Sports Science Talk
Posted: June 13th, 2014 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 91 Comments »I mentioned Sports Science in a recent post and that created a lengthy discussion in the comments section. This is a bit of a mystery topic since the Eagles are very guarded with the information they share, but we do know a few things.
All 32 teams do strength and conditioning. All 32 talk about nutrition and the ways to improve your body. The point of Sports Science is that Chip Kelly takes it to the next level. He literally has tried to make it into a science.
Eagles players are tested and monitored more than most teams, if not all teams. Remember that Kelly is Mr. Why. He loves to know why things happen, why things work a certain way. You can’t deal with those questions if you don’t have specific answers. Kelly has studied the way his players react to various activities and situations. This is not anecdotal research.
Kelly wants to know how to train his players in the offseason. How should they weight-train? What is the best way to practice in the spring and summer? His thoughts on nutrition and rest may differ during the season or that could be areas where he believes you should do the same thing year round.
During the season, the Eagles have a different weekly set-up than the other 31 teams. They get Monday off and practice Tuesday. They also have a “run-through” on Saturday, when most teams do an extremely casual walk-through. Kelly knows when and how to push muscles, but also how to let them recover for the best results. That is hugely important for players being able to stay fresh during the grind of a long season.
Kelly’s ideas also apply to the players the Eagles acquire. Go to the Combine or Senior Bowl and you’ll see Eagles personnel walking around and measuring the wrists and ankles of prospects. The Eagles are trying to study the frame of the individual players. A 255-pound LB should have wrists of a certain size. If not, maybe he’s carrying too much weight. Or maybe he’s simply maximized how much he will grow. The Eagles gather a tremendous amount of data on players and then use that to help them identify the players they want.
Bennie Logan seemed small for a NT at 6-2, 309. The Eagles studied his frame and felt he could bulk up to 320 pounds, but retain his athleticism. Any player can add weight (except Todd Pinkston, of course), but you want the right kind of weight. It needs to help the player and not slow him down in a noticeable way.
The Sports Science program gives the Eagles an advantage. How much of one is yet to be determined. First, we don’t know a lot about the long term effects. This is the first time these specific ideas have been applied to the NFL that I know of. In 3 or 4 years, the Eagles will have more data to study and they will adjust what they do for maximum results.
This doesn’t mean that the Eagles are going to have the biggest, strongest or fastest players simply due to Sports Science. I wish it worked like that. This is about the Eagles ability to maximize the health, strength and conditioning of the players they do have. Jordan Matthews will never be as fast as DeSean Jackson. That’s okay. The Eagles need Matthews to be the fastest version of Matthews possible. They want to get the most out of him. By having players get into the right shape, the player should have an increased chance to succeed in the NFL. Some players need more weight. Some less. Some need to be stronger. Others might need increased flexibility. Players need to adjust their bodies to their particular position and the skill set it requires.
I do think Sports Science is going to help players extend their careers. This is just an opinion for now. We need time so we can see some results and study what happened. Sports Science gets players to really take care of their bodies. Obviously that is a good thing. But beyond just being in good shape, the emphasis on recovery should help players for the long haul. This has the players pushing their bodies, but in a smart, healthy way.
One of the things people focus on in regard to Sports Science is how healthy the Eagles were last year.
The result was a veteran group that admitted to getting stronger as the year went on and an avoidance of significant injury during the meat-grinder that is an NFL season.
According to The Dallas Morning News, Eagles players projected as starters missed only 29 games last season, 16 by wide receiver Jeremy Maclin. That was the fourth-lowest total in the NFL in 2013. Only the Jets (20), Chiefs (22) and Redskins (22) had fewer injuries.
Sports science won’t prevent a broken leg or broken arm. In theory, what the Eagles are doing behind the scenes in terms of nutrition, recovery and the other aspects of sports science coordinator Shaun Huls’ strategy that aren’t readily known to the public, are helping the players avoid missing time due to minor ailments such as muscle strains, soft tissue injuries, etc.
