The Path Forward

The Eagles lost to the Redskins last Sunday, setting up an easy narrative about Robert Griffin III and the future. The Eagles need to find their RGIII, and they need to do it fast. But finding that one can't-miss prospect is exceedingly difficult. A preliminary look at the 2013 draft class says that none of the quarterbacks are at the level of a Griffin or an Andrew Luck. Geno Smith seems likely to be the first one drafted, but he may go before the Eagles get a chance at him.

After that, what other options will the Eagles have? Certainly there will be other prospects worth considering. Lesser talents perhaps, but if you get the right one... Aaron Rodgers was drafted later in the first round, Drew Brees in the early second. It's possible that the Eagles could succeed going down this route.

But the key lies not in trying to replicate the Redskins' success at betting it all on one quarterback. It worked spectacularly with a player like RGIII, but that's no guarantee. Plenty of teams have tried that model recently and failed, because they wish-casted success upon a young quarterback who never blossomed into a true franchise guy. Look at the Jets, who saddled Mark Sanchez with a long term deal before he actually proved he could be a good quarterback. Making a move like that can set your team back years.

No, the path I would really like the Eagles start down next year isn't the Redskins model (although absolutely draft Smith if you can). It's the Seahawks you want to look at. In 2011, Pete Carroll didn't have a quarterback he could trust. Tarvaris Jackson was the starter, and he posted the 25th-best DVOA in the league. Carroll went out and signed Matt Flynn, the Green Bay backup, to a 3-year, $20 million contract. If he had handed the job to Flynn, that would have been a mistake. But Carroll then grabbed Russell Wilson in the third round and put the two quarterbacks into open competition.

Obviously, things have worked out splendidly. Wilson won the job, and has improved into one of the better quarterbacks in the league (4th in DVOA). But it was the overall strategy that should be credited and emulated. Carroll didn't go all in on Flynn or Wilson. He made smaller bets on each and let them play it out on the field.

Some people in the Eagles community want the team to jump in with Nick Foles next year. That's crazy. The rookie has shown some fleeting promise and ability, but nothing that tells me he's a sure bet in 2013 or beyond. The way forward isn't to jettison him for someone else, necessarily, but it's about hedging your bets by signing and drafting as many promising quarterbacks as you can get your hands on.

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, Foles, who is statistically unlikely to ever become an elite quarterback.

The worst thing that can happen, going forward, is that you don't bring in competition for Foles and he falls apart. Then you've set yourself a year or more behind in the rebuilding process. Bringing in more quarterbacks only increases the odds of success that one of them -- even Foles -- will turn out well. And heaven forbid that the Eagles might end up with multiple valuable quarterbacks. What a horrible outcome that would be.

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Putting Nick Foles' Play in Context

Last week, Greg Cosell of NFL Films told Tim McManus that film study showed how Nick Foles was making progress week by week:

“I think there has been a little bit of progression,” said Cosell. “Early on, like a lot of young quarterbacks, he was a primary read guy. He was making predetermined throws, what I like to call, ‘I am going to throw that ball out of the huddle’ where the defense almost becomes irrelevant. I thought this week [against Dallas] Foles had much better pocket command and was much more decisive with his reads and throws and I think the game plan helped.”

With Foles' leading a come-from-behind victory Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, that trend seems to be continuing. While I may have been annoyed that the Eagles won the game, squandering a chance to get a better draft pick, Foles' play has been a bright spot. He hasn't looked perfect -- far from it. But he's looked like a quarterback that belongs in the NFL, an improvement from his first game or two. On Sunday he drove the Eagles down for a touchdown to win the game on the final play, a play he called. (More important: he proved that even as one of the slowest football players of all time, by my estimate, he can scramble for a TD.) That's a major boost.

Still, let's step back and put his season so far in context. Here's how he's doing against his peers:

Foles' first handful of games have been a mixed bag compared to his fellow rookies. He has completed about the same percentage of passes, but at a yard lower rate. He has thrown fewer interceptions, but also has fewer touchdown passes. Steady but not explosive jives with what we can see on the field. He hasn't looked like Luck or RGIII.

I did isolate just the performance over the last two weeks, though, to capture Foles' improvement. It's obviously a small sample size, but that line looks much more promising. His touchdown percentage is up, as is his yards per attempt -- without sacrificing completion percentage. The goose egg in the interception column is misleading; defenders have dropped at least two easy picks. Still, there's a clear uptick in performance that puts him in line with or slightly better than other rookies.

If Foles can keep this up for the remainder of the season, it will be a strong case for giving him a shot at the full job in 2013.

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Let's Cool The Nick Foles Talk For Now

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:

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Photo from Getty.​

Kudos to Dan Snyder

There was a lot more hand-wringing and bad-mouthing than I expected regarding Washington’s big trade to jump up to the second pick in the draft. And yes, absolutely the cost for Robert Griffin III was high. The risk may be even higher. But even so, the Redskins front office deserves high marks for executing this dramatic move.

