passing the ball versus running.

I will close with a prediction: in the following weeks, Doug will unleash Carson. As defensive coordinators begin to recognize that Jordan Howard is quietly efficient running behind Jeff Stoutland’s offensive line, they will increase the number of defenders in the box.

And Pederson and Wentz will take what the defense gives them.

Can't Run On Us

The following is a guest post by @sunset_shazz.

As the inimitable Jimmy Kempski recently explained, the Eagles’ defensive game plan is rather simple:

1. Stop the run.
2. Make the opposing offense one-dimensional.
3. Get after the quarterback.

Indeed, Eagles opponents do appear to give up on the run – this year the defense has faced the fewest rushing attempts per game. One caveat: they also have the second-highest point-differential. As everyone knows, you face fewer run attempts when holding a lead.

Are the Eagles’ opponents giving up on the run because they’ve fallen behind? Or are the Eagles facing fewer rush attempts due to their stout run defense, irrespective of the scoreboard?

I examined Game Script data compiled by Chase Stuart. Game Script is basically the average score margin over a total game. As a stylized example, let’s say Team A returns the opening kickoff for a touchdown, kicks the extra point, then neither team scores for the rest of the game. Team A’s Game Script in this simplified example would be +7 (the average lead held the entire game); Team B’s Game Script would be -7. A higher game script is often associated with more rushing by the team who’s leading (because you run when you win, not win when you run) and more passing by the opposing team (which has a negative game script).

The plot below shows each team’s average Game Script on the X-axis and average Pass/Run Ratio on the Y axis (all data through weeks 1-10). The regression line represents the expected Pass/Run Ratio, given Game Script, computed from the 146 games that were played through week nine. [1] A team that is toward the right (LAR, PHI) has enjoyed a higher average lead, and a team toward the top (SFO) has a higher pass/run ratio.

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By comparing each team’s pass-run ratio to what one would theoretically expect given game situation (denoted by the regression line above), one may construct a “Pass Heavy Index”:

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This year, Bill Belichick has been 10.9% more likely to call a pass, given game situation, than average. With Mitchell Trubisky behind center, John Fox is 15.5% less likely to call a pass, given game situation, than average. Despite almost being run out of town after a week 2 game in which his Pass Heavy Index was +27%, Pederson is basically in the middle of the pack.

What about the defense? One may similarly plot each team’s opponent’s average pass/run ratio against the opponent’s average game script:

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Did you notice the outlier on the upper left? One may also compute each team’s opponents’ Pass Heavy Index:

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The table above shows that Eagles opponents are not only passing more than any other team’s opponents (70.1% of the time), but that they are the most pass heavy adjusted for game situation. The evidence supports Kempski’s thesis: Eagles opponents this year have become one dimensional. One way to look at it is that opponents have a healthy respect for the Birds’ run defense. Another way to view it: they think they can attack the secondary. Somebody please inform the Green Goblin that he’s being disrespected.

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Stick Figure GIF reprinted with permission, courtesy Jimmy Kempski

Alternatively, perhaps this is an artifact of sampling bias – maybe the Eagles just happen to have faced teams who pass a lot (like Arizona).

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Looking at it game-by-game, 6 out of 9 teams the Eagles played chose to pass more than they typically do, adjusted for game situation. There were three exceptions: the Cardinals 76.7% pass ratio, though 8.3% higher than expected, was a tad (0.5%) less pass heavy than Bruce Arians’ typical game; this was due to an extreme game script driven by a three touchdown first quarter by Carson Wentz. In the most recent two weeks, the Niners and Broncos both continued to run more than would be expected, despite falling behind by two scores in game script. Could this portend a change in opponent strategy, perhaps due to the absence of LB Jordan Hicks, whose season ended in the first series of Week 7? Or was this merely due to the injury to Joe Staley for the Niners  and the move to Brock Osweiler for the Broncos? The next few weeks should be interesting.