“It’s hard to quantify that,” center Jason Kelce said. “There’s definitely a certain amount of luck that goes into it but the team in general puts a lot of emphasis on recovery, rest and making sure that you’re taking care of your body. I’d say that the sports science really played an important impact on [our health] last year.”
Last season, the Eagles led the league with 14 players who started every game.
We need more data to know how much of staying healthy was luck and how much was Sports Science. I have no doubt that there was a mixture of both. Sports Science can’t eliminate ACL tears or broken arms. That stuff is just going to happen. Sports Science takes out the nagging injuries that are more associated with muscles and things of that nature.
One is an event. Two is a trend. Three is a fact. If the Eagles continue to be among the healthiest teams in the league, there will be no mistaking the fact that Sports Science is a major reason why.
The Pickle Juice game was awesome, but I don’t think the Eagles ever had a clear advantage like that again. That was an anomaly. Makes for a good story, but it isn’t going to help take your team to the next level. Sports Science can do that, if it works as well as everyone thinks it will (or already does).
We have to be patient as we wait for data on Sports Science and the NFL, but I’m sure glad the Eagles are at the forefront of this idea. I think it will really benefit the team.
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The man behind the Sports Science program is Shaun Huls. Here is an excellent article on him from MMQB. This is from last year.
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I have read the Jim Harbaugh stole the sports science ideas from Chip back in his Stanford days. He apparently used pretty advanced techniques there. Also heard he has taken it up a notch in the NFL. I have also heard that Pete Carroll has been using it since he came to the league (no doubt taken from Kelly in his Pac10 days).
To what extent these guys are using it, I dunno. I think I heard that info on Harbaugh from a player who played for him at Stanford and SF. Pretty sure I heard Carroll uses it on a phoner over the radio.
It will be interesting to see if Lazor gets Philbin to use it, or alter the practice week. I’ll also be watching to see if anyone else in the NFL does the same. Knowing the typical NFL coach’s mind set, I doubt it.
*edit* forgive my terrible writing.. multi tasking.
There really isn’t anything to steal… You can either train your players they way they have been trained for the past decade, or you can commit to always trying to incorporate the newest information and methods to best train and condition your players… If you research the latest sports science techniques, chances are you will incorporate similar methods to what chips doing…
Military Grade training and recovery… Cant beat it!
Perhaps steal was an overly simplified way of putting it in text (or lazy). How about “caused the light bulb to go on”?
Fair…and yes, I’m sure Chip will cause the lightbulb to go on eventually for all these other franchises and in ten years every team will have a sports science division… Competitive advantage usually doesn’t get to go on too long before everyone starts to copy it..
Here’s a look inside Stanford S&C program.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1739903-how-to-build-a-bully-inside-the-stanford-football-strength-program
It makes sense why those 3 was one of the most successful college coaches and all have success at the NFL level
Same thoughts here. Of course there are other great coaches (Belichick, Payton etc.), but the Pac-12 gang are definitely in the Top 10 and there seems to be a reason for it.
Every time I open a jar of pickles, I think about how nasty is must have been drinking that juice in the heat/humidity that day! Or, well, any day!
You and I are two very different people, sir!
I love pickles, but just can’t see drinking the juice. I’ll stick with the purple GatorAid!
Never have a pickle without sipping the juice haha.
Yeah, I always think about that too. I’m not sure how they didn’t throw it up immediately after drinking it. Especially in the heat / humidity.
Drinking pickle juice on a hot day might sound disgusting but it has benefits. Besides hydrating, it would replenish salt lost during heavy sweating, some vitamins from whichever vegetable was pickled in it, and the acid content from the vinegar undoubtedly has some component useful to the human body.
From 3-5 to 10-6. That’s pretty remarkable, and its not like it happened and we are retroactively looking for reasons why. We knew last year that if the SS was successful, it would probably look like what we ended up seeing. This isn’t absolute vindication, but it isn’t data seeking either.
