Good Timing
Posted: October 26th, 2015 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 407 Comments »The bye week is here and that’s a good thing. The Eagles are a bit banged up so they need some time to rest and recover. The team is also in need of a mental break. Forget about the 3-4 record for a minute and just focus on the sloppy play. Every game has been filled with mistakes.
Sometimes the best way to quit making mistakes is to get your mind off them. I was listening to the radio show for Duke coach David Cutcliffe recently. He is a terrific coach and full of great wisdom. Someone in the media asked him if he talked to his team about the end of the Michigan-Michigan State game. The reporter was wondering if Cutcliffe would use that play as an example for his team. The next time Duke had to punt late in a close game, tell your punter to just fall on the ball if things go wrong. Don’t let a bad play become a disaster.
Cutcliffe said that certainly made sense, but followed that up by saying that you don’t want to plant the seed of failure in your player’s head. Is the last thing you want to tell a guy, “Don’t drop the snap, but if you do…”? Suddenly he goes from thinking about the punt to “Don’t drop the snap”.
I think a bit of that applies to the Eagles. The more you try not to drop passes…the more you think about dropping passes. And this year…you drop those passes.
But you can’t ignore an issue either.
Chip Kelly and his staff have to talk about the problems. They have to try to get them corrected. The tricky part is finding the balance between talking about them and talking too much about them. There is no magic formula. Each coach has to decide what is right for that particular player or team.
To this point, Kelly and his staff have not found the right balance. The same mistakes are happening over and over. I hope the mistakes will get fixed this year, but every now and then you have teams that never figure things out.
I think the bye week is probably the best thing for the team right now.
Kelly and his staff need to try to figure out things from their end. What can they do to fix the mistakes? They also need to self-scout and identify some areas that need to be adjusted. This could be schematic or personnel driven or involve play-calling.
The players are off this week so that gives the coaches time to study tape, check out the numbers and then to meet and discuss their findings. There will be no magic revelations, but any tweaks that can help are needed. The Eagles are not a good enough team to consistently win while making mistakes.
In 2013, the Eagles went 4-1 after the bye. Last year the team went 5-5. This might be the same coaching staff, but these are different players. This team could get red hot or it might turn out that nothing gets fixed. Only time will tell on that.
I think the “newness” of this team has been an issue. There is no consistent chemistry. There are times when things click, but there are other times when the players don’t seem to be working together. How many times have Sam Bradford and Darren Sproles been on different pages? Those are veteran players. And smart guys. But they aren’t reading things the same way. That can only happen by them working together.
There is no magic elixir for this team. I wish Chip could make one move and fix everything, but outside of the Packers trading Aaron Rodgers to the Eagles, there is no one answer.
I believe in Chip Kelly and his coaching staff. I think they will work hard to find some ways to improve the team. I like this group of players and think they will do what they can to get things fixed. Still, there are no guarantees.
The first order of business is to get some players healthy. Hopefully the time off will help the guys mentally, physically and emotionally. Kelly told the players he thought this was a good team. I’m sure plenty of people think that was stupid, but it really is Coaching 101.
Players are going to hear criticism from all over the place. They need support from inside the building. The players need to continue to believe in each other and the coaches. Eagles players are already down on themselves. The last thing they need is Kelly ripping them to shreds. If the players were in denial, that’s when you have to rip them, to get them to deal with reality.
There are no answers coming from the outside. If the Eagles are going to turn this around, it will be the guys already in the locker room. One way to help that happen is for Kelly to let the players know he still believes in them. They know they are part of the problem. Now they start to believe they can be the solution as well.
*****
I will write about the Panthers game, but since this is the bye week I’ll also be touching on other topics. I’ll write about the QB situation. I’ll talk about Kelly. I’ll write about the talent level of the team.
*****
We did get some good news.
Kelly said Jason Peters should be good to go when the #Eagles reconvene for training next Tuesday. Best news possible.
— Eagles Insider (@EaglesInsider) October 26, 2015
Jason Peters: "I'll be all right."
— Reuben Frank (@RoobCSN) October 26, 2015
Peters is clearly the Eagles best O-lineman. They need him back.
_
It will not matter. If Bradford holds on to the ball too long he will get sacked. If Bradford gets it out and hits the WR in the hands they will drop it. The receivers are mediocre at best, can’t create separation and therefore find themselves getting hit by LB’s and DB’s as the ball arrives which makes the ball go off their hands. This team simply isn’t good enough.
they are asked to catch a lot of balls going over the middle. maybe jmatt is tired of getting splattered in the slot.
Matt Mullin wrote a good piece at PhillyVoice: http://www.phillyvoice.com/chip-kelly-sam-bradford-eagles-panthers/. The essence of it is that Sam Bradford is playing the way he has always played in the NFL. With that being pretty evident, I am skeptical about him improving. We were basing our optimism on Bradford from one quarter of one preseason game this summer and the naive ravings of the homers at Bleeding Green Nation. The evidence for Bradford being any good was pretty flimsy from the beginning, and is far less compelling now.
I think he’s right, but he argued the point poorly. The most amazing thing is Y/A, the most important stat. 6.3 career. 6.4 here. Fascinatingly consistent.
The most frustrating thing about the Eagles this season has been the drops. Sunday night I saw Ertz, Matthews, Huff, Austin and Cooper all drop “catchable” balls.
As sketchy as Bradford has been, I wonder if things would be different if a receiver could make a play once in a while.
John Brown has had another good night for the Cardinals – just got a TD pass that was well thrown but not easy to hold unto. I saw some Carson Palmer highlights during pre-game. He’s thrown a bunch of slightly off passes this season that WRs like Brown and Fitzgerald made adjustments to and caught. These weren’t one-handed, amazing grabs, just simple adjustments that you expect any WR to make. I don’t see Eagles WRs doing this. Not Matthews, not Huff, not Agholor, and certainly not Cooper.
This season really calls into question Chip Kelly’s talent evaluation system, at least with respect to WRs. Jordan Matthews was drafted well before Jarvis Landry and John Brown. Heck, Eagles took Josh Huff before Brown.
Height, weight, hand and wrist size are all great, but they don’t matter if a WR can’t catch a football or run a route (hi, Riley).
Why weren’t Eagles in the mix for Brandon Marshall when they couldn’t resign Maclin? Jets got him for a 5th round pick.
Oh, well. It’s been a frustrating season and feels like it could become even more so.
Ags made a great one handed snag a few weeks ago… but I agree 100% with u.
Imagine Marshall on this team there would be more frustrations than ever. Remember the bone headed “Fumble” he gifted us. lol
Someone please put together this seasons highlights so we have something to feel good about.
upvote for the username..
How dare our young receivers not be as good as Larry Fitzgerald. For shame.
John Brown was a gamble by the Cardinals and it worked. Statistical outlier. From the stories coming out around that draft, no other team had him as high as the Cardinals did.
Allen Robinson, Jarvis Landry, John Brown, Martavis Bryant, Davante Adams all taken after Jordan Matthews.
Ridiculous how talent rich that draft was in WR.
Frustrating thing is that Chip may have taken two of the worst picks available, and only after another guy he was reportedly high on (Marquis Lee) was taken earlier, whom also hasn’t exactly worked out.
Still early in their respective careers, but early returns are not positive.
chip pulled a fast one on lee, don’t think he ever wanted him, knew the injury thing was an issue.
john brown is a worse djax, obviously he doesn’t want a speed guy. bryant had character issues. adams not doing much. robinson could have been nice since he fits size critera, but do you take him over a blue chip guy like matthews? i really liked landry but he went right after matthews, think he was expected to go in 3rd round. Landry and Huff are similar physically and style of play wise, landry is just way more talented.
At a certain point, Chip and the coaches need to stop making excuses and talking about the problems and start acting: talk is cheap and Chip needs to hold people accountable. For example, we saw this with the CB position last year where Chip talked every week about ‘fixing the problems” but never did and never replaced Fletcher until it was way too late.
If Chip truly believes the problems lie with the RB, TE and WR catching balls, then he needs to give more playing time to those who catch them and cut the time/bench those players who do not. The time for talk is over, time to take accountability and reward the players who can actually do the job well.
If Chip instead believes it is Bradford, then he’s got to take action. I have zero illusions about Sanchez, I know he is not taking us anywhere further than Bradford, but at some point you cannot allow the same problems to keep happening each week and hurt the team. Bradford seems to be pressing very hard and if he continues to be erratic vs Dallas after the bye, I think you’ve got to make the change.
I realize a coach wants to be and should be loyal to his starters to a certain degree and does not want them to feel like they got shafted or not given enough of a chance to show their talents, but again we are 7 games in and the season is drifting away if we do not turn things around quickly. I hope Chip and the coaches take the bye to study every facet of the scheme, play calls, coaching instructions, personnel and performance and get the problems fixed with the current starters or make changes where needed.
Wait so now you are mad the coach has words come out of his mouth at mandatory press conferences?
Is he supposed to mime? Interpretive dance?
I would definitely tune in for the Chip Kelly interpretive dance press conference.
Then the beat reporters would all whine like they did this offseason that he doesn’t talk to them enough. Or literaly at all.
WIP: “WHAT IS CHIP KELLY HIDING BY NOT TALKING?! IS HE SECRETLY IN ISIS!? HE SHOULD GO BACK TO DAMASCUS UNIVERSITY!”
Huh? I never said anything about Kelly’s press conferences. My point was eventually the coach must take specific actions to fix the problems – talking to the players has obviously not worked and eventually the coach needs to hold those responsible accountable and reward the other players who can get it done consistently. That reinforces what he is telling the players and makes it clear he is serious. If the players responsible never get held accountable for continuing to make the same mistakes, Chip will lose credibility and respect in the locker room.
Ok I took it as you reacting to what Kelly has been saying to the public.
I’m not sure I agree with the idea of sitting players though. All the receivers have struggled with drops, so I’m not sure who would be earning more PT there. You can’t really bench OL because the talent drop off from Lane or Kelce to Hawkinson or Andrews is so vast it’s going to be a large net negative. I could see inverting Matthews and Murrays snap counts, but that would be more as reward to Matthews. Murray isn’t really doing anything drastically wrong.
Agree on Murray, that is more play calling IMO and on Chip to deploy Murray in ways he can succeed in. I do think Bradford should be under center more with Murray deeper so he can get momentum/speed up to hit the hole harder. There are too many times that Murray gets the ball out of the shotgun stance with no momentum, hits the hole at half speed and gets stopped easily.
I dispute Chip’s assertion Matthews was injured prior to his 63 yd TD run and thus could not continue or that Duce is to blame for deploying the RB in an unbalanced way – that is more of Chip’s deflection tactics which I think hurt his credibility as everyone can see through such statements.
On the dropped balls, Chip could either try Sanchez if he thinks Bradford is the main culprit (I’d give Bradford the Dallas game post-bye to see if improvement happens) or evaluate the pass catchers if he thinks they are the main culprits. There are likely players that are struggling more than others with this problem. Benching them is one option, having them do extra practice each day is another – the point is Chip needs to take specific actions rather than just talking about the problem to hold the players accountable.
Every reporter says that Matthews catches balls obsessively. Maybe too much.
I disagree with you here because (1) using extra practice as a punishment sets up the converse, not practicing as a reward. That is not a mindset that wins championships. And (2) you are now saying that Chip should do things in practice to fix problems. I cannot imagine a situation where this is not happening already. What else would a coach do in practice?
We’re getting lost in the weeds of the details. The issue is Chip has to take specific actions to address these problems and try different things since they have been unable to fix the problems so far. What he does is up to him, I’m sure he’ll have much better ideas than I do, but the problems cannot be allowed to continue if we have any hope of achieving our goals this season.