The analysis presented above demonstrates that Eagles opponents are 10% less likely to run the ball than average, given the game situation. If opponents indeed are choosing to attack the Eagles’ passing defense, they are picking a different, though still potent, poison. The Eagles passing defense is ranked 7th in ANY/A allowed, and ranked 8th in defensive passing DVOA.

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Interestingly, the Rams’ and Jaguars’ average lead has been similar to the Eagles’, though their opponents are running more than typical, given such a deficit. Those teams are ranked 2nd and 1st against the pass, respectively, in DVOA, and are ranked 15th and 30th against the run. Though opponents of each team are falling behind during games at a similar rate, they are choosing to attack the Eagles differently, given the relative strengths of their defensive units.

Thanks to Eagles fan Noah Becker and MoK Editor-in-Chief Brian Solomon for discussion leading to this post. 

[1] The Y-intercept indicates the neutral pass/run ratio, 57.8%, which also mathematically corresponds to the league average pass-run ratio.

The Eagles Aren't Good Enough To Make Mistakes

Despite disappointing results in the last two games, the Eagles are a good football team. Going into this week, they were first in the NFL in point differential and second in DVOA. Now, they remain third-best in the former and should stay near the top in the latter.

Two losses, by a combined score of eight points, do not end the season. But they do show us what kind of team the Eagles are: one that can't afford to make mistakes if they want to compete for the division title. 

The truth is that the Eagles don't have many difference-making players. Fletcher Cox and (old but still great) Jason Peters, perhaps. After those two, who can the team count on to consistently win individual match-ups? Carson Wentz has flashes of brilliance. Third down back extraordinaire Darren Sproles is the only explosive play maker on offense.

This roster isn't built to exploit mismatches in talent. It's built on competence. On defense, guys like Brandon Graham, Jordan Hicks, and Malcolm Jenkins form the core, but none of them are keeping offensive coordinators up at night trying to scheme around them. They are good because they do the right thing (most of the time). They won't get you killed and they can succeed within the scheme. Ditto on offense: Jordan Matthews and Zach Ertz are solid starters in the NFL as long as you're not counting on them to be the number one option.

The early season win streak was built on competence in all phases. The defense didn't do anything special with fancy blitzes; it just lined up and got pressure with four rushers. The offense took league-best field position and converted drives into points at the second-highest rate. They did so methodically, not gashing teams with big plays but marching down the field with a mix of efficient runs and short passes (part of the reason Carson Wentz scores so low in Air Yards). Limiting turnovers (to zero for the first three games) and capitalizing on opponent mistakes.

That strategy was effective until this started happening:

As far as I can tell, weeks five and six are the most penalties the Eagles have committed in consecutive weeks since 1989. And those penalties matter. According to friend of the blog Sean Taylor, each additional penalty a team has over its opponent is worth approximately -0.5 points. The Eagles have out-fouled their opponents by 16 in the last two weeks and, surprise, lost by a combined eight points. Add in a couple more unforced errors, like a rookie fifth round pick stumbling out of the gate and a veteran running back fumbling at the worst possible time, and you can see how the Eagles went from 3-0 to 3-2.

Again, this is not to bury them. They are still a good team that should be at least in the race all season. But it's not like teams we've seen in years past that could spot an opponent a three touchdown lead and roar back in the final minutes. There are too few #playmakers and not enough strengths. That means they either have to return to the suffocating competence of the early season—limiting turnovers and penalties, staying efficient on offense, and preventing big plays on defense—or come up with a new way to win... like putting more in Wentz's seemingly-capable hands.

Time To Clear The Air

The following is a guest post by @sunset_shazz.

This is a wonderful time to be an Eagles fan. Jim Schwartz’s Attack Nine defense is rapidly exorcizing the ghost of Juan Castillo. Doug Pederson has rejuvenated an offense that had become stale and predictable under Chip Kelly. And, of course, rookie quarterback Carson Wentz is turning heads across the league, not to mention in the oval office.

Eagles fans, unexpectedly blessed with success, look to the poet Browning to give voice to their collective sentiment:

The lark's on the wing; 
The snail's on the thorn: 
God's in His heaven— 
All's right with the world!