Nolan Carrol: “coach Kelly is big on recovery. We train hard but recover harder. That’s what Chip takes the most pride in, that’s why we have a sports medicine, sports science division, those guys are constantly on us to recover, monitoring our bodies heart rates, soreness levels, everything to get our bodies in best shape to perform every day”
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We know about the heart monitors..the famous smoothies..no more taco tuesdays(shouldn’t take a sports science division to not encourage our athletes to put that crap in their bodies).
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huff revealed that every day all the eagles go thru hydration tests, ramped up from Oregon when they only did that every Thursday..
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Jenkins raved about how the staff knows what parts of each players bodies are some after practice and have a tailored work out for each player to try and get the soreness levels down…
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Chip doesn’t have a magic wand or the fountain of youth, but all the older players we ever see perform at a high level attribute their longevity to starting to really take care of their bodies…our sports science is simply trying to use all the cutting edge science to best take care of our bodies instead of only sticking to archaic methods of how things are done in the NFL… reducing soreness on Sundays, better odds of avoiding sprains and nagging injuries..the better you take care of your body, the better chance you have at longevity, so to some degree I’m sure this will help our older players shelf life
And Holmgron learned two decades before that! I’m surprised it’s taken the NFL this long to accept that tacos, fried chicken, nachos, pizza, and all the other junk that used to be in the Eagles lunch room (and is likely still in many others) is the worst way to get the protein they need. Lean beef and chicken, tuna, and yes, smoothies, are a much better way to get the lean protein without the fat that these guys need to heal during the season. KFC or Popeye’s is open all off-season long for them to ruin their bodies!
It’s insane to think of a million dollar athlete putting that crap in his body on a Tuesday and go play a game that Sunday. It’s crazy enough that an athlete would do that like Chad Johnson living off mcDonalds, but for a billion dollar sports franchise to be offering that crap to it’s players on a Tuesday is madness. Bet you none of the UFC fighters who are set to bang tomorrow night in vancuver were putting crap in their bodies on Tuesdays so for an NFL team to serve that crap in it’s cafeteria on a Tuesday during the season in this day and age is crazy…
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Bad enough you will have players eating crap on their own time during the season, you can ATleast control that they eat right while they are at your facility..we are talking about the fuel you put in your body..
Same with alcohol. Should be banned because it destroys 2 weeks of cardio training (if you party, a single glass is okay). You do not see swimmers or cyclists heavy drink because they wouldn’t be able to perform at max level.
Also we need more NFL players with fake asthma like in those two sports
SERIOUSLY!!! Drinking during the season is friggin AMATEUR at best… If Chip can get 53 athletes who want it bad enough to eat right during the season and refrain from alcohol it would be a huge advantage
Your comment about the UFC reminds me of an episode of HBO 24/7 years ago from I think Mayweather v Hatton. Floyd Sr was showing off a ripped 6 pack and talking about how he lives on cookies and junk food, and he had to be pushing 60 yrs old. It’s crazy to see how far some people can go on such a terrible diet, but it makes you wonder how much better they could have been.
I’ve never seen somebody stuck on a topic like you are Reid’s Taco Day.
“I think it will really benefit the team”….yes! I totally agree…but 10 years from now, every franchise will have a sports science division, so we need to take a run at this Lombardi the next 3 years before every other franchise starts to catch up..just like we need to take advantage of next years draft before Chip no longer knows all the college players better than Most head coaches…some time in the next 3 seasons, we need to bring that Lombardi to philly!! In other words, strike while the iron is hot!
this year is the first one. I think getting better is rarely as linear as one thinks, there are not equal steps each year.
Plus we will have more surprises for opposing teams early in Chip’s career. Why not us?
