Earl Wolff vs Florida State
Posted: May 2nd, 2013 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 30 Comments »I decided to pop in the NC State/FSU game to check out Earl Wolff. He didn’t have a bunch of tackles in the game and FSU had a very good run game so I was curious what was going on. Plus. FSU has some serious athletes on offense.
Overall, he played well. He’s far from perfect, but you can see why the Eagles liked him. Some observations/notes:
* Wolff was credited with 6 tackles (2 solo).
* Plays boundary Safety. This means that he lines up on the short side of the field. In college, offenses/defenses have to make strategic decisions based on the width of the field. Defenses want 6 players to the wide side. Offense like to attack the short side since there are fewer players and more chances for big plays. The rule of thumb is to put the best tacklers and most physical players on the boundary side.
* Generally lines up 10 yards off the ball.
* In this game, Wolff was aggressive. There were a handful of plays where his assignment was to drop deep, but mostly his first step was going forward.
* He tackled well. I saw one missed tackle. RB Chris Thompson made an amazing play by the sideline to break free from a defender and then got by Wolff as well.
* My favorite play came in a 3rd/short situation. Wolff lined up close to the LOS. The play went to his left. He went over and put his shoulder into the RG. That clogged the hole and someone else got the RB from behind to force a punt. Eagles Safeties haven’t been real keen on engaging OL in recent years.
* Wolff did give up a short TD. He bought the play fake and took one false step. The TE/H-back got behind him and got the pass for a TD. Wolff was just a bit out of position, but his aggression got the best of him there.
* I still don’t have a good feel for his coverage skills. He wasn’t in man coverage hardly at all. There weren’t many good shots that showed him covering deep.
* Wolff didn’t have a chance for many plays. FSU ran to the wide side quite a bit.
* I thought Wolff generally took good angles. There were 2 runs by Thompson where he was a bit out of position, but I have to stress that this is due to Thompson’s explosive speed. Watching this game reminded me just how much I loved Thompson. If 100 percent healthy, he’d have been my #1 RB. Wolff adjusted to his speed and was better on other plays.
* Wolff didn’t have to deal with much in the way of trash or blockers. He got tangled up with a WR on one edge run.
* I love Wolff’s wrap-up tackling.
* No big hits, but he did come up very aggressively vs a WR and was going to pop him good, but the guy ducked. Too bad. Would have been nice to see what kind of hit that was going to be.
* Wolff is just a good, solid player. There is nothing compelling about him (size, playmaking, game speed, etc.). I think that is why he fell down to the 5th round. I think he has the potential to be a starter in the NFL. At the least, he should be a good backup and STer.
I’ve got a few more games to watch. Hopefully I’ll get a better feel for his cover skills and his ability to diagnose plays.
_
And he has the second best Eagle safety name behind Dawkins!
As I was reading this I couldn’t help but picture Kurt Coleman in an Ohio State uniform. How would you compare Wolff to Coleman? I remember you were high on Coleman prior to his draft.
Many people forget that we moved up to get Coleman in that draft and I’d say that pick worked out pretty well (getting a solid backup in the seventh round is good value).
Would you call Wolff a more athletic version of Coleman or are they more different than that?
Coleman was 192 coming out of OSU. Wolff is 17 pounds heavier. He’s also faster and more explosive.
Kurt was a polished player. He just lacked size/ideal speed. Wolff was less of a playmaker, but has an NFL body.
Always said put Kurt Coleman in Nate Allen’s body and you got the perfect all round
/edit Coming out it would most likely resemble Jonathan Cyrprien coming out this year.
Love Kurts’ heart…….. but physically he is so limited. Oh, and the Dawk intro he does coming into the Linc bugs me……. be your own person. For sure
Me too man, I loved how Kurt played for such a late round pick. Part of me knows he’d be a great backup safety, and we could do a lot worse for depth, but the other part of me wants to see him gone because of how much he reminds me of the worst plays over the past few years.
Yup, I agree. I don’t count on Phillips for anything, but with our safety depth, and Colt Anderson/ST demon, I don’t know how Coleman sticks.
I think he’ll be around til’ the end; maybe out during final cut downs…. if (when?) Phillips gets hurt, I’d bring him back for depth. But then again, we should have a rookie also……… so….
There will clearly be a lot of interesting roster battles this year but I’m excited to see how the safety position plays out. It’s one spot where nothing really seems set in stone. I wonder if they plan on keeping Anderson who in a way has proven to be the best at his job, (barring Phillips injury), even though it’s on special teams. Also, what colt does is something that it seems can’t really be measured during camp since coverage is never really full go. So in a camp where competition is stressed it will be interesting to see how they view him. If they keep him I wonder who the odd man out will be. It would seem to be Coleman at a glance but who knows. Will be fun to watch.