I’m sure he has been taking some actions. Agree it hasn’t worked so far. Jordan Matthews did have drop problems early last year but did fix them. But making publicly visible punishments / changes really would just be to assuage fans’ anger, and may not fix the problem either. We are playing all of our healthy receivers and they are all dropping balls, so there’s not really anywhere else to go. You have to get the current players to stop dropping them, basically. It could be a mental thing where everyone is trying to do a little too much, or there could be something with Bradford where he doesn’t throw a consistent ball (and maybe the juggs machine does), or something. The mental aspect can be the hardest to fix… sometimes a team is just in a rut and it can last an entire year (2012 was one mind-numbing mistake after another). Frankly I thought a lot of stuff got cleaned up last game; it was primarily the drops (and Bradford still a bit inaccurate, though the short passes stopped). We didn’t see the botched snaps or bad fumbles, etc. They are clearly working on stuff, and I thought the drops had been getting a little better, but it was basically fatal in the last game.
I agree, he’ll have better ideas than I would about what to do. The point I was making is he needs to keep trying things until something works and continue to motivate/push the players to improve. If it is all mental and the player is pressing, maybe some time off may help clear their mind and allow re-focus. We’ll see, whatever happens if certain players cannot adjust or get past the mental aspect that all goes into evaluating that player and deciding if an upgrade is needed at that position in the off-season. It is a results based profession.
so you think chip is not doing anything?
Did you read the thread?
yeah i mentioned before chip doesn’t usually throw players under the bus midseason, but is pretty brutal in the offseason, i don’t think a lot of the non-drafted receiving corps will be here next year.
I agree with you there – if this is a talent issue that cannot be fixed now unless some other team dumps a good player for some reason
You’re a great poster, Gary and I typically enjoy reading all your posts, but I have to kind of agree with anon here, in reading your posts it does come off like you don’t think Chip is doing anything and that you assume there’s some magical tangible action he can take that can get an entire team of professionals to stop dropping the ball that he’s simply not doing right now.
I’m sure it’s just an issue of miscommunication, but that’s exactly what I took out of your posts as well.
like what? i’m sure they work on fundamentals at practice. he can’t control what they do in the game
C’mon, this is not rocket science. I’m sure they practice fundamentals like catching the ball too…but the point is it is NOT working and thus they need to try other things to get the problem fixed and the players performing up to standard.
Chip cannot control what they do in the game, but he can prepare them as best he can and he does control how much they play. If they continue to not perform well enough, Chip may decide to play someone else entirely or cut back their playing time.
Remember the “best players play” mantra by Chip – it should mean something.
it should but EVERYONE is dropping passes. who else is left? our best WR isn’t that good.
As I said above, I’m sure not everyone is dropping them at the same rate or frequency. For example, Celek may be performing better than Ertz in pass catching and thus Chip may decide to give Celek more of the opps in the next game.
That is performance based decision making and hopefully will motivate Ertz to improve and earn those opps back. That is a hypothetical since I do not have those stats, but I’m sure some of the RB, TE and WR are performing better than others and thus could be rewarded.
If everyone is equally terrible, then that truly is an indictment of Chip as a talent evaluator and cannot be fixed until the off-season unfortunately.
I think the issue people are having with your statement is, what are these specific things you’re talking about? The only thing you mentioned is benching the people dropping passes and putting guys in there that can consistently get it done. The only problem is that everyone on the team is dropping passes and there’s no one to put in that can consistently get it done. Short of that, do you really think that Chip isn’t actively trying to do something to help the situation?
Talk about practice. Isn’t that how a talented player got better in Philly?
We’re sitting here – he’s supposed to be a franchise player – and we’re in here talkin’ ’bout practice?
One issue I haven’t seen brought up is that maybe Matthews spends too much time on the jugs machine. I’m not sure if anyone here has ever used a jugs machine before but let me tell you, the ball comes out fast as all hell and with a very unique spin.
I once went to a passing camp in college for WRs. There I caught a few hundred balls a day off those jugs machines. By day 3 my hands were so sore they barely functioned. It felt like the ligaments between my fingers where all getting stretched out. I definitely had some sprained ligaments. My hands were sore, swollen and my grip on the football started to get weaker.
In addition, the spin from the machine was different from my QBs. When we, the WRs, met back up with our QBs, who were also at the camp and originally working by themselves during the first week, I had trouble readjusting to his throws and picking up the point of the football. I was plagued by drops that first day of group practices. I went from a slow fairly unathletic WR who made his living catching everything thrown my way to a guy who couldn’t catch a cold.
Maybe the answer is less jugs machine and more time with Bradford. Just a random thought I had.
Although I normally question the truthiness of everything Chip says I actually believe him in regards to Matthews. All indications are that he truly delegates all in game substitutions to the position coaches during games so he can focus on big picture stuff like play calling and time management. There’s definitely some valid arguments against this approach: see Fletcher, Bradley circa late 2014. But, all evidence does point to that being the in game division of labor between the coaches. Kelly even seems to construct his roster actively to have a bunch of similarly skilled players so that he doesn’t have to worry about who’s in there when he’s deciding which play to call.
When asked after the game why Mathews didn’t get more carries after his long run, Chip initially said he didn’t know, that that’s Duces call and he’d have to check with him. This seemed like he was being honest too. He then added that he recalled Mathews being in there late in the game but he was calling passes at that time instead of runs because that’s what the game plan called for, so maybe that’s why they seemed to get away from Mathews in the run game.
He then leaves the press conference and presumably talks to Duce at some point in the next 24 hours. Duce informs him that he was being cautious with giving Mathews snaps after his run because the back told him he had tweaked his groin the previous play. Next press conference the issue comes up and Chip informs the media that Mathews had told Duce he tweaked his groin. It wasn’t a huge injury and he wasn’t fully aware of it in the moment, but that Duce was monitoring him and limiting his snaps so he didn’t aggravate it further.
The media reports this like its some solacious cover up when really it seems completely plausible and that he just was caught up on what was happening with the RB rotation by Duce after the game.
This.
Public shaming. On the field after the game, Kelly should rub Matthews’ nose in the pile of dropped balls, then hit him with a rolled up play sheet.
I like this idea. Maybe he can take a picture and have the WRs hold up signs that say, “I dropped the ball” the same way people have their dogs shamed with a sign that says, “I ate the pillow.”
Chip would make a great mime. He’s already a troll.
Hard to bench the receivers and RBs that are dropping balls when it’s literally all of them. Matthews, Cooper, Huff, Austin, Ertz, Murray, Mathews and Sproles have all had a bunch of drops. Short of activating Kenjon Barner or resigning Jeff Maehl I’m just not sure there’s a good option to bench someone for someone else.
Jordan Matthew’s drops: “Kelly also did not confirm Les Bowen’s report that Jordan Matthews has an injured hand. According to Bowen, Matthews suffered a ligament sprain three weeks ago, though Kelly said Matthews’ hand isn’t hurt.Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/birds247/2015/10/26/kelly-we-limited-mathews-due-to-injury/#gI8fTbQ8UrboXGVR.99“
Maybe Jernst ^ was right about him using the JUGS too much!
My thoughts on the iggles at the break:
1. I thot that carolina was SB best game since pre season, and still has a shot to be a “franchise” QB for this team and just 1 game win with minamle dropped passes will be big boast to his confidence.
2. I think that alot of JM drops are due to pre season expectations about being “THE #1 GUY” now that Maclin has gone. He has the ability…just has to relax and let his talent work.
3. I think DM will struggle this year, (but be dynamic next year), because of a number of factors…used too hard by dallas in 2014 which also affected off season conditioning…hamstring injury affected getting more comfortable in running from shotgun formation…mental fatigue with Jj and dallas contract, getting married, wanting to impress Chip & fans this season.
4. The defence is coming along nicely, but we are going to struggle against tams that play “smashmouth” football…especially with D. Ryans out…hopefully Hicks can put on more weight and keep his speed by next year, and we need a physical safety who can hit and tackle that we can use when playing these type of teams.
5. I still have faith in Chip as GM and coach…I didn’t expect him to have everything the way he wanted it this year, but when you look at how the defence has looked this year compared to 2014, give him his 5 years.
6. I am somewhat dissapointed that Chip hasn’t found a young college “read option” QB to develop, with all the college QB’s running some sort of it right now, there must be somebody to develop…even if it’s just for a “change of pace” like the wildcat to use in certain game situations…
Completely agree! With everything you wrote, too. He focused on fixing the defense and he’s done a phenomenal job. He focused on completely rebuilding the offense and the results have been tough to watch, but I see the overall plan and how it might work. Like the defense last year, you can see that there’s some good pieces, but the deficiencies are making it dysfunctional. If next year he can focus on fixing the offense perhaps a few additions at Oline, the development of Ags and Bradfird and maybe the addition of another playmaker to stretch the defense at WR, and we’ll see a similar jump in production from the offense. After a huge rebuild in the offseason I’m not ready to blow it all up and start over after just 7 games.
Let’s hope Couplin ends up being that hard hitting safety we can deploy against a smash mouth team like the Panthers. I love Thurmond, but asking him to be a force player against guys like Cam, Stewart and Tolbert is never going to be a winning matchup for us.
As good as Hicks has been and he’s been phenomenal, you can tell by looking at him that he still has a college body. He’s a guy that has the frame to really improve his strength in the offseason conditioning program and should be even better next year.
Its astounding that every year Chip harps on reps yet it seems like every uear the team isnt gelling and they make mistake after mistake.
Maybe they are over repped. Maybe they don’t drop anything in practice.
chip said jmatt catches TONS of balls at practices, chip things it’s an “overthinking” thing.
see ball get ball.
even dogs know that. Matthews just isn’t a natural hands catcher.
If he drops another key catch or bobbles it into an INT I hope he gets a seat on the bench. At least to send a message to him and all the other skill players.
I’m this frustrated and Im a JMatt fan!
exactly
I think the best course of action is to make Sam the 3rd QB and get our 4th round pick at least.
Then chip can go to the U and get the hell out of the NFL.
Sam isn’t playing poorly. Not like we’ll do a ton w/ the 2nrd pick anyway.
Well if chip leaves and is no longer our gm and the worst one in the nfl we could have some hope.
Yea who wants another 2nd round pick that looks bad. Rowe might be enough
Has anyone done a breakdown of sammy b’s throws left side vs right side. Just watched all 22 of the Panthers game. Sammy doesn’t play poorly, lots of drops. But he does miss some TD passes. Looks to me like all his completed passes are left / short middle.
When he threw right it was usually a screen pass or a throw away. Def seems like he has a tendancy to have his reads on the left hand side of the field. Watching replays of the missed red zone opportunities there were def open guys one several plays sammy just tried putting it to the back of the endzone, usually on guys that were covered, when guys underneath or on the other side of the field were open.
I guess given the line play i wouldn’t be surprised if sam had defined / half field reads but makes me wonder.
Additionally, if it’s not a pick play or we’re playing against zone, nobody gets open. Some of those sacks were just coverage sacks (and not a lot of time to sit with the ball). I guess i shouldn’t be that surprised given our receivers.
The lack of open WRs has definitely been tough to watch on the all-22. Another reason why I hate the, “Bradford holds the ball too long” meme. You can’t see it on the TV but a lot of those times there’s just nowhere to go with the ball.
Every QB misses some open guys, it just happens. We’re not privy to the designed read progression that he’s going through, so like you said, some of those might be designed half field reads, or instances where pre snap looks determined that he shouldn’t go somewhere with the ball but the guy comes open anyway.
For the most part though I’ve been impressed with Sams ability to identify the open guy. I’ve been disappointed with his accuracy since I was expecting that to be his most elite skill and it’s been inconsistent, even if over blown by some. The biggest issues though that I see with the passing game is the targets. The Oline has been fine, not great but fine, in pass protection. Sams been more than serviceable minus some terrible INTs. But, the guys he’s throwing to can’t stretch the field, they can’t consistently get open without being schemed open and they can’t catch the ball. No one is making plays for Sam. And, then when he does convert some throws someone else puts them in a hole with a penalty, they give up a quick sack, Kelce snaps the ball over his head, or the running game puts them in third and long.