Seriously have no idea what you are trying to say.. I don’t know how to interpret that at all.. I get the first part and don’t disagree. I actually expect to see a higher degree of improvement in year two, then we saw in year one when everything was so knew to everyone,, for example people think Coop can’t have that type of success again, but I don’t think we even seen his best yet. We have a ton of weapons, so he may not break last years stats but he should be a better WR in this system then he was last year…. But I don’t know what your second sentence means
my 2nd part, not well said, is that maybe we can make a bigger non-linear jump into the SB this year b/c teams still are not adjusted to Chip. I am thinking in year 4 maybe everyone knows Chip better, but this year there will still be some break down plays where the D just is out of position. I was trying to provide ammo for why the Eagles could jump up.
It’s not every team that is like the Seahawks, where each year they got closer. Look at the Ravens etc.
Oh gotcha… And I don’t disagree at all… Your young QB leaves his first playoff game with a lead.. Another division crown coming..you get to the dance two years in a row, then you absolutely could get hot and not just take the next step winning a playoff game.. I wouldn’t rule it out at all… But If we only win one playoff game this year, I would still call it progress
Beason,needs foot surgery and 3 month recovery time…so far the cowboys and Giants lost their MLBs because of chips Voodoo dolls… Who’s the redskins MLB? Full moon, Friday the 13th, hope the redskins MLB is hiding under his bed today covered in bubble wrap, for his sake 😉
CB Brandon Flowers Released.. should the birds grab him?
Hell to the Nah!!!
Who do you think takes a flyer on him? Cant be that awful.. right?
Reuniting with Romeo Crenel for the texans, Or a team that plays a lot of zone..
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Detroit cut CB Chris Houston who they just signed to a 25mil contract last march…tho durability plays a role in his release. Flowers just got abused last year.. Thinking having safeties we can trust will allow us to press on the outside this year which happens to be the strength of our 3 outside CBs, and it also happens to be what Flowers underperformed In..
Cant argue with ya there, good points… Texans would be a good spot. Romeo might have some Fountain of Youth Science for him, get him playing to his strengths
I wanna know wtf is going in with Andre Johnson? I don’t even understand what his problem is lol.. You don’t want to report to the texans, but you are in your 30s and owed like 20mil..no one is trading for your contract, so what exactly are you even trying to achieve right now? Is he simply seeking permission to seek a trade, since he will have to restructure with a trade partner to ever get them to agree to trading for him?
Im sure he just wants to WIN now and it looks like its a ways away, especially since they drafted Savage as their QB of the future.. they should have struck a deal for Mallet.. really dropped the ball there.. I don’t know what his plan is but his goal is correct.. he needs to get to the patriots.. maybe they just trade Johnson for Mallet. HA that would benefit all parties but sounds nearly impossible ..
Wow.. While that sounds impossible, it would actually be a great trade for both parties. I’m sure both would have to agree to new contracts with their new team, but maybe that’s not that crazy…
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BEASTMODE threatening to retire if they don’t show him the money, yet he is already paid like a top 5 player at his position! the Seahawks just had to pay a bunch of expensive dudes like Earl and Sherm, and still have to worry about paying the QB… Trouble in SUPERBOWL paradise?
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San Fran’s starting RG Boone, won’t attend OTAs because he wants money!!! Lol
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While the Novacare complex just keeps on coombayaing away!!!
good I hope he retires.
Ryan Mallet is terrible, not sure that is a remotely good trade for the Texans.
He will be a Texan next year
beastmode knows he’s only got a couple of years left and he’s only making like $5, probably non guaranteed
BeastMode is socially awkward. cant go see the president, cant do media days, he might just ride off into the sunset with a ring and live out his days on his couch. who knows.
cant play press, we play press. he’ll reunite with romeo – he’s young enough
I am not sure that preventing broken bones is outside of the realm of possibilities. Good nutrition can lead to stronger bones, but more importantly, it is widely accepted that one’s chance of being injured increase when one is fatigued.