But wait. From his perch at the indispensable Football Outsiders, Scott Kacsmar has some discomfiting news: both Wentz and Cowboys rookie QB Dak Prescott are mere dink and dunkers, with lower than average air yards per attempt (defined as the average distance a football is thrown beyond the line of scrimmage). A low score on this metric is undesirable, in Kacsmar’s view.

The inimitable Jimmy Kempski responded to Kacsmar’s initial claim with a sardonic video rewind post, prompting Kacsmar, in an entertainingly vitriolic rant, to frame this argument as a contest between enlightened, statistically rigorous analysts on one side and straw-manning “numbers are for nerds” egg avatars on the other.

I don’t believe that view is correct.

As Brian Burke has explained:

A statistic that both correlates with winning and correlates with itself would be a reliable predictor of future wins.

First, you want your in-sample measure to have some predictive power in estimating out-of-sample future wins, because, hello, you play to win the game. Second, you want a metric to have some degree of statistical persistence over time, in order to be confident you are measuring a signal (in this case, an attribute of quality quarterbacking) rather than mere noise.

Regarding the latter, Kacsmar notes that in 2015, the correlation between air yards in the first three weeks of the year and the air yards for the entire season was 0.80. Well, that doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? After all, what we really care about is the correlation between the first 3 weeks of the season and the ensuing 14 weeks. Using his dataset, and using the Spearman rank correlation estimator rather than a standard Pearson estimator, which in this case would be considered less robust, I found that the correlation between the first 3 weeks and ensuing 14 weeks last year was 0.60. That’s pretty good, as far as football statistics go. However, do note that within a season a number of other factors surrounding the quarterback are, for the most part, held relatively constant: coaching scheme, strength of running game, defensive strength, etc.

When Chase Stuart examined the persistence of the Air Yards metric from year to year, he found that between 2006 and 2012 for 100 qualifying QBs the correlation between Year N and Year N+1 for Air Yards was 0.34. Both completion percentage and yards/attempt were “stickier” with N to N+1 correlations of 0.51.

Kacsmar, in his FO piece, assembles a smaller dataset (than Stuart, above) which he judges to be salient:

I gathered that yearly data on 21 quarterbacks with at least four years of starting experience, all of whom are still active starters this year except for the retired Peyton Manning. The following table shows their average air yards by year for the period of 2006 to 2015.

The first rule of Analytics Club is to plot your data, so I plotted Kacsmar’s data into a time series chart, in order to visualize the range and variability of the attribute, segregated by quarterback, over time:

Taking Kacsmar’s dataset (which, it is important to note, uses 21 quarterbacks who have experienced some career longevity rather than Stuart’s more comprehensive analysis of 100 QBs), and running a similar autocorrelative N to N+1 analysis, I found that the year-to-year correlation was 0.40. My friend, real-life data scientist Dr. Sean J. Taylor, was generous enough to both replicate my work and provide me with a scatterplot, complete with line of best fit and confidence interval shading:

Chart courtesy Sean J. Taylor

The autocorrelation statistic, the scatterplot and time series visuals each show the same thing: we are measuring mostly noise, with a faintly detectable QB signal. The attributes I mentioned before—scheme, effectiveness of the running game, defensive efficiency which affects game script—are all likely to change the calculus of decision-making with regard to throwing shallow or deep.

In fact, Kacsmar himself gives us a good reason to doubt the validity of Air Yards in capturing an attribute of QB quality: it doesn’t improve as a player gains more experience. Quarterbacks, like all athletes, typically experience an age curve, reflecting both athletic maturation and decline, as well as the steep learning curve imposed by formidable NFL defenses. Chase Stuart has shown that the age curve for NFL quarterbacks is pronounced. The absence of an “age/experience curve” for Air Yards is yet another red flag.

Air Yards doesn’t appear to measure a persistent quarterback attribute over time, particularly when compared with a conventional statistic such as completion percentage or advanced statistics such as Adjusted Net Yards / Attempt (ANY/A, for which Danny Tuccitto brilliantly used confirmatory factor analysis to verify its validity) or Defensive Yards Above Replacement (DYAR, rigorously developed and tested by Aaron Schatz).