I’m sorry but all of you Matthews apologists, I have beach front property in Canada that sounds really nice and you can get stone cold hands there too.
What is there to appologize for? Clearly Jordan ISNT playing up to his potential, he hasn’t been even close to playing good ENOUGH, and we need the kid to step his game up…. ISNT it pretty crystal clear? I haven’t heard many people say that they are happy with Jordans play.
Wow. It must be bad. I don’t remember ever seeing you refer to him as Jordan before.
Actually, Canadian beachfront might be pretty valuable in a couple generations. Besides, free drugs.
I guess you guys haven’t spent much time in BC? Beautiful area. Victoria, Canada one of my favorite spots in the world.
I think, given his history, it’s the guys calling him a complete bum that would be more susceptible to buying beachfront property. Sorry, but he has FAR more good games than bad under his NFL belt. Not saying his a superstar, but the idea that people are “apologists” for a guy who has shown he can play at a high level in this league is just dumb.
heyoooo
Shame we’ve been looking at a loss, way more often than a win, going into the bye week over the past two decades.
Chip just needs to stop being stubborn. Pick up Terrell Pryor he really can’t be worse than Bradford at this point. The added threat of the run will prob help the offense as well. Idk I’m bummed with this season.
He absolutely could be (and would be) worse. There’s a reason he’s not an NFL qb on any team. Holy ….
Don’t talk about my client that way.
Pryor could, and more then likely would be worse.
Kelly, and you to an extent Tommy, keep talking about these “correctable” mistakes, and about sloppy play etc. Unfortunately when it comes to being able to catch, that is not a correctable trait in a player. By the time you reach the NFL, you can either catch or you can’t. You could even argue that it’s a skill developed during childhood. Some players, such as Calvin Johnson, have incredible hands and have done throughout their entire HS, college and pro careers. How many examples are there or serial “droppers” becoming sure handed? It’s not a technique thing, it’s simply a hand-eye co-ordination deal. Like speed, you either have it or you don’t. Unfortunately, almost every receiver we have (I’ll reserve judgement on Aglohor for now) doesn’t have good hands, unlike Maclin, Jackson and particularly Avant.
Are you suggesting if you went onto the field right now and caught routes from Bradford you would catch the ball just as well as you would 6 months later if you continued practicing catching the ball? It’s not a heredity trait passed down through generations of pass catchers LOL
If it were, Chip would have a way to measure it.
or jordani’s inner jerry rice would come out
If it was that simple, why don’t players demonstrate an ability to improve their catching from one year to the next? Avant entered the NFL with great hands, and he continued to catch the ball well right through his career. Same with Maclin – there was no sudden “lightbulb” moment. I’m sure Matthews catches plenty of balls in practice, so why isn’t he improving by your logic?
The point is it’s a small sample size, everyone with great hands will go through a stretch where they drop the ball. If Mathews hands were as bad as they’ve shown thus far in the season he would not have been a 2nd round pick, much less drafted at all. The large sample size (HS/CFB/Rookie year) show that he does catch the ball well.
If improvement wasn’t possible then why would players practice catching the ball so much? I don’t understand your logic in this argument. The majority of everything we do is attainable through repetition. Some things are out of control like your height, but catching a football is a trait that can be improved upon.
One of my good friends is a WR in the NFL right now and he has always had good hands on whatever level he’s played at, but he also has improved cuz he works his ass off in/off season to get better at it.
Exactly right. Larry Bird wasn’t a good shooter because he just “was”, but because he worked at it, every day.
I think we’re seeing a very clear example of a “fixed” versus “growth” mindset in this argument…
Shooting and catching are two very, very different attributes. It’s like comparing catching to being able to throw the ball. No matter how many reps Kevin Kolb got in, he was never going to develop a Mike Vick-esque cannon
Agreed, complex movements like shooting a ball, throwing darts, hitting a baseball, playing an instrument are all things that can be improved substantially with practice and repetition. Catching a ball is all about hand eye coordination and body control. It’s a physical athletic trait that we don’t have a good test for like the 40 yard dash, so people assume it’s something that can be improved with practice.
Physiologically, the circuits in the brain that control these things are very different. The complex motor circuits continually prune themselves and develop faster and more precise motor actions the more you do something repeatedly. And that’s because it’s possible to develop more efficient circuitry when you’re doing something where the movement is supposed to be repeated the same way every single time, and getting better at that movement occurs when you repeat it exactly the same way every time.
The circuits that control spatial awareness and allow someone to see a ball traveling through the air at a certain trajectory, predict it’s motion through the air and get you hands to meet that trajectory at the right time operate differently. Spatial awareness, body control and the ability to transfer visual data to precise movements is much more fixed. And because the specific motion is different every time because the trajectory of the ball is different every time, the circuits are not able to prune themselves to a single “most efficient” circuit to complete a physical movement the same way every time.
Studies in neuroscience agree with what you said.
See my response to Fred below. Studies in neuroscience support the idea that hand eye coordination, while not completely static is a lot more fixed and harder to improve than other complex movements.
Understood, but we’re treating this as if it’s simply a case of hand-eye coordination. It’s not. Dropping passes in this context has a lot more to do with the rapport between a QB and a WR. Matthews obviously had more of one with Sanchez last year, and it doesn’t look like he’s developed a strong one with Bradford yet.
Case in point is Sproles. He’s not someone you’d normally accuse of having bad hands. Yet he’s dropping a lot of passes as well. And not all of them are bad passes.
Hand eye coordination is one thing, but far more important is how well a QB and his receivers know each other and their tendencies. It’s a mutual thing. Sometimes it happens really quickly, sometimes it takes some time to develop. Whatever is going on is not just on Matthews, and it’s not just on Bradford, either. In many ways, we should have expected this many dropped passes with so many new moving parts on offense. It’s simply how the game works.
Well said, and I agree. Except with Sproles. I was shocked last year by his drops as well. He was good for a drop a game last year. Which is something I’d never expect from him, but it hasn’t changed this year for better or worse.
While I do believe it’s difficult to improve hand eye coordination, I also don’t think this is the best Matthews can catch with his level of hand eye coordination. He may never be a natural hands catcher that can pluck the ball with one hand, but there’s definitely something more than just hand eye coordination going on this year. He’s capable of catching a lot better than he currently is and should absolutely improve.
Fully agree. I don’t think Matthews hands are “maxed out”, but he’ll never be an above average catcher of the ball from his current starting point
Matthews hasn’t gone through a small stretch though, he hasn’t caught the ball well throughout his NFL career to date. He was a second round pick because he possesses other attributes (size, RAC, character) – not because he’s an excellent catcher of the ball. Improvement is possible – just on a very minimal level. Can you give me any examples of a player who improved dramatically when it comes to catching the ball during their NFL career?
Well for one, I’d suggest you can’t be a bad catcher of the ball and hold the SEC record for receptions by 34. And if you need an example of improvement we can take a quick peak at his own mentor Jerry Rice.
From 92-96 his drops went 13-12-7-6-3.
Aside from that you should also understand becoming a better pass catcher doesn’t equate simply to the # of drops each year but also how you are catching the ball otherwise and making more tough catches that aren’t considered drops by statistics.
I’d argue Maclin significantly improved catching the ball in his Eagles tenure, peaking his final season last year. How many times up until last season did Maclin make really fantastic sideline grabs while falling out of bounds and keeping 2 feet in? He became much better also catching balls in traffic that he shied away from earlier in his career.
Matthews caught majorly screen passes at Vandy..and he dropped those too. SEC record is bs considering how the great SEC WRs leave after their 2nd/3rd year.
Pretty good screen passes considering he also holds record for most receiving yards. He had 34 catches/ 300 yards more than Cooper who is 2nd. Matthews played one more year but also barely played as a freshman (15-181 mostly in last 2 games).
Matthews played 5 more college games than Cooper.
Calling an all time SEC record in ftball “BS” is laughable.
Bringing up college records to try to justify that a player is good is laughable.
Proving a player can catch a football by proving he has caught the football before more times than anyone else is pretty solid evidence.
Good troll effort considering you have no actual response.
So Aaron Murray > Peyton Manning just because he has the numbers in college. Woop dee doo nice argument. This is the NFL where he isn’t catching screen passes and having his entire offense tailored to block for him.
Lol you’re so clueless you have to make stuff up.
You’re right though he literally cannot catch a football; those 260 screen passes were sweet though.
You can improve the outcome (lack of dropped passes) by forcing yourself to focus more, and changing other things you’re doing that might be effecting your ability to complete the catch (turning up field before its secure, jumping or hopping at the moment you go to catch the ball, trying to body catch, changing your hand position when trying to catch, i.e. Pinkies together vs thumbs together, improving grip strength, ect) but it’s very hard to improve hand eye coordination and thus there will always be natural catchers and guys who have to fight the ball more, and this is something that’s very difficult to improve. Just like speed, you can improve and get faster, but not significantly so.
I fully agree there is a portion of talent involved in being able to catch a ball. Something such as hand eye coordination is tough to really significantly improve on compared to other areas.
I’m glad you pointed out an assortment of details that CAN be improved upon to be a better pass catcher.
Tons of guys don’t have the natural gifts that some very elite talent guys have and in order to close that gap they have to do all the other things better, which are acquired through practice and repetition. No matter what Jordan Matthews does he will never be as talented as Julio Jones. But he has the capability to outwork Julio, improve and close the talent gap disparity catching the ball.
How do older players stay in the league so long with loads of younger/talented/more athletic players coming into the league every year? They learn to understand the work that is necessary practicing all year and they learn the finer details of their craft that makes up milliseconds here and there to let them cover the gap with a younger guy who doesn’t work as hard or understand those details.
Personally, I don’t ever think Jordan will be an elite WR, I think he has the capability to be a 1B WR or a really fantastic #2.
Agree entirely!
It’s a pretty common thing for receivers to develop a rapport with quarterbacks. One of the most common things in the sport, in fact. It’s why James Jones is suddenly a good player again, for example.
What’s less likely is the idea that somehow Matthews got worse this year as opposed to last. He had a nice rapport with Sanchez from all the reps they shared, and it showed.
The idea that the receivers won’t improve with more time with their QBs is kind of ludicrous.
My point is, Matthews had drops last year too. He hasn’t shown good hands in the NFL for one and a half seasons now. He has good RAC ability, plus size and excellent character. But his hands are below average and while it’s possible he may improve slightly in that area over time I don’t think he is a natural catcher of the ball. I see it all the time in cricket (I’m British) – certain guys are excellent fielders and have good hands from the moment they begin playing until their eyes go. As I said, it’s a hand-eye trait. Unless Matthews vision and hand-eye co-ordination improve immeasurably during adulthood (a rarity) he will continue to drop passes throughout his career
maybe he need contacts?
I think you’re mistaking Matthews this year for Matthews last year, which is my point. He did not have problems with drops last year. Maybe he wasn’t the absolute “handsiest” receiver in the league, but he certainly wasn’t known for bad hands. He wasn’t great with it in college, then proved it wasn’t an issue in the NFL. Now it’s an issue in the NFL over a small portion of the season.
As others have pointed out, TO was a player notorious for drops early in his career. I was living in SF at the time and followed the team. This is 100% true. And while he never developed into the absolute most sure-handed receiver, he certainly improved on the drops throughout his career.
I really think you’re letting your anger over the current drops (which are a problem) cloud your view of Matthews. He is not a lost cause, not by any means, and has more measurable success in the NFL than measurable failure.
“over a small portion of the season”
TO had way more talent. I do wonder if playing in the middle has jordan a little skittish. He’s often playing against linebackers who know his routes, let him catch the ball and then unload on him.
