In Other Cornerback News...

On Wednesday, I took a look at Brandon Boykin's production. For a rookie slot corner, he did rather well. I wish I could say the same about the rest of the Eagles cornerbacks. Overall, it was a rather disappointing bunch.

As everyone surely remembers, last offseason the Eagles traded away Asante Samuel for a seventh-round draft pick. It was a stunningly low value return for a player who is currently fourth in career interceptions among all active players. Still, there was optimism. Trading Samuel allowed Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie to play his natural position outside rather than in the slot. Nnamdi Asomugha, it was thought, would benefit from Todd Bowles' better schemes.

It didn't quite work out that way. Check out the numbers below, with ranks based on the 118 NFL cornerbacks who have played at least 25% of their defense's coverage snaps:

I used the same metrics to evaluate Boykin's slot performance. First you have target percentage, which measures how often quarterbacks looked your way. All three starters did better than average in this marker, Asomugha especially. The former Oakland Raider has always deterred passes in his direction, and this year was no exception, ranking fourth among those 118 cornerbacks. As we will get to in a moment, Asomugha's stats weren't as good when quarterbacks actually threw the ball at him. That makes for a curious question. Is he still benefitting from reputation? Or does his press-coverage style just discourage lots of short, quick passes to his receiver?

The second metric is completion percentage. Both Rodgers-Cromartie and Boykin were quite solid. Although he was flagged for a number of poor pass interference calls, DRC's last-second make-up speed allows him to get his hands on the ball at the last second and break up catches. Asomugha, on the flipside, didn't look so good. Quarterbacks completed nearly 65% of passes toward his man.

Finally we have yards per catch. Everybody here did poorly, with Asomugha at the very bottom. If you want, you can give some benefit of the doubt here. The Eagles had poor safety play all year. Where the corners should have had help over the top or a timely tackle, often turned into a major error that allowed significant yards after the catch. Still, it's not a positive marker.

Note that I haven't mention the other two cornerbacks I listed, Curtis Marsh and Brandon Hughes. Neither has good numbers, although they only had 78 coverage snaps combined, so it's hard to draw any conclusions.

Overall, I think you have to lean toward letting Asomugha go. He's clearly a liability in coverage, and that will only worsen as he slows down and teams realize how bad he has become. Boykin certainly looks like a keeper with upside. And DRC has potential but not always the best results. I've advocated re-signing him in the past, and I still think that would be a good idea. Hopefully the next coach can get more out of him. The final takeaway is that the team needs better safeties. Mistakes are really magnified when you can't count on a last-resort option to clean up the mess.

Photo from Getty.

Quick Hit Thoughts On The Bryce Brown Show

Bryce Brown is kind of a beast. 19 rushes for 178 yards and 2 touchdowns? That's impressive. Fumbles aside, he looks like a real keeper. At a ripped 225 lbs and having run a 4.37 forty yard dash at his pro day, Brown is an amazing athlete who looked the part of a stud NFL back when he got the chance to carry the load. This is why you draft players with upside in the later rounds, not limited effort guys like Kurt Coleman and Brian Rolle.

Speaking of Kurt Coleman, he was involved in at least one of two horrific coverage breakdowns that gifted Carolina touchdowns. Jon Gruden was in shock up in the booth as the Panthers waltzed into the endzone untouched. Here's what Dan Jeremiah, former scout with the Eagles from 2010-2012 said on Twitter:

Kurt Coleman is a good 4th safety. He should be covering kicks and playing in emergency situations. He's not starter quality.

What happened to Todd Bowles? Even with players like Coleman, this defense shouldn't have gotten worse after the firing of Juan Castillo, right?

Nick Foles is probably not the guy. Everyone hoped that the Eagles had lucked into their future starter when Foles lit up the preseason. But he's been exposed right now as a guy that doesn't look at all ready to play in the NFL. (Anyone know where Mike Kafka is?) Foles was lucky he didn't get picked off two or three times during that game. And even when he completed passes, he nearly got his receivers killed by leading them into nasty hits.

Vinny Curry: He's alive!

Alex Henery is a stud? With three more field goals on Monday night, Henery has hit 19 in a row, breaking the franchise record he previously held with David Akers. Of course, he still hasn't attempted a kick longer than 49 yards this year.

Oh, and the Eagles lost. That puts them in line for the fifth overall pick. Somebody put on some limbo music. How low can you go?

Photo from Getty

Unpredictable, But Still Revealing

Sheil Kapadia:

Remember the whole “We’re not going to be predictable” storyline that got repeated after Juan Castillo was fired? Well, Bowles lived up to it here. I’d say blitzing Asomugha, your $60M corner, on third-and-long qualifies.

Another great All-22 breakdown from Sheil. Blitzing Nnamdi certainly isn't predictable -- although it also doesn't seem to have worked very well. And any time you're willingly taking your top corner and putting him on the line of scrimmage, well, he's probably not your top corner any more.

It's All Downhill From Here

As Eagles fans, we've been lucky over the last decade to witness such consistent success. Other than 2005, we've avoided watching a team just spiral out of control. Unfortunately, that's all changing now.