But does it predict wins?

My general model of the production function of football is as follows: runs and passes are inputs; completions and first downs are intermediate goods; points are outputs. Success rate metrics such as Defensive-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), DYAR, and ANY/A are all measures of intermediate goods which are of interest to the analyst because they tend to reliably convert to points. And as Chip reminds us, if you (f__king) score points you are more likely to win. 

Chart courtesy Sean J. Taylor

The scatterplot above shows the relationship between a QB’s average air yards over a season and the points scored by his team over that season. There is no statistically significant relationship between the two measures. Contrast this with ANY/A, which correlates 0.55 with wins. Or DYAR & DVOA, whose parameters were specified in order to predict future wins.

Kacsmar has been careful to note that he isn’t an advocate of maximizing Air Yards; he thinks middle is best. He elaborates in his FO piece:

Generally, air yards are a stat where you don't want to rank at the bottom, because that is where many ineffective passers dwell, including Blaine Gabbert. That preference for short throws often extends to crucial downs, which is why these quarterbacks tend to do poorly in ALEX and attacking the sticks. However, it is not preferable to rank at the very top in air yards either, because that is how "screw it, I'm going deep" players such as Michael Vick, Tim Tebow, Vince Young and Rex Grossman have earned their reputation as inefficient passers.

His claim, if I have understood it correctly, is that quarterbacks at the tails of the distribution are less likely to be successful in future. Our scatterplot above doesn’t show any relationship between the middle of the distribution and success, measured by points scored. But could Kacsmar’s anecdotal observation that “middle is best” be a mere artifact of sampling? If successful quarterbacks have longer careers, the law of large numbers dictates that they will, by mere virtue of larger samples, be less prone to the extremes in Air Yards. Taking a separate dataset evaluating quarterback air yards between 1992 and 2012, and plotting those against passes thrown, one arrives at the following:

You can see that the more passes a given quarterback throws, the less variance he exhibits with respect to his peer cohort. This needs to be examined further, in my view. I admit that I am not familiar with the nuances surrounding various measures of air yards (various observers have different estimates), but a longer, broader dataset would be desirable to plot air yards versus attempts. We don’t want to fall prey to the famous Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation misstep where it was initially claimed that small schools are consistently among the best performing schools, when it was merely the case that small schools experience more variance than larger schools, and therefore disproportionately comprise the tails of the distribution.

Here is the plot of the fourth-grade math scores versus number of students in the school:

The prior two sections showed that Air Yards as a measure is neither statistically persistent nor predictive of success, in terms of points scored. I did mention some alternative, robust metrics, two of which are generated by Football Outsiders. As of Week 3, FO has not applied opponent adjustments to their measures. On a raw Value Over Average and Yards Above Replacement measure, these young QBs have performed in the top quartile over the first 3 games.

Looking merely in the rearview mirror, without making any judgments about the future, they appear to have performed well.

Another measure I have mentioned, Adjusted Net Yards / Attempt (the “adjustment” gives a bonus for touchdowns and a penalty for interceptions, and the “net” deducts sack yards) is a persistent, predictive measure. With a hat tip to the excellent Derek Sarley, I prefer to plot this against completion %, to show both efficiency and consistency of per-play execution (weeks 1-3, minimum 46 attempts):

Once again, the rookies have played impressively: Wentz and Prescott are in the top quartile (4th and 8th, respectively) in ANY/A and the 2nd quartile (13th and 10th, respectively) in completion %.