Not arguing that Matthews is TO-level talent, just pointing out a good receiver who had problems with drops that were quite severe early in his career (and who wasn’t considered a star until at least his 3rd or 4th year).
And note that these routes over the middle you talk about are no different than the routes he was running last year.
The guy has sophmore skittishness, in my opinion. It will either pass, or he will be a broken man. My money is on “it will pass”.
yeah but his route tree was still new. Now if you watch the all 22, the lineback that covers him, prior to the snap drops into the middle of the field, matthews goes underneath and the linebacker just tracks for 5 yards and there’s always a guy or two waiting there for him.
I wonder if anyone has charted the number of blows to the head Matthews has received this year. He’s taken a lot of nasty hits.
He is in a funk. Its more then likely a head thing. Your explanation completely ignores how last year he started with some drops and as the year went on he pretty much eliminated them.
definitely agree he is in his own head right now
He had drops in college, drops for most of last year, and drops for all of this year. Maybe the last few games in 2014 were the exception, not the rule.
While having drops in college it was not nearly at this rate. His drops last year were mostly in the first 2 games. So are you going to tell me in the other 14 games last year and the pre-season this year that he lucked into not dropping the ball?
I just finished watching the game. My thoughts: Bradford played well. The Panthers’ ILBs just neutralized the outside zone and screen plays and their red zone D was the difference in the game. All the plays outside just weren’t working but Chip kept calling them up… the OLine really suffered when Peters left. We need more Matthews and less Murray. Not that he played bad but Matthews is so much more explosive. We just were beat by a superior team and Cam is a good qb. Eagles were in the game until the 2 minute warning. We need more play makers everywhere and a our D will be really scary if we ever get a dominant pass rusher.
The part that has been frustrating for me is that so much of the anger and call for desperate actions are a result of the media narrative that set up unrealistic expectations.
If the story this spring had been about a team that reduced its offensive resources in order to upgrade an unacceptable defense, about a QB who is going to be given patience and coaching as our best chance at a franchise QB without a top-5 pick, about a coach who is going to try to make the depleted offense good enough while the QB situation is assessed and the defense is shored up, in hopes of building a true contender in the long run. If the story had been that, expectations would have been different and the start to the year wouldn’t look half bad.
Totally agree, the media and members of the fan base who got led by the nose by them bear a lot of responsibility for the unrealistic expectations and thus over-reaction to the team’s struggles so far this season.
However, the Eagles, especially Lurie and Chip as the two main leaders, bear some responsibility too of not communicating that approach and allowing the media/fans to run away with the over the top narrative. It helped them make money and gave them cover from criticism. Unfortunately, it was short sighted as they are seeing now since the fans now feel they were sold a bill of spoiled goods.
Obviously, it is somewhat naive to expect a major sports organization like the Eagles to state publicly this is a rebuilding year and we do not expect to win anything (see also how the Phillies twisted themselves into a pretzel about even using the word rebuild to describe their situation), but expectations still could have been tempered without going that far IMO.
It would be difficult for Chip or Lurie to make a statement saying that our guys aren’t really as good as people say and that a SB run isn’t really in the cards.
Besides, when the coach starts worrying about the media narrative, he is already lost.
Agreed which is why I said it was naive to expect that, but Chip fed into it by dismissing that the changes would have significant impact i.e. a QB who had not played for 2 years, two new inexperienced OG, young WR, two new RB, rebuilt secondary etc. Chip’s message was the team is better and he expected them to not miss a beat.
All he needed to do was remind everyone this is a process, it will not happen overnight, that time is needed for a new team to gel, new players to gain/develop trust with each other etc.
That does not run anyone specific down or negate that a SB run is possible; it is just a more truthful and realistic message than the dismissive “everything will be fine” message that Chip used.
Either way, I blame the media/fans more than Chip like I stated above. Us fans should know better if we are such knowledgeable Eagles fans and should have remembered how important continuity and chemistry can be to successful teams in conjunction with talent & depth. The media is trying to sell the story which naturally leads to exaggeration and hype, but they need to be more responsible in how they cover the team and be careful about cheer leading rather than objective reporting.
That is fair. I would say we all learned a lesson, but we didn’t. This wasn’t the first time for this cycle, and it won’t be the last.
Definitely true! 🙂
And I am not speaking as a knowing outsider shaking my head. I was right there climbing aboard the roller coaster despite having ridden it before.
Ha ha. I probably will be first in line when the roller coaster comes back around again.
Me too, every time
It’s OK to board the rollercoaster as long as you don’t barf when it starts going down.
Imagine you’re in the marketing department, and Chip says “you know, we’re going to struggle to make the playoffs this year, and we’re going to look REALLY sloppy the first half of the year as we get all these moving pieces in place, but we’re building for the future.”
Do you think you think there’s even a remote chance you’re getting a bonus at the end of the year based on sales growth? Just like ripping the players publicly might make fans feel better but is ultimately counter-productive, publicly admitting a rebuilding year might placate some fans (though it is likely to alienate just as many), it doesn’t do good for your organization as a whole.
And that’s saying nothing about the effect that has on the players themselves, who have limited careers and veterans especially are going to be upset with the coach giving up on the season before it happens. “Win the day” is more than a slogan. Realistic expectations are for self-scouting, not public consumption.
I never said they should admit this was a rebuilding year or they had zero chance to win anything, as I said that would be naive to expect.
What I said above was that Chip, Lurie et al. could have easily reminded the media (and us fans via those channels) that every season is different, that winning is a process which does not happen overnight and that time is needed for new players to gel/gain/develop trust with each other.
There is nothing wrong with stating those things and it does not mean winning or a playoff run are impossible and does not rip any players/coaches or anyone else publicly – it would not impact their marketing or sales. It actually can generate good will if done correctly (see 76ers or Flyers compared to how badly the Phillies botched their situation).
What it also does is provide credibility for the organization if things go badly as they have. They can say we said from the beginning this is a process and takes time. It shows the media/fans that the organization knows what they are doing and will not blow sunshine up their backsides all the time.
Instead, Chip took a “everything will be fine” stance publicly and now looks like a moron who either glossed over major issues or was totally out to lunch when putting the team together. That is a false perception, but one the Eagles could have avoided if they had been more measured in their messaging about this season.
The Flyers (I’m not into the NBA, at all) are doing the right thing, but that’s not because Snider provided realistic expectations – just the opposite. In fact, Snider tends to have the opposite problem – he doesn’t have realistic expectations when self-scouting. It seems someone in that org has finally supplanted him as the final decision maker, because this current process is totally contra Ed Snider’s history.
With that said, the Flyers are hurting with ticket sales. I haven’t bought a ticket from them in about 5 years (I sunk my money into Phantoms season tickets, and have gotten a few Flyers tickets as gifts of one sort or another), and haven’t so much as had a spam from them trying to sell me Flyers tickets in that time. This August, I started getting weekly emails. I’ve gotten a monthly personal call. The packages and discounts they’re offering are amazing. So it seems like the realistic expectations of the fan base, who realize this team is building for the future despite Crazy Eddy’s statements, is affecting their sales quite a bit. And that’s just tickets. I’m guessing merchandising is taking an even bigger hit.
Rebuilding always leads to some retraction (which is why most organizations resist doing it as much as possible) especially here in Philadelphia where fans are, as Rollins said, fair weather to an extent. We love winners, but do not have much patience for rebuilds or losers.
On the Flyers, Snider is the one who endorsed the hiring of Hextall, the “promotion” of Holmgren and the more draft and development-focused approach to building a team. Snider finally realized his way was never going to work especially in a cap league and he desperately wants to win another Cup before he dies. Hextall is calling the shots with Snider’s support. They understand they will take a short term hit in exchange for hopefully an extended run of excellence where they’ll make it all back 10 times over.
However, I’d argue that the Phillies have paid a much higher price in lost credibility with their fans. Attendance dropped significantly every year they twiddled their thumbs and refused to rebuild. Their entire management has been replaced and had to be since the fans would not have come back with them still around. New blood is in, a new approach is in and exciting times are ahead finally, but they dug themselves a huge hole that will take years to get out of and could have been avoided if they had started years ago.
I’m not convinced that Snider has changed (people his age tend not to make such drastic shifts, especially when their old method was so successful (financially, at least)), but I can’t say it’s false, either. Clearly, the important part is that the organization has changed its ways, and that’s true so far.
The Phillies’ problem, IMO, is that there is no horizon to be aiming for. They clearly waited too long to rebuild, but the problem started earlier than that, when they shortchanged their scouting and their money pool for draftees while they were riding high. The problem right now is that I honestly don’t see when they’ll have a competitive lineup again. They have some decent pitching prospects, but their lineup prospects are almost exclusively in that zone of “has high potential, but it is more likely he never sniffs the big league.” To me, there is literally nothing to be excited about in their system, outside starting pitching.
Contrast with the Flyers, who have some young forwards already in the NHL, and a stable of interesting young prospects at D (and even some at G, though they’re farther away) with a couple of forwards in the system who have solid NHL potential. IMO, they’ve knocked it out of the park in the last two drafts. No guarantees, but there is reason to be hopeful for the future.
The Eagles are more like the Flyers than the Phillies, and I’d argue are further along the process than even the Flyers.
Snider has not changed; he was convinced to try this other approach since his had failed and the cap has made it 10x harder to buy talent which the Flyers excelled at for years. The cap hell that Holmgren/Snider put the team in also played a role since they faced dark times unless they rebuilt and operated in a much smarter and more disciplined manner moving forward. If this fails, Snider will likely take back the reins which would be bad IMO.
I agree with you, the Eagles are not in a rebuild situation and should be trying to win now.
I also agree completely about your Phillies points. They did mortgage the future by shortchanging their drafting. scouting and talent development and are in a deep hole. They do seem to have a better grasp on reality and what needs to be done to rebuild now though and so I’m more optimistic than I’ve been for a long time.
I know it was preseason but geez the GB game.
I know, I know. I heard the stat line from that game within an hour of drafting Bradford and Matthews. It set up unrealistic expectations for both of my teams.
How much different would the conversation be right now if Bradford had gone 8-20-2 with a pick?
right and it wasn’t just the stat line but how pretty everything was, the balls thrown right in the tight window, the WR’s catching them (!!!).
This is what set my expectations. Passes were perfect, receivers held onto the ball and we just romped. Then the regular season happened followed by anger. Copious amounts of anger.
Yeah, I went from “SB sucks, always has” to “okay, Chip was right, superbowl here we come!”
In retrospect, not smart. But few things play out the way we think, with Chip.
Media Narrative???? DId you come in igglesblitz.com during the preseason? This is your fault and Tommy’s fault and all the rest of your fault. Don’t blame the media.
I think you missed the point.
Many of those comments you dug up were intended in hyperbolic jest. The others were reactions to the hype created by the media coverage of the team. Some of us do not have access to the closed doors meetings at the NovaCare Center and are forced to base our opinions on media coverage.
Lastly, I am a little hurt that I didn’t get one of my own comments thrown back in my face.
Im sure they are there. go read the posts. Its like a sauna using chip kelly’s nutsack sweat as water on the hot coals.
You constantly makes phallic references and seem obsessed with male genitalia.
“I wrote this morning about the Eagles strong showing in the preseason making me believe the team is now a legitimate Super Bowl contender.” -Title Contender (August 31, 2015 igglesblitz.com)
“Why would Bill Lazor even know who Chip Kelly is?”
GEAGLE • 2 months ago
Can’t fuckin believe it’s football season!!!!!
…
Week 2, Romo and Dallas will have a “Cuban Missle Crisis” on their hands when we unleash Kiko on Romo!
That is totally classic.
ok Sybil.
it was Hicks!
botto • 2 months ago
after rewatching the beginning of the Gb game it is really inspiring how Bradford lays the ball in the recievers hands.
the pass to sproles for the TD was so perfect it was unreal.
all his other passes were really amazing as well.
he is hitting guys in stride on the hands. this is going to kill teams if it continues which I think it will.