Unfortunately I think Coleman only makes this roster if Phillips blows out his knee in camp or Nate Allen just completely stinks up the joint.
He’ll end up as a back-up with the 9ers….at Nnamdi’s request….poor fools think they are getting that guy from Oakland.
Maybe Nnamdi never got used to East coast time? He was always a few hours behind everyone else, so maybe moving back West will put him into the right mind frame……… then again, probably not.
That must be it.
How would you compare him to CJ Gaddis? I was a naive man 6 years ago and I had high hopes for CJ Gaddis. The similarities between those two are eerily similar.
Earl Wolff:
5’11
209 lbs
4.44- 40
39″ vertical
CJ Gaddis:
5’11
203 lbs
4.43- 40
39.5″ vertical
Both drafted in the 5th round….AND they went to the same high school!
Gaddis came out of school early. Wasn’t as experienced or polished. Didn’t last in the NFL due to lack of maturity/brains/discipline/etc. Wolff should score pretty high in those areas.
Gaddis was very talented, but only played a couple of years. Finished his career with 57 solo tackles. Wolff had 211 solo tackles in his career. That stat should illustrate how different these guys were.
You did a late post anyway. You are a beast Tommy…
I watched the game anyway…might as well post some notes.
Watched BYU vs. Utah st last night…I gets he impression that when the offense is backed up to its goal line, Kruger taste a safety, flips the switch and unleashes his inner madman….it’s like the 3rd time I notice create Havoc when a QB is backed up into his own endzone
The Eagles are looking for some pass rushing depth.
http://eaglesblog.net/2013/05/eagles-looking-at-a-lb/
“Eagles Safeties haven’t been real keen on engaging OL in recent years.”
Those days watching Dawk taking on pulling OGs are long gone.
Dawk? Heck, I’d be glad to see Quintin Mikell walk through that novacare door….lol
how much better of a prospect was Dawkins when he came out of Clemson. I was young…please don’t read this as me expecting the Wolff to Morph into the Wolvorine…Dawkins is the Barometer for which safeties are measured in this city…Wolff scores very high athletically…was Dawk even better, physically coming out?…what role did the alcohol problems play on Dawks draft stock
. Was it something he already overcame in college…or did he overcome it as a rookie?
Dawkins was a talented but at the time undersized safety (he was under 200 pounds coming out). The drinking problem began after his rookie year and didnt have anything to do with his draft stock. Also it wasnt until his 3rd year when he was teamed up with Jim Johnson he became the safety we know and love, before that he was a special teamer and none spectacular safety.
thanks man….
I wish we could get updates on B-fletch and Phillips….It’s worrisome to get such a talented 1st rounder like Phillips for chump change…I think Fletch and Phillips are the keys to our 2013 defense…anyone hear anything about how those two were moving around during mini camp?
Shocked that no eagles were traded during the draft…are we just going to cut guys, or is there any chance we get some 2014 value for someone we were going to discard anyway?
I’ve been watching some of the http://www.fishduck.com videos today. An interesting one below. Jason Kelce, with his speed, looks very capable of helping us run the ‘most important play’ he talks about in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9_x9JAzb2E&list=UUZG5WxnkptyNJTNIOJuK0Zw&index=1
If Kelce is back in form, cant wait to see us pull him. Also the whole OL is athletic enough that all of them are good pullers so I expect to see quite alot of that.
Also watching those zone reads, you cant stop thinking that Vick would be scary doing that with McCoy or Brown in the back field and Jackson or Maclin there as potential end arounds or part of that straddled triple option.
I have to admit that the thought of what Shady,Bryce n Vick could be in the run game is very exciting…but Can Vick know 3 variations of every play, read the LB(defense) at the line, audible into the right play, make the right read, hurry back to the Line, and do it over and over again while avoiding the DUMb Vick mistakes that shoot us in the foot and kill the drive?….Can he Ignore the allure of the big play when he see’s Desean has a step on the CB going deep, and take the less glamorous defined throw, that Chip will create for him?…..
….
I will say, that the last time Vick was really fighting for his NFL life, was in 2010, and he sure responded well to it. I wasnt blown away by all the yards, TD’s and spectaculr things that he did that year…I was blown away by how he took care of the ball. If he can get back to that, then he is an exciting option….But I cant watch our Veteran QB, continuosly look like Joe Webb in the playoffs…He is fighting for his NFL life AGAIN, lets hope he responds..
If Vicks “read” responsibility is one linebacker, after the snap, that seems like it woulkd simplify things quite a bit for him
Great write up Tommy. Have you watched him against GT? I think it would be interesting to know how he was used against a team that ran the ball almost exclusively.
Did they put him in the box or keep him back for the occasional bomb?