As Bill Barnwell has noted, the statistics from 3 games tell us very little about how a QB will play in the future. A very small sample size disadvantages a purely statistical analysis; the comparative advantage shifts towards the film analyst. Ideally, one would combine both, but in this case, the stats aren’t meaningfully more robust than mere anecdotes. This is why I disagree with Kacsmar’s adversarial Michael Lewis-style “stats versus scouts” framing; the NFL stats on these two rookies don’t really tell you anything dispositive yet. From a purely Bayesian perspective, the eye test is just as likely as a mere three weeks of quantitative data to meaningfully update one’s priors. I have not yet enjoyed the privilege of watching Prescott, but I’ve seen every Wentz throw; moreover, I’ve seen astute film analysts such as Greg Cosell, Fran Duffy, Jimmy Kempski and Ryan from ChipWagon break his film down. Lastly, as Brent from EaglesRewind notes, one’s priors should be heavily influenced by draft position, which was the NFL auction market’s initial “revealed preference” view of value.

As for me, I’m on the Wentz Wagon. Dan McQuade reasons persuasively that Eagles fans should enjoy this run, because life is fleeting. Memento mori, football fans.

TL;DR:

• The early results from the credible advanced statistics, meaning those that tend to be both persistent and predictive, are that Wentz and Prescott have played well in their first three games.
• Looking at the numbers alone, a three game stretch is insufficient to give us high confidence that such success will continue in future. 
• The Air Yards statistic is neither persistent nor predictive, and reflects the aesthetic tastes of one particular writer, rather than a desirable quarterback attribute.

Thanks to Sean J. Taylor for his methodological insight and scatterplot work. Any errors are mine alone.

@sunset_shazz is a Philadelphia Eagles fan who lives in Marin County, California. He previously wrote about Chip Kelly's Oregon bias and other topics, and contributed to the 2015 Eagles Almanac.

There Are No Shortcuts To The Super Bowl

Last March, Jeff Lurie told reporters he was was tired of waiting for the Eagles to be great. He’d seen sustained success, he’d been to a Super Bowl, and he’d watched his franchise post a solid 20-13 record (including a playoff loss) over the prior two seasons. It wasn’t enough.

“I’ve lived through a lot of division championships, a lot of playoff appearances, a lot of final four appearances, but our goal is we want to deliver a Super Bowl,” he said at the time. “And sometimes maybe I’m influenced by the notion of it’s very difficult to get from good to great, and you’ve got to take some serious looks at yourself when you want to try to make that step. It’s a gamble to go from good to great because you can go from good to mediocre with changes, but I decided it was important enough…”

On Wednesday, after firing Chip Kelly before the final game of the season, Lurie didn’t walk away from his words earlier in the year.

“I said, with Chip’s vision, it was an opportunity that he wanted to lead the way, to try to go from good to great,” he said. “In fact, I remember saying to all of you, there’s dangers in that, in terms of having two 10-6 seasons in a row, and when making significant changes, you can easily achieve mediocrity. I think it would be a shame not to try, but… that is the danger when you take a risk.”

I hope Lurie learned more than that, because his "strategy" was little more than a desperate hope. He handed over all power to Kelly, a moderately successful coach with zero experience running the intricacies of a NFL organization. 

The road to the Super Bowl is not paved with such gambles, with an outsider making a bunch of questionable bets that luckily pay off. You don’t win by cutting talent and building #culture. You don’t win with a rigid set of measurables that dictate player acquisition. You don’t win by ignoring critical positions and spending excessive guaranteed money on less important ones. You don’t win by overpaying for a subpar quarterback coming off two major knee injuries, or turning over half the roster in one offseason. That’s how you end up 7-9 in one of the worst divisions ever.

There are no shortcuts.

Remember Andy Reid’s binder? Reid came to Philadelphia with a detailed multi-year plan of how to build an organization. He arrived in 1999, overhauled the roster, brought in an impressive group of experienced coaches (including 6 eventual head coaches), drafted a quarterback in the first round, and went 5-11. In 2000 the team and young quarterback improved, overachieving to reach the playoffs. By 2001 they were one of the best teams in the conference. In 2002 and 2003 they missed the Super Bowl by inches. In 2004 they came minutes away from the trophy itself.

Lurie said he doesn’t want the middle steps, he just wants the Super Bowl, and he was willing to gamble to get there. But those middle steps are important. That’s how you build a champion—not overnight, but consistently, step by step.