I’m AWESOME!
The original AG • 2 months ago
Fran Duffy did his All-22. Hicks and Rowe made some nice ST plays. I’m even more excited about Bradford (if that’s possible) as a QB
And you’re point being?
exatly, I couldnt stand the trade and Bradford prior. I bought in to this preseason way too much like most fans would. I now dont think much of Bradford at all. Will be really disappointed if they sign him
i’m ok w/ signing him IF they can figure out the drops. if wrs cant catch your passes then maybe you’ve got the issue. that said, not a lot of good options.
Tumtum RobNE • 2 months ago
People are convinced the Eagles line is bad. I was really getting it from guys at fantasy drafts this past weekend. I just told them where I thought we stood (right with Dallas), and then let them chirp. In a few weeks I’ll be dropping it on them hard.
RobNE • 2 months ago
The twitters attacking Tommy are silly. Any team that is a 10-1 in Vegas to win the SB and that is seen by the writer as a favorite to win its division is a SB contender. I would say it’s semantics but I think that’s giving too much credit to the other writers, b/c I don’t see how semantically they are not SB contenders. Tommy didn’t say SB favorite.
and how is it premature? you have to wait until a team has a 3 game lead in the division, that’s not fun or calling anything that’s just calling what has already happened.
mtn_green • 2 months ago
Preseason just shows how high the ceiling is. Folez, Vick didn’t look so good in preseason before 27-2.
this is called being a fan. your a pure KNOB.
lol Going back 2 months to reach for people posts huh? That’s pretty hysterical and truly shows that you’re just a little troll bitch with no life at all. Want me to go back and find your post where you were begging me to leave you alone and stop responding to your posts? Or how about when I had you scared and you told me that you were 6’3 and do olympic weight lifting? lol Dude just give it up you’re a an idiot and a bitch and no one here takes you serious.
I don’t think that’s quite accurate. Chip made dramatic moves because, in Jeffery Lurie’s own words, the team wasn’t good enough and needed an overhaul to get better right now.
So blaming the media doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me. The message coming out of Novacare is we were making these moves to go from a solid playoff team to a superbowl contender.
Clearly that hasn’t happened, in fact the team appears to have regressed considerably. So what are we supposed to think?
I don’t remember Laurie focusing on the “right now” part. The rest of what you wrote I believe is accurate, and I believe it is true, then and now.
What are we supposed to think?
That turning over half a team takes time?
That we bought what the media was selling?
That the group of people named after the emotion “fanatical” might not suggest the best solutions to the challenges?
That angry mob mentality has fixed very few problems in human history?
That we actually don’t know more than the guys that have devoted their entire career and life to their work?
That blowing it up and starting over doesn’t actually get us closer?
That in an infinite universe, there exists a version of our world where Bradford caught Suggs mid knee-lunge, by his neck, using one hand. He then held him up in the air, shook his head disapprovingly, and slammed him to the turf?
Im starting to think Suggs couldve helped us out there. So wrong I know, I cant stand watching SB play, its painful. I have zero faith
I’m not condoning the angry mob thing, I’m not really a believer in the fire everyone mentality, I’m just pointing out that the noise out of Novacare was that we were doing all this to get better now because where we were wasn’t good enough, and drastic changes needed to be made to get us to where we want to go.
So saying that it’s purely a media creation I don’t think is entirely accurate.
Chip made some bold changes and so far they don’t seem to be panning out too well. Maybe in the future they will. I just don’t think it’s fair to pin all this on the media.
you kidding? the defense is hot fire. that’s where most of the changes were. did you really want sanchez for another year? or foles?
The Eagles never mentioned SB contender. Kelly just said they he thought the team he had last year had gone as far as it could as constituted.
The SB talk got generated by the media based on the preseason performances. Vegas odds makers shifted the odds in a huge way between the start of the preseason and after the 3rd preseason game based on all the money that was coming in from the general public on the Eagles. People just seemed to forget that the NFL preseason is completely worthless in its predictive value of regular season success.
I’d argue that the NFL preseason is almost entirely pointless with 2 games being sufficient to actually get the players ready. Greedy NFL owners will never agree to giving up at least one preseason home game along with the considerable revenues that come with it.
If you go back and look after the offseason last year or even after Mathis was released, there was a lot of second-guessing of Kelly’s moves and logic though.
Good balanced article. You have your finger on the issues without any of the emotional hyperbole others would like to surround them with.
Most interesting part to me was the Cutliffe tidbit which I loved. I coach basketball and it reminds me of the fine line you have to tiptoe sometimes in terms of situational stuff. If your down by 2 points at the end of the game and one of your players is at the free throw line, in a timeout before you have to make a decision to either discuss what happens if he makes both or doesn’t. Some coaches prefer starting with “after Johnny makes these 2 ft’s, this is what we will do”. Others prefer to say the former then include “but if he doesn’t make both, this is what we will do”.
I’m intrigued by the mental aspect of the pass catching, including the impact by the media. These guys are getting hammered by the media every single day about catching the football (which is there job), you have to think it has some sort of confidence impact. As I imagine it would if any of the media writers bosses came to them everyday “hey your article yesterday wasn’t as good as it could have been, whats the deal?”. The repeatedness of it can take a toll, I’m curious if that has a real impact. I hope the bye week gives them time to clear their heads, ignore everything around them, come back fresh and get back to doing what they are capable of.
maybe they’ll overcome all this mental crap, in a couple of years
I keep hearing that we need less Murray And more Mathews but that is not the case AT ALL!!! Flawed Thinking….
..
Murrays snaps are fine, he doesn’t need Mathews to cut into his snaps…. What we NEED is less passes for Bradford and more touches for Mathews..
..
Forget Murrays snaps, instead of bradford throwing 54 time, you take 14 of his passing attempts and give those 14 carries to Mathews, and Bradford would have attempted 40 passes, with Murray and Mathews both getting 18-22 carries, and this problem dissapears..
..
Not for nothing, but why the fuck is SAM throwing 50 plus times when the run is actually working?
can’t run the ball on 3rd and 9. i bet to 10 rb screens they run a game they look at as runs
you can run a draw on 3rd and 9 against the Eagles.
I was just going to say this exact thing. It sounds good in theory to just throw less, but when your down by 2 scores at half time and you have drives that start with 2 runs for 3 yards and its 3rd and 7, or worse your in 3rd and 15 because of a holding penalty it’s hard to justify handing the ball to Mathews.
Where the fuck do you see me suggest we should run on 3rd and 9? If it’s 3rd and 9, good chance it means we tried to pass on first or second down and it didn’t work.. The way we were running the ball, I would bet that we would NEVER see 3rd and 9 when we run on 1st and 2nd down
..
No one is suggesting running the ball on 3rd and Long, but we could have EASILY called 14 less pass plays on 1st and 2nd down and turned them into 14 extra carries for Mathews without taking snaps from Murray.
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We have a bunch of young Wrs that need to develope and a QB who is working his way back after not playing for two years, and than we have 3 stud Veteran RBs, and the OL is starting to run block better. SAM should NEVER throw 54 passes this year.. The rational assumption was our 3 elite backs would carry the load early on while SAM and the young WRs grow in this offense and get comfortable.. If your OL is getting killed like the Dallas game, I don’t blame chip for abandoning the run…. But in games where our Run game is working, during the firsthalf of this season, Bradford has no business throwing 50 plus times..
..
Now that the run game is working, we should see at least 35 carries per game between Murray and Mathews, and as our WR’s grow and SAM gets comfortable we could start throwing more and more…. But Part of the faith we had in SAM coming into this season was supposed to be that we had a monster run game we could lean on while SAM works his way back to where he needs to be… the OL is starting to open holes in the run game, so Why are we passing more than we are running?
..
Watching the first half of the Panthers, I was pleased with our run game against that Front, and most of the plays that stalled our drives were drops on 2nd down or penalties that put us into 3rd and long… When we run the ball on first and 2nd down, odds are we will be in 3rd and 6 or less… the RB were supposed to be the focal point of this offense at least for the first half of the season… panthers don’t run as many plays as we do, yet they are running the ball more than us at a time whete our Wrs are playing bad, and the QB is still getting comfortable..
,,
I’d like to see a new found Commitment to our run game.. I’m not suggesting only throwing 20 passes… But even if we run 80 plays on Offense, we have the RB Depth amd Talent to where we shouldn’t see SAM throw more than 40 passes in a game, unless it’s like the cowboy game where we can’t gain a yard on the ground..
..
subtract 14 passes on 1st and 2nd down, and turn them into carries for Ryan Mathews, and we would see both Mathews and Murray with 14-22 carries each per game..
..
We were wearing that Panthers defense down and we threw 54 times.. Can’t imagine how much more we would have worn them down if we took 14 passes and turned them into carriers for Ryan
..
While this passing game is trying to work thru things and improve to where we need it to be, we should be trying to win games with the Defense and RBs as the focal poïnt of this team, while we wait for our passing game to get where IT needs to be… Even if we run 80 plays, we have the depth to run the ball 40 times, ISNT that why we have more money invested in our RBs than every other team?…
..
If the passing game isn’t working, and we are still getting plenty of snaps off, there is No reason why both Mathews and murray shouldn’t have 15-22 snaps per game each…
If the receivers would catch the ball on 3rd down, drives get extended. When that happens they get more runs, and some of those go to Mathews.
Also, not getting stupid penalties (Kelce, Johnson) that force us into passing situations.
true but theres always some of that throughout a game, never going to eliminate all of it. Stop shooting themselves in the foot would be a good start.
Exactly, there was only one failed 3rd down conversion Sunday night were Bradford threw a pass that was incomplete and wasn’t dropped. And, that was like a 3rd and 16 after a holding penalty had negated a first down pass on 3rd and 6. Every other 3rd down that wasn’t converted was due to a drop or a relatively quick sack.
[…] the Eagles, this bye week couldn’t come at a better time […]
I can’t believe that Rueben Franks asked chip if the problem with drops has anything to do with guys working too much on the Jug machine? Lol really? I guess he also thinks that you improve more as a free throw shooter if you don’t practice free throws?
…
I really don’t understand why the media keeps asking chip if he has enough talent, and then they get mad at him when he says that he does? Lol as if Chip can actually sit at a microphone in week 7 and tell the world that his players suck and they simply arent good enough? Forget what chip really believes, tellihg the public that his players aren’t good enough is practically the worst think chip could ever do in the middle of the season. One game out of First place in the division…
..
And then people get mad after losses when chip says the problem is execution… Hello? That’s literally what everyone says about every loss.. Has any one seen post games interview after the Patrios win? All you will hear from Bellchic, Brady and GRONK say that they were successful because they EXCUTE. It’s what EVERYONE says, if you lose, you didn’t execute, and if you win, you executed well, it’s all you will ever hear after. Any game…. So I’m not exactly sure why people get mad when Chip says we didn’t execute well enough….
I do not think they are angry that Chip keeps saying that, but rather that the problems are not being fixed.
free throws are a different beast. Alone at the line during a game, all about form and execution. In a football game you have a defender to deal with also. A lot more to that than juggs machine and repetition. I just think with WRs, a lot of the hands part is far more of a natural ability than a learned ability. Not to say practice cant help, just think its limited.
It’s like the old guys who say no one in NBA can shoot. Yeah, they can, but the level of difficulty increases when you’re busting your ass up and down the court and working your tail off to get a spot of daylight off of 6’8 freaks with 7′ wingspans. If the old guys saw them in the gym at practice, they’d change their tune.
Doesn’t mean that NOT PRACTICING on the Jug Machine is the answer.. Just like NOT practicing FT is NOT the Answer,.. maybe you can say, he needs to work on more than just the Jug Machine, but suggesting he would be better off not using the Jug Machine is absurd and moronic
.