If sports science can help our players train harder and recover faster, they will be better conditioned and less likely to leave themselves exposed due to fatigue. Like the soft tissue injuries, it will take time to quantify any results, but it is worth watching.
Proper nutrition can not only make the bones harder but every part of your body more durable like muscles and ligaments. Being fatigued does not make bones more brittle. Fatigue can cause the stabilising muscles for a movement to either weaken or lose their coordination, which will leave parts of the body to absorb the forces of movement which should not do so.
Agreed, I wasn’t suggesting the bones get weaker when you are tired. What you said is true, as is the much less scientific fact that, when you are exhausted, you don’t get your cleats out of the turf quite as quickly when a guy comes in low or have quite as much wiggle to turn a crushing hit into a glancing one.
Hah, yeah, you just had the bit about hardening bones with diet and fatigue causing injury in the same sentence so I kinda went off that association rather than what you really were saying.
Yeah, sometimes my mind goes faster than my fingers. By the way, are you in a medical field? You seem to have a much deeper understanding than the rabid fan hoping guys stay healthy.
Nah, I’m currently studying to become a personal trainer, but I’m going to be a damn good one.
If the Eagles sports science techniques are proven to keep players healthier and reduce injuries, then don’t the Eagles have a moral obligation to share their techniques with the rest of the league?
If the team doctor developed an ACL surgery technique that reduced recovery time in half, would we think it’s ok if he kept the technique a secret and only performed the surgery on Eagles players?
…Maybe.
Yes I would be ok with that.
“don’t the Eagles have a moral obligation”
No. The have an obligation to the eagles. Its all about having an advantage over the other teams. A legal advantage.
A lot of it is simply extreme attention to things commonly known but are perhaps undervalued, like sleep, hydration, and nutrition. Mandating factors that other teams opt not to.
To be honest, I’m not sure how many of the Eagles procedures are unique the Eagles. Sports Science is decades old in Europe and Australia.
I guess I’m saying that I don’t think a situation exists at Novacare like the one you described. If another team wants in on sports science, and valued it as much as we do, they could catch up to us relatively quickly with some diligence. But your overall hypothetical is fascinating. Take it one step further, say the Eagles did discover a secret procedure or method that aids them in football, say a method of preventing/recovering from concussions, but would also benefit all athletes (like children), or even regular folks, or soldier, not just competition.
But the eagles do not have any secrets all other teams could get if they dropped things like fast food Friday or just used state of the art research
Moral Obligation? No.
Every team has their secrets about how they go about winning.
Our sports science techniques fall into that realm if you ask me.
Throughout his coaching career, Chip has picked up ideas that took a lifetime to acquire.
Why would he just even the playing field when he is always looking for an advantage?
Now on the other hand, when your talking about a medical breakthrough where a player can come back from an injury in half the time, then sure it should not only be shared with other NFL teams, but worldwide if you ask me.
The idea of a “team doctor” is very misunderstood. The Eagles team Dr is a local orthopedic surgeon that evaluates the players and covers the games, but he doesn’t necessarily perform every surgery on every player that gets injured. A lot of these decisions are made by agents, and in reality, Dr James Andrews does a relatively high percentage, for athletes all over the country. Chips sports science doesn’t extend into the operating room. Also, any team Dr who had an innovative surgical technique would be sought out, and would not only perform that on patients who weren’t on his “team” but he would do it for other athletes. Just like Dr Andrews, the Redskins team Dr, does for other athletes, The Eagles included.
ACLs can basically be categorised two ways. You have the contact kind like Kelce getting taken out by Ed Reed. A strong enough collision will do it and there’s really no way around that. The second kind is like Maclin tearing his making a cut. In every case of a noncontact ACL, the cause is rotary stress and the knee is subject to enough that the ACL tears. Something in the way the knee is stabilising is dysfunctional because the knee should never be under rotary stress at all; instead, all of the muscles of the leg should absorb that stress for the joint. In a nutshell, the prime mover muscles are too powerful for the stabilisers, and the joint is left to absorb the force itself. This is an unnatural condition that is caused by incorrect lifestyle or workout practices. Noncontact injuries, no matter how serious, are not only preventable but predictable if you can screen people for the movement dysfunction that will eventually cause an injury.