One of the paramount truths of today’s NFL is that your franchise is irrelevant unless it has an elite quarterback. I don’t mean that you absolutely can’t win. Teams can go far in the playoffs or even win a Super Bowl with some luck, timing, and roster dominance in other areas (See: 2011 Broncos, 2000 Ravens). I mean that you are unable to sustain or count on success.

Teams that don’t have a franchise QB grasp at straws year after year. They do what the Redskins have done. They throw second-tier, underprepared youngsters into the role and hope they succeed. They cycle through overpriced veterans past their prime and flawed journeyman. It’s the most pathetic of struggles, as the front office just tries to keep their team above water.

Since Dan Snyder bought that team in 1999, they have had seven different single-season passing leaders. It’s been a murderer’s row of Brad Johnson, Tony Banks, Patrick Ramsey, Mark Brunell, Jason Campbell, old Donovan McNabb, and Rex Grossman. Yuck.

Andy Reid is not a perfect coach, but he understands this better than anyone. He didn’t hesitate to draft Donovan McNabb, and reared him into a top quarterback. When Reid saw the end of McNabb’s career, he snared Kevin Kolb to carry the torch. And now he’s settled on Michael Vick for at least the next couple of years. All three of those quarterbacks, even Kolb, would have been upgrades over the slop the Redskins have tolerated over the last decade. Reid never would have let himself go that long without a real franchise quarterback.

Regardless of how it turns out, the Redskins should be applauded for finally grasping that half measures aren’t enough. Another couples of years stumbling along with more free agent castoffs or another mediocre prospect would have gotten that front office fired anyway. At some point, you might as well try something that could actually work.

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RG3 to Philly? It's Pretty Crazy

Heisman-winning quarterback and draft analyst man-crush Robert Griffin III met with the Eagles at the NFL Combine late last week, sparking a mini-resurgence of speculation (read: hope) that by some twist of fate RG3 could be coming to Philadelphia.

Jimmy Kempsi wrote, “it wouldn’t be a complete shock to see the Eagles make some sort of blockbuster trade to move up to 2 to get him.” He goes on to make some good points: Michael Vick will turn 32 before the season starts, his contract isn’t really for the full six years, and the cost of paying a first round quarterback isn’t prohibitive any more. Despite those reasons, there are still major barriers to bringing Griffin to the Eagles.

Let’s start with the fact that the Eagles are completely outgunned in trade negotiations. All indications are that the Rams are looking to sell out of the second overall selection. Do you know what it would take for the Eagles to even get into the conversation for that pick? According to the draft value chart, giving up the Eagles 2012 1st, two 2nd, 3rd, and 2013 1st round picks still leaves the team coming up slightly short.

For comparison, let’s take two of the teams cited most often in trade rumors: the Browns and the Redskins. Cleveland has the 4th and 22nd overall picks. Just those two selections are already worth more than the massive Eagles bounty described above. Former Eagles GM Tom Heckert definitely has the inside track on Griffin. Washington, meanwhile, could match Philly’s offer with just their 1st and 2nd round picks this year and 1st rounder next year.

You can draw comparisons with Vick today and Donovan McNabb in 2007, the year the Eagles drafted Kevin Kolb, but the cost is so much more prohibitive for Griffin. Using an early second round pick when you already have a starting quarterback is questionable, forfeiting almost your entire draft is prohibitive.

And that brings up the second major reason to shoot down any Griffin ideas: the opportunity cost is far too high. Giving up that many high picks would mean ignoring needs at a bunch of positions, including linebacker, defensive line, cornerback, and wide receiver. Given the general lack of young talent, especially on defense, the Eagles cannot afford to waste the opportunity to finally get a good, full draft.

Drafting Griffin, despite these concerns, would be writing the next year or two off. The Eagles front office would be admitting to the fans and — more importantly — a veteran group of players that they can’t win in 2012. They would be telling Michael Vick, who everyone hopes will work to improve himself this offseason, that he’s not really their franchise player. That could be a disaster.

What it comes down to is that the timing is off. Tommy Lawlor called the situation “awkward,” but it’s more than that. 2012 is shaping up to be a make-or-break year for more than just Andy Reid. Vick needs to get back to his 2010 form. DeSean Jackson, if he even accepts the franchise tag, could be gone after 2012. Veterans like Cullen Jenkins, Nnamdi Asomugha, Jason Babin, and Trent Cole may only have a year or two of high-level play left, and poor drafting has left the cupboard bare behind them.

Next year should answer a lot of questions about this team and the way it’s constructed. The Eagles could rebound and make a playoff run, in which case you will want a strong crop of young players in place to fill in the holes and keep up the momentum. Alternatively, if the Eagles flop there will be a NovaCare house cleaning like we haven’t seen since 1999. In that case, the team will be in a natural position to draft a new franchise quarterback and rebuild around him going forward.

Watching RG3 highlights is intoxicating, and I would love it if he ended up with the Eagles. But it’s not going to happen. Let’s just make that clear.

Photo from Getty.