FYI, Jordan works on MORE than just the Jug Machine.. not Only did he hit the Jug machine all week, but he also put in extra work all last week with SAM, working on their timing on 3rd down, and REDZONE routes… The work they put in last week seemed to Help SAM have a solid performance against Carolina, but it wasn’t enough to help Jordan Obviously..
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LESS WORK is NOT THE ANSWER… MORE work, keep drilling the basics of your craft. Is the answer,,,, to suggest that Maybe Jordan should stop working with the Jug Machine is MORONIC, and THATS WHAT my post was about.. No where did I say that he should ONLY work on the Jug Machine, but he DAMN SURE SHOULDNT STOP working on the Jug Machine,.
,,
Just because the extra work hasnt paid off yet, doesn’t mean you should stop working… You continue to put in the work until you break thru this slump.. To think he should stop working is the answer is a new stupidity low even for our media… Nothing to do but work our way out of this
I once over did it on a jugs machine and it completely threw off my ability to catch a football.
Who’s our WR coach? No one ever talks about him, but you see receivers on other teams doing things you never see our receivers doing (double-moves, fake-outs, catching balls)… Maybe part of the problem IS coaching?
I can’t seem to find his name, but I found this publicity photo:
lol…. too funny.
Tasteful? No. Funny? Yeah kind of.
chip draws the scheme and it’s basically the same every week
Bob Bicknell.
Ryan Day’s background is as a WR coach, so we have an in house candidate if we need to make a move midseason.
is that an upgrade or a downgrade?
At this point I think it would just be a “fire your friends day” type move.
-It’s almost assuredly not completely Bicknells fault.
-Kelly’s contributed to this sitaution just as much
-But objectively the WR’s have all been dissapointing
You move on from Bicknell not because he’s grossly incompetent, but because things seemed to have snowballed. It sucks because you aren’t firing him for being totally crap, but sometimes you just need a fresh voice in the room. Especially with these WRs right now. They all seem to be trying to do too much. Physchologically I think it would be a positive.
Is Day a good WR coach?
Hell if I know. He’s bounced between Temple and BC for the last decade. Neither one exactly has the talent pool that you can blame him for not producing NFL WRs.
i mean a promotion for Day, but i agree w/ everything you said about the coaching.
cmon, Im seriously never blaming a position coach like a WR coach for drops. Just wont do it
Mostly a lateral move, but a slight downgrade.
If you did it would would likely promise him to hire a new WR coach after the season and move him back to QBs.
I know this is a side comment that has nothing to do with your comment.
BUT
I hope Temple whips Notre Dame.
Go Owls !!!
you should always STRETCH when you wake up, its too late now. get a life.
what were his exact words? that Deuce handles the Rbs? seems like a complete racist remark.. get a life, seriously.
it sucks to have optimistic fans.. man wish we had more “fans” like you..
FACT you have no life.. get a job or go volunteer somewhere.. help out in some fashion.. stop looking for reasons for more people to hate you.
remember when there were rumors of a vjax trade, wonder if we could reopen that converstation
every year we hear during the season that the team has the right players and then there’s overhaul in the offseason i expect this year to be a continuation of that.
UPVOTE the deleted comments! wooohooo hopefully that “fan” is outta here.
Finally!!!!!
Although he will make a new name soon enough. Went from LongDong to LongDing to whatever it just was….hopefully it’s an IP ban.
It seems he is a master at snaching up new handles.
Just a child.
Yes! Tommy rides again!
http://i.imgur.com/O3DHIA5.gif
The loser is already back and with such a clever new name “SnatchMaster”.
you that that name is a reference to him catching passes?
How juvenile must one be to make a name like LongDing, Snatchmaster, or Eagles fans cry?
the kind of guy with a smallding who never gets snatch
How do you know that the troll didn’t delete his own comments?
I talked to my coworker Jets fan. He was telling me how they attacked
their backup lb once Harris was hurt and out of the game. He said in
spots where they had backups, Brady just picked on them all game. That
as opposed to chip running sweeps against the fastest sideline to
sideline lbs in the game, was driving me nuts. Then the quick screens
that never work and never going deep against their weakest link,
safeties.Stubbornness with the DBs last year and now more of the same on the offensive side.
you’re complaining about the jets game? you want us not to run the ball at all and have SB throw 50 times against the best secondary in the league? ok
I think he is trying to make the point that while Belichek tailors his attack to the defense’s week points, we stuck with our same offense regardless of the opposing teams strengths and weeknesses. He was talking about the Carolina game and specifically running sweeps that their fast linebackers were shutting down.
In the jets game we threw that wheel route 1million times b/c of their slow lbs. Agaisnt panthers no wheel route.
I understand what he’s saying, i think chip should be more inventive as well but he doesn’t have a ton of options, bc of lack of talent, especially once jp went down. It’s not like we had a matchup against carolina where a player is constantly winning.
at least try to go deep and test the safeties. Also, the O line was weakened so they run more outside runs? Just not liking coaching or QB play. Coaching I can handle more than Bradford but swing pass on 3rd and 9 was brutal. Bit nitpicky though as I wanted to get at least 5 yds to help the FG and they could have there. However, why settle also, try to get the first. QBs are defined by converting 3rd downs. Almost like they didnt want to try.
Going deep when your left tackle is a guy who can struggle in pass pro at his natural position of RG doesn’t sound like a realistic option for replacing run plays in your plan. Normally, it would be quick, short passes, and … wait for it … screens, to slow down the outside rush. I can understand criticism of his use of Mathews, but I have no problem with the game plan in general after Peters went down. As hard as it was to run outside, do you really think they were going to do all that much better with inside runs against that front? Kelce was struggling, again. And the WRs bear the brunt of fault for what went wrong offensively.
but he doesnt employ typical screens often enough. Its always the quick screen and that doesnt do squat against a fast aggressive D. Sure, let them have the rush and do the traditional screen, didnt see that. Ya the inside runs may not work but he can mix them in more to keep the D off balance. Another issue I have, he force feeds his vision more than trying to keep a D guessing. Sweep to death to wear them out, well it didnt work and wasnt working at all. Its frustrating to watch as is anything Bradford, guy is terrible even outside the drops. Not sure what Ill do if hes signed next year. It will be like the Vick years, knowing its just coasting until change happens. Just our luck, Bradford will probably stay healthy on this team.
Hell, I’d take it even a step further. We actually avoided their biggest weakness by not attacking their crap safety tandem and played right into their strength by instead attacking the perimeters against the fastest ILB combo well face all yea. This game called for tons of misdirection to attack their speed and over aggressive pursuit and deep bombs against a terrible safety tandem, mixed with pop passes and seams to get their ILBs to have to hesitate from immediately moving forward on run action.
i think he’s talking about NE Vs NYJ brady/McDaniels vs Chip strategy.
They also did the same thing in the SB where one of seattle DBs got injured and went after Simon all game.
He isnt talking about the Eagles Jets game.
That was probably my biggest complaint. How many times can you watch their linebacker beat your linemen to the spot before you realize it’s not going to work? I get it, you need to run outside sometimes to keep them honest, but to continually call the play is just insanity.
on mathews busts a TD on a counter
Yep. The Panthers got lazy and lost backside contain while Kurt Coleman showed hes still Kurt Coleman.
That’s why you should still run that play, but not at the frequency that Chip was calling it. Maybe my perspective is skewed, but when they got into the 4th it felt like that was the only run play they were calling.
Still pissed they didn’t try to take more shots downfield even with the current state of their WRs.
Guess Kelly felt it wasn’t a good option though given how mediocre the pass protection was especially after Peters went out.
I didnt think pass pro was that bad. Few times it def broke down completely.
josh norman on riley cooper?
I’m curious to see the ALL 22 for the game. On the Matthews run it looked Coleman was a fair distance back, so I’m wondering if Carolina kept at least one of their safeties at a significant depth.
From screen grabs people have posted it looked like they parked Coleman 25 yards off the line in the center of the field.
I thought running through the middle was working well enough.
Thank you. I was cursing at those long, drawn out sweeps as they went nowhere. But then again, those have seldom worked this year.
Why was Duce Staley the ONLY coach called out by Chip Kelly during his press conference? Chip Kelly didn’t call out the WR coach. Why is that?
he was asked why RM wasnt getting more touches after that long TD run throughout the 2nd half. Probably asked multiple times. Also cmon though with the WR coach. These guys have been catching footballs since peewee.
Why didnt he say the WR coach hasn’t been practicing catching with the WRs enough in practice. Nope he just shut up when asked about the drops.
oh my god he’s back already
that didn’t take long
You really need a more creative troll name. This is something I would expect a 7th/8th grader to come up with instead.
What i want to hear about is Bradford and the receivers coming in early / staying late and getting use to the timing w/ each other.
They are off for five days straight.
They need to practice catching balls from HIM and not the JUGs machince
exaxctly
You heard about it last week, he put in a bunch time getting in extra work with Jordan and his Wrs on 3rd down routes and they worked on their ENDZONE routes… The extra work seemed to help SAM since he was actually pretty good against a good Panthers defense, even tho his Wrs did him no favors..
..
The extra work seemed to do SAM some good, but it didn’t help Jordan or Huff in this past game..
I come to this site for some sanity. Thanks. I would rather have chip kelly than about 29 other current NFL coaches.
oof 29, not so sure about that at this stage
http://deadspin.com/shirtless-eagles-fan-gives-deeply-uncomfortable-pregame-1738915915
The crowds that are in the Linc are much more reasonable except for some of the yahoos in the upper end zones. You still get plenty of these guys though in the parking lots before and after the game.
I couldnt even bring myself to click on that and watch when I read the headline. Ya, not surprising but not just Philly, NFL fans everywhere. Special breed.
Really isn’t that bad. Just a drunk guy making a fool of himself.
oh well that can be fun
It is a great time for a bye for multiple reasons. If the Eagles want to have a running shot at having something to play for in Jan., they need to go at least 3-1 out of the bye including beating the Boys.
need to win last 3 divisional games for sure
Giants game for sure. They could probably lose one of the Skins/Boys games but it means they need to likely win at least 2 of 3 vs Pas/Cards/Dolphins. I don’t see that happening.
I’d give this team a 50/50 shot of making the playoffs and winning the NFC East yet. Just how subpar the division is this year.
If the offense continues to look this moribund and the Eagles are home again in Jan for the 4th time in 5 years, then the boo birds will have some valid reasons to complain vociferously. Pretty far from the ‘gold standard’ language Lurie trots out annually in the offseason.
You do know that Lurie said “gold standard” one time in 2003, right?
He will never live that down. Part of me rolls my eyes when I still hear that brought up, but I can understand why. It’s something he never should have said.
Yeah I do but he uses some variation of it including lumping the Eagles into one of the best franchises in the NFL again this offseason.
They simply aren’t and that goes back a decade now. They have some moments since ’05 but it has generally been mediocrity with subpar performances in the postseason.
it is financially, which is prob what he cares about
All they have to do is win the division. Ask the Giants about how that went for them in 2011, with a team many considered mediocre.
we aren’t that kind of lucky
First time for everything. IMO this team is built such that if the chemistry finally clicks, all the pieces are in place to be a top tier team that can beat anyone.
ha, cmon. Just not seeing this WR group doing much or the QB for that matter
Giants’ teams were fairly unique though and I don’t see Bradford capable of putting together a playoff run like Eli has had done.
Bradford isn’t terrible. He just isn’t very good either with the Eagles being stuck in the same limbo they were at the end of Cunningham’s career until McNabb arrived. Just several QBs who have some moments but simply aren’t good enough to sustain a playoff run.
Maybe they do and Bradford really surprises me. I just don’t see him playing well in 3 or 4 consecutive playoff games.
no wrs and no 10-15 sack olb.
Yeah that is part of it but Bradford simply has put together an unimpressive 7-game stretch so far.