The best teams in the NFL have the best talent. The best teams in the NFL have a top quarterback they drafted and groomed. The best teams in the NFL have smart, experienced coaches who adjust their schemes to the players they have. The best teams in the NFL have a front office structure that empowers multiple voices and balances scouting with analytics and financial understanding.

Going into 2016, the Eagles need to avoid the quick fix, or the allure of competing for the playoffs in year one of a new regime. That won't set the team up for long term success. (Plus, they'll likely be in the running anyway unless the putrid NFC East changes significantly in a year.)

The blueprint needs to be for a Super Bowl contender in 2018. Let's lay out what that looks like...

Front Office: Howie Roseman has a mixed reputation among fans and league sources, but he can succeed in the Joe Banner role. He has experience on the personnel side to pair with a firm grasp of the league's economics. Roseman does need to find a qualified general manager-type to run player personnel, someone less washed-up than Tom Donahoe, with more experience than Ed Marynowitz, who's not obvious idiot Ryan Grigson.

Coaching: A NFL team is a crazy thing to manage, and any head coach needs to be able to bring in the right people and command respect across the organization. He doesn't have to be a brilliant innovator on the cutting edge, but he does need to be flexible enough to adapt his schemes and techniques to get the most out of his players in each situation. The single most important skill set within that is the ability to find and develop a franchise quarterback, which is what makes a candidate like Adam Gase so attractive.

Quarterback: You cannot be a consistent Super Bowl contender until you have a quarterback. As such, you should exhaust every possible avenue to get one, especially the draft. I stand by my recipe for QB hunting laid out four years ago, on the eve of Andy Reid's firing:

Draft a quarterback early and late. Sign somebody in free agency. Trade for a promising backup. Rinse and repeat. You're never going to be able to compete for the Super Bowl until you find your one franchise guy. Might as well cycle through as many potentials as you can until you do. The financial cost of doing so is less than the opportunity cost of sitting pat with one player, [Bradford], who is statistically unlikely to ever become an elite quarterback.

In the Eagles' case, that means avoiding any multi-year guarantee to a still-unproven quantity like Sam Bradford, and perhaps letting him go entirely depending on the cost.

Roster Building: Outside of quarterback, which takes priority over everything else, the offensive line is next on the list of must-haves. Though I don't know many of the names, Jimmy Kempski's mock draft would thrill me based on the selection of two quarterbacks and three offensive linemen. Lane Johnson and Jason Kelce are the only long term building blocks you can count on there. Meanwhile, don't waste resources on the rest of the offensive skill positions, none of which will matter much until the offensive line and quarterback are fixed.

The Eagles defense needs more talent across the board, but it also likely needs a scheme that better takes advantage of the players in house. Kelly wanted a two-gapping 3-4 system, but it would be nice to see what Fletcher Cox and company could do in a one-gapping 4-3 instead.

Overall: Both the organization and its fans need patience. We were spoiled by Chip's quick turnaround, but where did that leave us? Let's plan for sustainability.

Read more: How The NFL Chewed Chip Kelly Up And Spit Him Back Out

Offense Taken

The following is a guest post by @sunset_shazz.

Earlier today, DN columnist David Murphy published a contrarian piece purporting to show that the Eagles have neglected the offensive side of the ball in the draft under Chip Kelly. His lazy “analysis” consisted of counting up Eagles draft picks for the offensive and defensive units over the past 3 years. Even the dullest of readers can see the problem: this method equates the pick of Lane Johnson with that of Jordan Poyer. Or Zach Ertz and David King.

When pressed upon this obvious flaw by friend of the blog Noah Becker, Murphy accused his interlocutor of poor reading comprehension:

The Eagles spent 2 1sts, 3 2nds, 1 3rd round pick, and a 4th round pick on offensive players since 2013. https://t.co/avOT0i8dSu

— Noah Becker (@Noah_Becker) November 17, 2015

@Noah_Becker but i'm not going to annotate the piece for you. if you legitimately can't see it, then, yes, you are a poor reader.