In hindsight, this was completely foreseeable. Andy Reid deserved to be fired after the 2011 season. His decision to go with Juan Castillo was indefensible (morbid humor), and the personnel holes were inexcusable. Lurie kept Reid around, though. That alone was probably a bad move, but he compounded his mistake at the same time by issuing an ultimatum for improvement. 8-8 wasn't going to be tolerated this season, and while we can debate the specifics, some combination of winning the NFC East or a playoff game is probably the bar Reid has to beat.

For many observers, myself included, that kind of ultimatum was comforting at the time. Lurie wasn't issuing a blank check to Reid. He was setting a standard and giving him one last chance. The problem that I didn't consider (and Lurie probably didn't either), is what happens if Andy can't reach that bar? What happens if he realizes, say, six games into the season, that his job is about to go down in flames?

Maybe he would fire his defensive coordinator, the right move but too late. Maybe he would start seriously considering starting a rookie quarterback to give the Eagles "a spark." And that might cause his starter and team leader to give up, even though he was far from the team's biggest problem. Maybe the rest of the team would smell the desperation and respond in kind. Change becomes a reason to trash people anonymously, and adversity becomes a reason to give up.

As a generic football team, you wouldn't count them out at 3-4. Not yet. But all indications are that this team has entered a death spiral. Morale is at an all time low, and desperation is peaking. The bye magic is gone. The coordinator change didn't work. The lame duck head coach will try anything. The offseason roster purge looms. They'v e even lost Dave Spadaro.

It's the end times.

Photo from Getty.

Are The Falcons A Scary Opponent?

At 6-0, Atlanta is the only undefeated team left in the NFL. At least on the scoreboard, that's perfection. The Eagles, with their 3-3 record and series of close games, are far from perfection. So should we just chalk Sunday's game up as a loss and move on?

I wouldn't. For an undefeated squad, the Falcons look relatively unimpressive. Not bad, for sure, but nothing special. Football Outsiders ranks Atlanta 8th in overall DVOA., with the 10th-best offense and 11th-best defense. Why the difference between performance and record? Look no further than the teams they've beaten:

Kansas City (1-5)
Denver (3-3)
San Diego (3-3)
Carolina (1-5)
Washington (3-4)
Oakland (2-4)

Not a single team above .500. It's been the 29th-most difficult schedule by DVOA in the league. You go through the numbers and nothing really stands out as being special about this squad, other than their ability to avoid turnovers. The passing game looks dangerous with Roddy White and Julio Jones, but it ranks below both the Giants and Steelers. Run game isn't going to frighten anyone. On defense, the pass coverage looks solid (Vick: beware Asante Samuel), but they are suspect against the run.

Plus, I have a reasonable amount of confidence in Andy Reid after the bye. I know there are other factors at play, but his record with two weeks to prepare is untouchable. He's won every game after the bye for 13 years, plus all three division playoff games where he also had the extra week. That's a full season of undefeated post-bye play. Tough to ignore.

On top of that Reid preparation time, the Eagles also have the addition-by-subtraction in the defensive coaching ranks. Todd Bowles has pledged to be less predictable in his play calls than Juan Castillo. I like the sound of that coming out of a bye. Matt Ryan is going to have a tough time preparing for coverages he can only guess are coming at him.

All in all, I'm surprisingly optimistic about the inconsistent Eagles potential to upset the Falcons.

Photo from Getty.

Too Little, Too Late?

Reuben Frank:

According to a source, Andy called Juan into his office this morning and dismissed him. Juan will no longer be with the team in any capacity

More to come on this, obviously.

Bowles Was Supposed To Be The Smart One

The offense deserves the brunt of criticism after this loss (and there will be more to come on that front), but I wanted to take a moment to recognize the greatest error in over-thinking and outsmarting yourself we have seen since Juan Castillo was named defensive coordinator. Take it away, Tim McManus:

“We came into the week, I was going to shadow [Larry Fitzgerald],” said Asomugha. “We kind of had an idea, I think Coach [Todd] Bowles had an idea that that’s what they were figuring, so they were going to move him and put him in all sorts of different places. So we said let’s just let’s just stay on our sides and make sure that Boykin is at the nickel, keep Dominique on the outside. That was our plan, and they were able to do some things to take advantage of it."

So, the only logical thing was to play Fitzgerald man-to-man with one or both of your top-flight corners. Instead, because that's what the Cardinals would expect, you do the exact opposite? This is the point where we note that Fitzgerald had 7 receptions for 105 yards and a TD in the first half, before the Eagles switched back to man coverage and he caught only 2 passes for 9 yards the rest of the way.

Please file this report under: "Why you lose football games."

Safeties Stepping Up

Mike Tanier, over at his new home Sports on Earth, has a quick look at one Eagles defensive change at halftime designed to inhibit the Ravens' tight end-centered attack. Interestingly, Juan Castillo apparently didn't order the change, but rather it was the defensive backs acting on their own (or perhaps under the authority of shadow-coordinator Todd Bowles). Check it out.