I guess he has shown some nominal improvement but I’ve given up that he is suddenly going to become hyper accurate, hit WRs consistently, or be a real difference-maker.
As long as he doesn’t continue to throw INTs, makes a couple of decent throws a game, and executes well in the red zone, that should be good enough to push this team to 9 wins.
To me, Bradford is just the same mediocrity he was with the Rams. Just is probably a marginally better option than Sanchez. Problem is that both of them in the bottom 1/3 of starting QBs in the NFL.
hasn’t had much time in the scheme. role players not giving any help.
Kind of rings hollow to me at this point 7 games in and given his lengthy track record with the Rams.
Sanchez did show improve almost right away under this offensive scheme vs his prior numbers (albeit a pretty low baseline) even if they leveled off to mediocrity overall.
sanchez had a full preseason and half the year on the bench. but i agree.
Connor Barwin is a 10-15 sack OLB.
i mean this year
Not this year.
Falcons have looked very beatable in the last few weeks
They have and given how prevalent injuries are in the NFL being the ‘best team’ at Week 7 means very little. Lots of possible attrition yet.
I just want to see improvement in the offense in so many ways that playoffs and January are meaningless at this point. I actually want to see Sanchez run the O, just to see what it looks like out of curiosity. Ya, that lol
Presented without comment
https://twitter.com/NFLCharean/status/659006762482184192
right thing to do. get a player in his prime. they can handle dez they can handle hardy. I don’t really have any issues w/ hardy on the sideline. Who wouldn’t be pissed in that situation — he was vocally trying to motivate his teammates. no one writes articles when tom brady is cursing up and down the sidelines.
ya that part was fine except those players that act like that who never won anything are doing no teammates any favors. Horrible leadership when it was TO, when it was Dez and esp from this clown. Basically undermining that coach and slapping his clip board was not good. Have some respect. For that guy coming from where he is doing that says it all. He should be thankful to be playing at all. They should dump him and let him hang out with Ray rice. At least Ray seemed to be remorseful. Being a great player is all that matters it seems.
Yeah it was overblown I thought. Hardy just is very vocal, has some skeletons in his closet, and now everything he does is under a microscope.
That kind of behavior is unacceptable at any level from any player. The fact that he’s a woman beating thug who should be behind a gridiron right now instead of on one only makes it worse.
He slapped the clipboard out of a coach’s hand, how is that not even a 1 game suspension? Oh, right, it’s Greg Hardy and he can do whatever he wants so long as he gets sacks.
by the league? he’s got 3 sacks and a ff in two games, i doubt jerry would let his ass touch the bench.
Are you a closet Cowboys fan? The way you speak of them really does seem that way.
yup, that’s why i spend all my time on this blog.
Clearly you wouldn’t be the only one that isn’t a fan and is constantly on this blog.
w/r/t hardy, it’s not like i like the guy, i’m just a realist about jerry. i also think anything hardy does is under a microscope right now.
I hear ya, I am also just messing with you so no need for explanations man.
There’s a line between being vocal/emotional and being an immature dickhead who handles frustration poorly.
None of Hardy’s teammates were motivated by that. Some were trying to get him to calm down, the rest were thinking “somebody shut this asshole up”
That wasn’t a Dawkins “dawgone chest” moment
That wasn’t Tom Brady telling his OC he knows he made a bad throw and to piss off, while sitting on the bench trying to get ready for the next drive.
That was the angry middle schooler who throws his helmet and stomps and pouts because he lacks the emotional maturity to handle adversity.
Yeah, I’ve seen Brady physically assault an assistant coach so many times… wait, I’ve never seen that. Did I just miss that, or are we mixing and matching circumstances?
“physically assault an assistant coach” ok
Under the law of some jurisdictions, knocking a possession out of a person’s hand is criminal assault. On a moral level, it’s long been accepted by most moral systems that a tool in hand (say, a crutch) is considered an extension of that person’s body. So, yeah. Physical assault.
it’s football. write or wrong that’s not the first notebook that got smacked in the heat of battle. if it wasn’t greg hardy no one would really care. it’s not like he pushed the guy. i’m not saying it’s right or exemplary but i think a lot of the commentary is fueled by people’s feelings about hardy.
And if Dez Bryant had done it we’d be saying the same about him. The point is the people who do things like that in the first place are immature d-bags with major self-control issues. The fact that it was Hardy is kind of part & parcel of the whole thing.
How is thIs any different than a student knocking the teaching plan out of a teacher’s hands right in front of thr whole class? Total lack of respect for anybody or anything.
And it’s a good thing – Hardy has earned the extra scrutiny of his actions. If he weren’t a millionaire NFL athlete, he’d be cooling his heels in jail and/or riding the merry-go-round of long probation supervision that I doubt he’d be able to comply with. His privileges have allowed him to escape consequences, and no one should forget that. And not just for their own safety, but for Hardy’s good, too; you keep enabling him, and IMO when he has a nearly inevitable massive blowout of some sort, and you share in the responsibility for his fate. If anyone on the Cowboys cared about him as a human being, they’d be trying to get him into an inpatient, intensive program to save him from himself. But obviously, no one does.
That’s Absurd ..no issue with Hardy? I don’t mind him getting in his teammates faces if they are lacking effort, but you can NOT condone GReg Hardy Interupting the ST coach when he is giving instruction to his KR unit that was about to go in the game… Even if you are OK with Hardy getting in the ST coaches face, at least wait TIL after he gets his KR unit set and into the game..
.,
Hardy is the last player that could afford to LOSE CONTROL like that. Naturally peiple will think, If this maniac can lose control like that on the sideline, imagine how scary he must be when he loses control in his personal life… You were accused of being a raging lunatic who terrorized a defenseless woman, and during your second NFL game on a team that gave you a chance, you act like a lunatic on the sideline! Not a good look
..
Cursing out teammates won’t win him any favours, but physically interfering with a coach is unacceptable.
PLEASE GOD,
Let Hardy do something dumber than normal after he signs and put the Cowboys in eternal cap hell.
Sincerely,
Everyone everywhere
Is there even such a thing as cap hell though? We heard about this for years with the Indigenous Peoples & even the Cowboys, yet nothing ever seemed to come from it.
Isn’t that how they lost Demarcus Ware?
Or Demarco Murray, or how they are still paying Miles Austin even though he hasn’t played for them in a couple of years.
For real? They’re still paying Miles? LOL
lol If I remember correctly they still owe him 5 mil for this year.
Maybe that’s why he’s dropping passes – thinking he’s still employed by the Cowboys?!
I don’t miss that guy at all.
Good point. I had forgotten that.
More like purgatory for the Cowboys, but might be hell for the Washington team.
2010 6-10
2011 8-8
2012 8-8
2013 8-8
2014 12-4 (“won” a playoff game)
2015 TBD (but doesn’t look good so far)
Let’s see how good they look when Romo is still on the books but sitting on the sidelines.
They are already there.
Because you 100% know that they won’t write any type of protection for themselves into the bonus contained in the deal.
P.S. If they rework Romo’s deal and push out the gaurenteed money to make it work, that would be okay too.
[…] the Eagles, this bye week couldn’t come at a better time […]
First half of the season I never ripped our OL, opting to take the wait and see approach and wait to see what these kids could grow into.. Obviously I wasn’t happy when the OL shit the bed in games early on and rips their play in an individual game, but it was way too soon for me to jump on the bandwagon and assume that chip made a mistake with his Guard evaluation…. We have seen some growth, but still need more info to know whether Chips handling of the,Guard Position was right or wrong..
.,
But one thing Im ready to bash chip about is that we really don’t have ANY Tackles on this roster with exception of our Starters… I understand the need of versatile backups who can play T and G, or C and G, but it’s become painfully obvious that we don’t have a single real back up Tackle… Gardner, Kelly, Tobin, Andrews all these kids belong at Guard.. We don’t have a True Tackle on our bench and That can’t ever happen again..
..
Hopefully Lane and JP DONT miss any more game time this year.. I can’t stand to watch Guards playing Tackle, and it’s not fair to expect anything more out of Tobin at LT than we saw in the Panthers game which certainly wasn’t GREAT
..
And I’m still scared to death about our backüp center position because I trust Josh Andrews more at Guard, and seeing him have to come in and make a,l our OL calls if KELCE misses any time scares the bejesus out of me..
..
I feel you brother I really hate the fact that the Eagles don’t have a decent swing tackle on this team. Versatility may be an important trait to Chip but he also needs to understand that you have to have players that can play one position at a respectable level.
…
As for Kelce, I honestly think he is hurt right now. His play this year has been mediocre at best. Now I know that he has new guys lining up next to him all the time but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be playing at a higher level.
I’m not as worried about Kelce not playing up to his potential the first half of this year, and it’s certainly plausible that he is playing banged up.. Some guys just have down years for whatever reason.. I assume if he is left alone, sooner or later he will work thru this funk… I’m way more worried about the fact that he isn’t the most durable Cat to begin with, and im not comfortable without having a solid backup Center on the bench..
..
the versatility in our backüp OLineman is Great, but the problems is all our backups are More Guard than they are Tackles, or More Guard than they are Centers… Need at least a backüp whp is more of a Tackle, but can also be asked to play Guard, and a backüp who is more of a center, that is also able to play some emergency Guard… Where as right now, all our Backups are Guards first and foremost..
..
But you are absolutely right that the lack of continuity with the guys Linning up next to KELCE is no excuse for some of the bonehead mistakes KELCE is making that we aren’t used to seeing… Even if he has a complete stranger Linning up next to him, no excuse for having crazy snaps flying all over the place looking like a man trying to piss with an erection…he needs to get it together.. Hopefully OL injuries stop so we can ATleast get some continuity going on that line
I think this team on offense is pressing. It’s mental mistakes and they aren’t letting the game come to them.
I don’t know how to get someone not to press so much besides just getting in their head that they just need to do what they do in practice.
O-line depth issues were a major concern coming into the season. Unfortunately, season has, thus far, pretty much worked out to our worst fears. Jekyll and Hyde O-line and QB play are the two biggest reasons the team is a game under .500 instead of 5-2 or better.
Losing Parkey was big. I know he wasn’t as good as last year but he’s still better than Sturgis.
Especially on kickoffs. Sturgis is Henery Jr.
Defense was a concern at the end of last season too.
Ranked 10th in the league in DVOA, so not so much. Fletcher was a concern, I’ll give you that.
Bradfords best games are losses and his worst games are wins…?
that says something but I just don’t know what
That he has been neither the biggest problem nor the biggest solution?
yeah, its like he is just a guy, that throws interceptions in the endzone, and sometimes doesn’t.
If that is the case I want Bradford to play bad for the rest of the season. I mean, if he wants to be here he should put the team first.
http://www.rotoworld.com/articles/cfb/46136/349/peshek-wr-metrics-20
This was posted a lot about Matthews and some other WRs during the draft. It still makes me sick to look at it.
hey a least he caught the ball then
Did you read to the end?
“he biggest player to watch out for here is Jordan Matthews who has a slightly above-average drop rate of 7.69%. There were a few 50/50 drops that I hedged on Matthews’ side for. He could realistically be anywhere between 7-11%. If you’re watching Matthews intently, keep an eye on his hands.”
6 days until the trade deadline. If Chip doesn’t want to trade for a WR then I completely understand that since he has 0 leverage on his side.
For the sake of just talking football, who are some good WRs that you would trade for?
maclin
Hopefully when Ags gets back he remembers how to catch the ball
its his chance to shine.
can’t wait for some sarcastic applause when a WR catches the ball at the linc
I didn’t want to do it for two WRs on the team but Matthews has forced me to.
Who are we going to trade?
Bradford, hahah jk
Great question. You’d have to assume it would be for an overpaid vet on a dead end team.
Peeping the standings; I’d take a run at Anquan Boldin. Niners are dead in the water, need to blow the whole thing up, and would spin guys off for later picks.