Great stuff. You mention that second type of tear involving a destabilization of the knee due to rotary stress and I couldn’t help but remember an article I read a while back.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/a-surprising-discovery-a-new-knee-ligament/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Basically doctors have rediscovered the ALL, another ligament. One of the reasons we were led to look for this ligament was because patients who suffer an ACL tear are never quite right after the surgery. The knee seems to function perfectly fine but there is a lost stability. The reason being that most ACL tears are accompanied by an unobserved ALL tear. And there is not yet a medical procedure to repair the ALL. Since Maclin had already torn his ACL once, he was likely already operatiing without an ALL, further destabilizing his knee and making the second tear even more likely.
Point is, for anyone who had torn their ACL before, as you say, it is imperative that they learn the number of motions that destabilize their knees and endanger them to re-injury.
This was the other knee
Are you sure? I thought it was the same one and no one was shocked because they used a cadaver ligament the first time, something no longer done on athletes.
The cadaver is still commonly used, but it is generally considered less than ideal for a high level athlete. Think about this, would you rather reconstruct a 20 year old WR’s ACL with his own 20 year old tissue, or a cadaver that could be comprised of a 60 year old’s dead tissue.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000222537/article/eagles-jeremy-maclin-preps-for-second-comeback-from-acl-tear
Also:
http://www.phillymag.com/birds247/2014/01/20/couple-notes-maclin/
Cadaver verification.
Fascinating article. It’s amazing how thousands of people can just skip the same crucial thing when examining a knee over so many years. Sure provides a tidy explanation for why some knee reconstructions fail.
It’s imperative that both players who have sustained a serious noncontact injury and those who haven’t fix their movement problems. No joint is designed to bear weight or any force from movement at all. The joint’s job is to extend and flex and possiblyrotate, that’s it. We might look at your body and see that you’re out of whack in a few places, really can’t stabilise enough to be physically active, and yet you’re safe because you aren’t physically active. But even some football players just get lucky, or their dysfunction is very minor and subtle. And then they just haven’t made that certain cut at a certain angle yet that’s going to expose their problem by making their knee explode.
I wanna hear more about these hydration tests
Back in college, before the sports science revolution, we used to call them keg stands.
college? thats everyday life for me… no college lol..
I think it measures the salt levels in the pee so they can see how well you have been hydrated. I know hospitals have done that for decades
interesting, and i heard a couple players mention them like the tests are a lil bit of a hassle
Brandon Flowers was cut by the Chiefs. I wonder if Kelly is interested in him?
He 5’8…what do you plan on doing with Boykin and Jaylen Watkins?
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We have 3 outside corners who are better than people think, and Boykin and Jaylen…. No, we won’t be adding anyone’s 28yr old trash midget corners
I just noticed a downside to bringing in all these high character guys to compete for roster spots. There are so many of them with inspiritational stories that it is going to make it sad when we have to cut down to 53. The Army Ranger, Josey, and now Barton? Where are the head-shaking, wasted your chance and got what you deserved cuts when you need one?
http://www.phillymag.com/birds247/2014/06/13/bartons-journey-kingston-south-central-philly/#more-2666051
That just tells you our front office is doing their homework.
I am ecstatic over the idea of having such high character guys.
The good news for them is that once we decide to cut one of those guys, it’s very possible another team jumps and signs them.
It’s the old story of another mans trash is another mans treasure.
But to take that a step further, our front office should be commended for how many guys they brought in to compete and the overall quality of those players.
Our cuts will provide a huge upgrade from a depth perspective for many teams.
Also, I believe that this years practice squad may be one of the best ever.