— David Murphy (@ByDavidMurphy) November 17, 2015

Well, Mr. Murphy, we at McNabb or Kolb are both literate and numerate. One can easily assign values to the Eagles draft picks to determine the actual allocation of draft resources to each unit. The canonical draft value chart was developed by Jimmy Johnson in the early 1990s. For many years, this provided a sufficient first order approximation of relevant draft value. However, in 2012, the excellent Chase Stuart conducted an exhaustive analysis which used the approximate value provided by a player in his first five years with a team to construct a draft value curve; like all good scientists, he published his results.

Using these values, we can compute the approximate draft value allocated to each unit by the Eagles in the Chip Kelly era:

As is shown above, over the past 3 years, the Eagles picked 6 players on offense, at an average draft position of 48th overall. Although they picked 15 players on defense, these averaged at a draft position of 152nd overall. Using Chase Stuart’s draft value weights, the Eagles allocated 58% of their draft value to the offense and 42% to the defense; a balanced allocation, reflecting the front office’s desire to build a balanced team. Murphy’s claim that the offense was neglected in the draft is simply untrue (unless you believe a 1st round pick is equal to a 7th rounder).

Moreover, during our research we also discovered the earth-shattering news that the NFL has a salary cap. In 2015, the Eagles allocated $69.4 million to the offense, the highest(!) number in the league. To argue that the Eagles have neglected the offense in their allocation of resources is either lazy or disingenuous. Or both.

The Eagles’ woes are more prosaic: rather than being inattentive to the offense, the front office suffered from poor execution. Allowing the offensive line to age while failing to build adequate depth, using three high picks on one position in two years, guaranteeing money to the insipid Riley Cooper, over-allocating salary to an aging running back who has carried more than 400 times the previous season, cutting their best receiver for #footballreasons without recompense, trading a draft pick for a speculative upgrade at QB – these are all legitimate criticisms of the front office strategy. But accusing Chip Kelly of neglecting to spend resources on the offense… the evidence doesn’t support that extraordinary claim.

It’s one thing to mail in a column. It’s quite another to insult your readers’ intelligence when your obvious shortcomings are pointed out. Eagles fans and Daily News readers aren’t as dumb as some writers make us out to be. 

@sunset_shazz is a Philadelphia Eagles fan who lives in Marin County, California. He previously wrote about Chip Kelly's Oregon bias and also contributed to the 2015 Eagles Almanac.

Coach Chip Strikes Back, Or Something

It's amazing what a win over Dallas will do for your spirits. The Eagles went into the bye week at 3-4, reeling from a loss to Carolina that wasn't particularly close. Post-bye, post-victory over a hated rival, and they're 4-4, with the wind at their back, a rejuvenated team.

All it took was a few fourth down tries, a revived running game, and a kicker that finally made a clutch field goal longer than 50 yards. Suddenly it's "the biggest win of the Chip Kelly era" (which is really saying something about the Chip Kelly era, unfortunately).

Sam Bradford is fixed. He's "continuing to flip the script on his legion of detractors". Apparently, the main issue was footwork, with QB coach Ryan Day noticing a problem three weeks back. "The results have been evident," writes the Inquirer.

Have they?

Via XKCD

The funny thing about the win on Sunday night is that on paper, not a lot looks different from the losses earlier in the season. If you're going to give the Eagles credit for any improvement, it has to be in the run game, where they've reeled off four straight games with more than 150 rushing yards. Kelly also seems to be mixing up the play calling a bit better. 

But Bradford suddenly proving he's the guy of the future? This team, suddenly a legit playoff contender? Seems like wishful thinking.

Take Bradford on Sunday. His stats were solid: 25 for 36, 69% completion rate, 295 yards, 8.2 yards per attempt, 1 TD, 0 INTs. But the funny thing about those numbers is how much they were influenced by one great overtime drive. In regulation, his stats weren't quite so good: 20 for 31, 65% completion rate, 239 yards, 7.7 yards per attempt, 0 TD, 0 INT. That's arguably worse than Matt Cassel, who completed a higher percentage of passes for more yards and 3 TDs (plus one bad INT).