Boldin would catch all of those contested balls in traffic and really add a strong veteran voice to the mix.
good call. if only we could pry steve smith away too
That is 100% not a guy I want on my team to stabilizing things. Plus he already threatened the Ravens with retirement if they traded him.
I think he’d blow up the locker room
perfect timing
ok, but he is so tough, these young guys could learn a thing or two.
we don’t need stabilizing we need some one to catch a pass
An overpaid vet on a dead end team? Does Miles Austin count? Riley Cooper?
We might be down now, but I’ll be back at the top of the emotional roller coaster after we beat Dallas!
Bradford needs to beat dallas. then we can like him for a week
Bradford is down on my villains list right now. I’m way more worked up at other guys right now.
yeah im with you, but he still needs to pull a win out somehow….
He put the ball in guy’s hands during the CAR game. No much else a QB can do.
he can stop greasing up the ball I guess, no he played fine in that game, a lot of really perfect passes they just dropped.
Devin Hester. I bet he can still run off the safeties, and he would make the rest of our WRs hands appear improved, at least by comparison.
On short term IR. Not sure if/how he comes back.
But I like the skill set addition.
AND he is hurt?!?! How has this not happened already?
How about Vinny Curry and a pick for Alshon Jeffries?
Only thing about trading for Alshon is he is a free agent after this season and the Eagles would need to pony up to keep him. Also I dont think the Bears would want Curry since they also now run a 3-4. Without those circumstances I would do that trade in a heartbeat.
Well said.
I didn’t realize they were a 3-4 now. We have too many good, young DEs to keep them all active…Bair would seem appropriate.
I agree and it would be nice if we could get something in return for Curry. Anyone know of any 4-3 teams in need of a pass rushing DE that would be willing to part with a WR. Detroit? Would they really part with Megatron? I am drawing a blank on any other ideas of any other teams.
I think we are stuck with what we have…. Maybe Ags shows up after the bye. And maybe they throw the ball to him
I hear ya Will, I pretty much feel the same way. Detroit was the only team to pop in my head since they have a aging high paid wide receiver and are losing games.
Chip would just throw bubble screens to him anyway
lol You are so right. Lets trade for one of the biggest and best wideouts in history that makes catches over 3 people and throw screens to him all day. I can picture it now.
I can honestly go the rest of the season without seeing another WR screen. I don’t mind the RB screens but id like to do away with the some of the WR screens.
I agree wholeheartedly. Enough with the WR screens and actually give us more RB screens please. I feel like we don’t run enough of them.
I wanted Golden Tate before he signed that huge Detroit contract. He constantly fights off several DBs to CATCH the ball. He’s a deadly blocker at times, plays bigger than he really is.
I am with you 100% Mags I wanted him here to. His YAC in this offense is what is really missing on this team. He would have been a huge upgrade over Jordan in the slot and can also play the outside.
I do like players who play to win.
Tate would be a big spark to this offense. Can get vertical as well.
We don’t have the cap for Megatron
I was mostly speaking hypotheticals but I am sure if the trade was executed their would be a plan in place on a reworked contract.
Alshon is a VERY interesting situation. He’s a free agent at the end of the year, but the Bears are somewhat irked at his propensity to sit out games.
“somewhat irked at his propensity…” Lovely use of the language.
Fitzzzzzzzzz
I wish…
No way they part ways with him with them winning games and him having a career year through the first 6 games.
That was a joke and more of a trip to memory lane of good old TATE.
Culture and talent.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000500229/article/austin-collie-scores-in-debut-with-cfls-bc-lions
Collie and his 26 concussions. I don’t know why a guy like that would keep risking his future health to play football at any level.
Three. Alleged. Besides, just throwing names out there, like everyone else. Also, he played with Brady and really likes his current young quarterback, who has been compared somewhat to Russell Wilson, only taller. See, you’ve got to pay attention to the goings-on out here in the wild and woolly Pacific Northwest! We have toilets that flush, now! ;~)
3 in 21 months, that is crazy.
Vjax
I had on WIP a little on my way home from work and someone called in a suggested that the Eagles trade Denver Demarco Murray to get back Emmanuel Sanders and Brock Osweiler. He then said we should also ask for Evan Mathis back in the trade as well. People like that is why fans the call into radio stations have a reputation for being stupid.
That would actually be a fair trade IMO. I’m not the biggest fan of Osweiler but Sanders would immediately give us a boost to the WR performance. Although we do have to gamble with Mathews being healthy for an entire season.
Sanders is a young pro bowl wide receiver. By all reports, Denver is high on Osweiler and considers him to be their QB of the future when Manning is gone. There is no way they would trade both of them for a running back on a huge contract.
Since we are paying more money for RBs than every other team and our run game is starting to work, I hope we recommit to our run game,.
..
With what our defense is growing into, I would like to see our Identity, just for the time being, to change into a team that wants to play defense and run the ball to win games… In a normal offense that would mean the QB only throwing 20-25 times a game, but in OUR offense, even if we run the damn ball 40 times a game, there will still be 30-40 pass plays for the QB….Obviously in games like the cowboys game we can’t run 40 times when we can’t get anything going so you have to pass 50 times… But while the games are close and the run is working, wish we would commit to the run at least on 1st and 2nd down.. The defense putting extra playërs in the box is no excuse to abandon the run, because we are allowed to counter by putting extra blockers on the line…
..
if we run on 1st and 2nd down, unless we get called for a penalty there is a good chance we won’t face many 3rd and 9s… I’d like to see us go overboard with our run game, until a defense can do what the Cowboys did to us and force us to pass.. Get in your two TE sets and start pounding the ball until a defense forces us To abandon the run which really hasn’t happened since before the Jets game…
..
carolina doesn’t run as many plays as us in a game, no reason they should feed their RBs more than we are…. mathews needs the ball more, but he doesn’t need to take Carries from Murray…For what we invested in our run game, a QB coming back from a two year absence and a bunch of young WR’s that need to be developed, our run game has been working well enough to where we should NOT be seeing SAM throw 50 times.. Our RB’s are the best players in our offense, so First and Formost, Murray AND Mathews should get their carries, and then the WRs can eat the left overs.., while Mathews averages 6 yards per carry, their is no reason he shouldn’t get his touches at least when we get off more than 65 plays per game..
..
We have the best stable of RBs, we are paying more for our RB’s than most teams, and our RBs are our best Offensve weapons, so there is no reason why our 3 RB’s shouldnt combine for ATLEAST 40 carries…. ESPECIALLY Now when our offense does Nothing in the first half.. What the hell do we have to lose while the offense keeps struggling in the first half, why not struggle on the backs of our best players, whch is our stable RBs.
..
As bad as our offense was, they were wearing that Panthers defense Down.. Can’t imagine how much more they could have worn them down had we eliminated 14 passes on 1st and 2nd down, and gave those extra 14 carries to Mathews… Murray and Mathews are two of our best offensive players, so unless a,defense completely shuts them down, there is no reason why both shouldn’t get their touches first and Formost..and if our offense is going to struggle in the first half, at least struggling while we run the ball, still wears down a defense like body blows early in a fight that don’t start to pay dividends TIL later in the fight…need to recommit to our run game, to the point where our RBs are getting more carries than the Panthers, as long as we are getting off 65 plus plays in a game of course.
..
The ONLY games where we should have thrown for 45 plus times is the Falcons game because we were down 3 Tds and the Cowboys game because we couldn’t gain a yard on the ground… Since the Jets game, there has been no reason to pass 45 plus times… When you are struggling, and when you are in a BIG Game, your best players NEED the ball… And it’s pretty obvious that our RBs are better than a bunch of kids at Wr..
..
Need to Play a style more dependant on Defense and Running the ball… Which n turn, would open up more play action,take pressure off our WR puppies and hopefully allow them to get out of this slump.. if we are going to have 3 stud veteran RB’s, we NEED to USE THEM….
..
The rest of the year, we should NEVER see a game where both Mathews and Murray didn’t get at lest 15 carries each
we have 1 stud, 1 multi purpose weapon, and Demarco Murray.
but we should absolutely use the hell out of them all until some one catches a pass.
OT:
Is anyone watching the World Series?
Since I live in Queens I guess I can’t pass a bar without being dragged in to watch the Mets.
So who are you rooting for?
No.
Royals.
F NY
The Cubs? ;~)
I wish the Cubs would have made the series.
always root for the NL, but watch? maybe
Maybe if it was the Cubs. I’m an NL guy, but I don’t want to see NY win anything except for an outbreak of cholera.
well you’re right I tried rooting for the Mets but its impossible. NY sucks.
go royals.
the other answer is: Baseball is DEAD
Not the Mets.
Not watching
So the Flyers have 7 games before the Eagles play again………….. I’m thinking 7-0!
Are the Flyers any good this year? It seems like just a couple of years ago they were in the playoffs, then traded away some decent players. I’m not a huge Flyers fan, but do remember some of the glory days.
Go Parent! Oops, sorry. Go Hextall! Oops, sorry, who’s there now?
Not really. They’ll be lucky to sneak into the playoffs.
http://www.fantstore.com/products/86794-NPT.jpg
I think they have a shot. They are absolutely a better coached team this year. The Metro is a tough division this year, and right now I’m hoping they can sneak 7th or 8th seed. I know there’s no trophies for improving from the year before, but already they look like a legitimate hockey team.
It might also be that they got rid of Grossman and MacDonald which were the 2 defensemen causing all the turnovers last year (or at least 80%). Addition by subtraction I guess.
NYR, NYI, Was are the 3 from the metro
Mon, TB 2 of 3 from Atlantic
I can’t decide if Det or Fla gets the 3rd one, but I think both make the playoffs.
Which leaves one spot between Phi, Pitt, Ottawa, and possibly NJ.
Ottawa frequently throws themselves down the toilet, don’t they?
You could very well be right.
I hope, but at least I won’t be frustrated by watching overpaid defensemen ruining the game.
I wish to see the young guys come up, but have to be patient.
I spoke too soon. Down 2-0 to the Sabres?
SMH
https://twitter.com/YahooSports/status/659149950903832576
Where’s his arms?
He probably still has better hands than 2/3 of our receivers.
look out!
Which fits because he only has 2/3 of the hand of one of our receivers.
they are in Miami
Good thing no Djax on this team, would be worthless: Bradford is 0-17, 2 INT on passes 21-25 yards downfield. Only successful play is 1 DPI.
How many of those are drops?
One was a bad throw to Ertz in the EZ. Ertz basically caught it for Landon Collins on his facemask.
I remember that throw
You don’t remember how he “played” in his contract year? “For who, for what” personified. Yes, he runs fast when he wants to.
Some eye bleach for the awful WR play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vtyfcLYCNk
Was talking about trading for this guy too.. Late round pick for him if his only problem is smoking weed.. Hopefully a year off would have fixed that
Too bad the trade will never happen. I’d even give up our first if that was all that they wanted. Gordon made Hoying or McCown or whoever their damn QB was last year look decent.
It seems to me that fans who defended Donovan McNabb for ten years because of the poor quality of his receivers should cut Bradford a little slack when he’s working with Riley Cooper and Miles Austin as his two outside receivers.
Did McNabb ever have to work with wide receivers this bad? Freddie “The People’s Champ” Mitchell would be the top receiver on this team.
I think part of it is media hype. Since the trade we were all sold this story about his accuracy to the point now there many people literally criticizing every throw to the point of..if it’s not perfect it was a bad pass. Even the media now can’t help themselves. Anytime he throws a completed pass it comes with a disclaimer…”slightly underthrown”…”could have lead him a bit more”…little by little our expectations are shaped to believe Bradford should have video game accuracy on every throw. It’s really unfair. Even Brady and Rodgers need help from their receivers from time to time.
Don’t know how many times this year I’ve screamed at the TV “First Down Freddie would’ve caught that!”