Just saw the Brandon Flowers got released by KC, good fit for philly? would they be interested? is he good anymore? All I know is he a former probowler and we could use some help on the back end.
Got dropped bc he can’t play man coverage. I actually think we are happy w the secondary
well happier, far from perfect but a far cry from last year if we’re healthy
He is small and cant play man so he would backup boykin
No
apparently their new managment not a fan of his size (5’9″), moving to bigger guys and more press akin to our scheme.
No need for him or the contract he’ll get.
Off topic. In the 70’s I was a Steelers fan. Even have a copy of Roy Blount’s book, “Three Bricks Shy of a Load”. They went from hiring Chuck Noll and drafting Joe Greene and finishing 1-13 in 1969 to 4 Super Bowls by 1979. Best defense there ever was or ever will be. The more I see and hear about Chip Kelly the more he reminds me of Noll. Practice how you intend to play. Linebackers who can rush the passer, stop the run game and cover. etc. R.I.P. Coach Noll. Go Coach Kelly. “What it takes.”
’91 Eagles was the best defense ever.
RIP chuck, but you only ever fielded the 2nd best.
from philadelphiaeagles.com:
Still, Noll’s best team might have been in 1976, when the Steelers rebounded from a 1-4 start to go 10-4 – even with Bradshaw injured and out most of the season – by playing the greatest stretch of defense in NFL history.
The Steel Curtain shut out five of their final nine opponents while yielding only 28 points. At one point, they didn’t allow a touchdown for 22 quarters.
Tickle me unimpressed
I wonder about what type of indirect effect sports science will have on recruiting free agents. If the Eagles get a rep for keeping players healthier and on the field longer, maybe that’s a factor when Pro Bowl LB Guy is deciding between us and someone else.
We don’t sign other teams probowlers.. We develop our own
Our LB corps are not what I would consider strong.
You got an aging Meco, Cole and Barwin.
Those three players will need to be replaced within 2 maybe 3 years max.
We do have Kendricks who could leap forward and has shown us flashes of great LB play.
I also have hope for Smith II to emerge as the dark horse steal of the draft.
But when you look at our depth, Goode, Acho, Brayman, Maragos, and then you got Long, Knott and Matthews, Kaddu, and Phillips.
Can one of them emerge? Maybe but I would like to have a player like Meco in his prime if given the choice.
I take my first statement back now that I have listed them.
There is a lot of potential for several of our depth players to become great players.
Disagree. This isn’t Meco’s last year in philly! we already drafted Coles replacement in round 1, Mykal Kendricks will be a superstar by the end of this year and it’s ridiculous to start putting expiration dates on Barwin so soon… Plenty of time to draft Meco’s replacement,,.and we don’t need a replacement for Barwin! because by the time he is done! Dion Jordan will have broken free from the shackles of Miamis franchise tag! and Dion will then come home to play opposite Marcus 🙂
How long will it take for Bennie to develop into a Marcell dareus type(minus the idiot)? 330lb big boy NT who logged 7.5’sacks…. Marcel is 6’3 so Logan probably won’t get to 330, but he should max out around 322lbs when he is done adding weight… And is certainly mobile enough to get after QBs
I would presume never, but that’s OK. Dareus was the 3rd pick overall and not a 3rd rounder. Bennie will probably never be a star but he can anchor this defense while Cox takes care of the stardom hopefully.
Yeah I agree that he will probably never be THAT good… But I see no reasonwh y he can’t be a stout anchor against the run, and strive to get his paws on like 5 QBs per year which would be pleasant surprise pass production out of a NT
One aspect that I don’t think gets enough play, is Chip’s focus on not tackling to the ground(I get that this isn’t the sexy, top secret sports science-iey stuff people like to talk about). I think the Sean Lee injury showed how important it is to keep guys off the ground. What drove me crazy was everyone screaming that Reid ran a hard camp and Chip should too. Like Reid’s teams were know as good tackling teams? In fact, guys like Nate Allen got better this year