The point is not that Bradford's game-winning drive has no value. But just remember that he was one Caleb Sturgis screw up or one heads-tails controversy from being the same just-good-enough-to-lose Bradford we've seen all season. If Jordan Hicks tears his pectoral muscle before grabbing that pick six, the Eagles don't make it to overtime and there is no "Sam Bradford has fixed it" narrative worth telling.

Nor, really, is there one for the Eagles, who had two weeks to prepare and narrowly avoided falling to a Cowboys team that lost 5 straight games coming in and had posted just 91 passing yards against Seattle a week earlier. This is a 4-4 team that has played a bunch of bad teams in a bad division. Luckily, they play more going forward: their next three opponents are a combined 7-17.

Maybe this group has finally turned a corner, and will cruise to 7-4 before heading to New England. I hope so. But don't be surprised if this turnaround is a mirage, and inconsistency dooms the Eagles to underperform down the stretch. That would simply be par for the course this season.

Can The Eagles Defense Carry The Offense?

Last week, I placed the blame for the Eagles' 0-2 start squarely at the feet of the offense. Despite this week's win over the Jets (yay!), Chip Kelly's favorite unit continued to perform woefully.

Yes, Ryan Mathews, subbing in for DeMarco Murray, rushed for 108 yards on 25 carries. But his numbers hide the fact that there were still far too many negative or no gain rushes (10 total). Between Mathews and Darren Sproles, the rushing game averaged just 3.47 yards per carry, a heady improvement from the prior weeks, but nothing to get excited about. Everyone on the offensive line, including Kelce, Peters, and Johnson, are struggling to run block consistently.

Meanwhile, despite being sacked just once, Sam Bradford played another horrible game. His final numbers were 14 for 28 (50% completion rate) for just 118 yards. One touchdown and zero turnovers, if you want to focus on that. But his accuracy was poor, his ball placement terrible, and he has zero guts to throw the ball downfield, one of the only things that might give the running game enough room to breathe. See more at ChipWagon, as always.

All of which leads to...

The #Eagles offense is regressing. 2013: 6.3 yards per play 2014: 5.6 yards per play 2015: 4.5 yards per play

— Phil Bicking (@p_Red) September 28, 2015

Really bad. So the question is, until the time the offense recovers (assuming that's in the cards?), can the Eagles defense carry the team? And on that front, at least, there are some promising signs. To the stats!

Through three games, the Eagles have given up the 5th-fewest points per drive (1.42), the 9th-fewest yards per drive (26.9) and the 10th-fewest plays per drive (5.6). The run defense has been fantastic—allowing a league-low of 3.1 yards per rush and zero rushing touchdowns. Most important, they've forced turnovers on one out of every five opposing possessions. To keep it going, we'll need more Walter Thurmond ball-hawking and disruption at the line of scrimmage (Brandon Bair sighting FTW).

The worrisome note is that the Eagles haven't gotten consistent pressure on quarterbacks. The defense ranks 8th-worst in sack rate so far. Overall, this isn't terribly surprising. The two-gapping scheme means players like Fletcher Cox are responsible for the run first, then the pass second. Neither Connor Barwin nor Brandon Graham are consistent man-beaters on the outside. And now the top two middle linebackers are hurt. Billy Davis needs to mix in some good blitz concepts to get pressure if this defense is going to sustain itself.

Three games is also quite a small sample size, especially when about half of that time the Eagles faced Brandon Weeden and Ryan Fitzpatrick. Luckily, due to a combination of easy schedule and injuries, the Eagles aren't scheduled to face many top quarterbacks down the stretch. The next three games match up against Kirk Cousins, Luke McCown, and Eli Manning, with Cam Newton as the pre-bye week chaser.

Still, that we're having this conversation at all is a good sign. The defense was atrocious two years ago, and improved to average or slightly above last year. If it can take another leap, that's a huge deal for this team—especially if the offense can't turn it around.