Not So Dumb

Football teams are chemistry experiments.

I try to make this point on a regular basis because I think it is a good way to explain the amount of change from one season to the next as well as changes within a single season.

The 2004 Eagles had Donovan McNabb, Terrell Owens, Brian Westbrook, Todd Pinkston, Freddie Mitchell, L.J. Smith and a good OL. They were a dominant offense and outstanding team. The 2005 Eagles brought back most of those guys. Pinkston got hurt and Mitchell left, but Reggie Brown was added to the mix. McNabb had to play through injuries and of course TO went TO. The talent was similar, but the circumstances very different and the results were very different as well.

The 2010 Eagles started with Kevin Kolb at QB. He struggled in a big way. Michael Vick took over and it looked like a completely different team. One player made an astonishing difference.

Not that long ago, critics were all over Doug Pederson and Mike Groh. They didn’t know how to run the offense. Frank Reich was the real key to the Eagles success. Changes were coming in the offseason and no one was safe.

Now let’s talk about the last four weeks.

vs WAS … 28 points … 436 yards
@ DAL … 23 points … 256 yards
@ LAR … 30 points … 381 yards
vs HOU … 32 points … 519 yards

Somehow Pederson and Groh became less dumb in a month. The OL started to peak and that made a big difference. Skill players began really stepping up. Nick Foles started hitting on some deep balls that Carson Wentz had missed.

The coaches did adjust the gameplan for the last two weeks. They felt things had gotten too bloated and complicated. They wanted to go back more to basics. Those changes have worked well.

You have to understand that Pederson and Groh have been making adjustments all year long. The adjustments just weren’t working. This is no different than a chemist tweaking a formula to try to get the desired results from a mixture.

“Let’s add a tad more sodium citrate dihydrate and see if that does the trick.”

If it doesn’t, you keep working.

Think of the changes from 2017 to 2018. The staff in 2017 had their top four WRs healthy most of the year. They had three talented, veteran TEs. They had three good RBs to work with. The OL was fairly healthy, aside from JP’s injury.

The 2018 staff had all kinds of WR injuries to deal with. The #3 TE missed most of the year. The #2 TE is a rookie. RBs have been coming and going all year long. The OL has dealt with nagging injuries for much of the season. And the QB missed a lot of offseason practice while rehabbing a torn ACL. He then dealt with a back issue that was more serious than anyone knew.

Even if you return Flip and Reich to this year’s staff, the results for 2018 weren’t going to be the same. There were just too many issues for this group to be dominant like they were last year.

Doug Pederson is still a good coach. He’s still a smart coach.

You may have questions about Mike Groh, but you do have to understand that he was dealing with tougher circumstances than we might have realized.

There has been real improvement by the Eagles offense this year. They are playing their best football of the season at the right time and they should put up solid numbers again this week.

If this group gets to the postseason, that will make for an interesting test.

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Reich and the Colts offense have slowed down a bit. They were shutout four weeks ago. They haven’t scored more than 28 points in the last three weeks.

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Great video here from Doug.

Coach Pederson breaks down the tape from Sunday's dramatic win over the Houston Texans.#FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/WZ8pEm8jVn

— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) December 26, 2018

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