In Good Hands

Posted: May 9th, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 2 Comments »

Players come and go. Coaches, too. Teams have long term success based on ownership and the front office. The Eagles have been successful because Jeff Lurie is a good owner and Howie Roseman does a good job of running the team.

Kevin and Ben are data and analytics guys. The Eagles were one of the first teams to embrace that side of things so it isn’t a surprise that they are highly regarded by those two.

The Eagles using data wouldn’t mean too much if they didn’t win games. They see this as a way to help the players and coaches. They hired Nick Sirianni in part because he was open to using data. Doug Pederson used that info to help the team win the Super Bowl in 2017. I still remember Cris Collinsworth being almost shocked when the Eagles went for it on fourth down late in the game. Those of us who had watched the team all season long knew it was a no-brainer.

Howie is masterful when it comes to moving up and down in the draft. You can disagree with his picks, but he almost always gets good value.

https://twitter.com/RichEisenShow/status/1785728361299615956

Howie does a lot of trading, all year round. He takes chances. Some work out (Darius Slay, CJ Gardner-Johnson) and some don’t (Robert Quinn, Golden Tate). The key thing is to learn from your mistakes and to keep trying. The Eagles don’t win the Super Bowl without trades for CB Ronald Darby and RB Jay Ajayi.

Drafting is complicated since that involves a lot of different people and circumstances. The Jalen Reagor pick was bad. No one disputes that. Getting Jalen Hurts in the second round made that shit sandwich easier to swallow. QBs are critical and hard to quantify in terms of value. Finding a star QB at pick 53 is very rare.

The last few draft classes show a lot of promise and the Eagles have a good amount of young talent in place. Time will tell us how good that talent is.

Finding talent is only part of the equation. You have to find a way to pay them. Credit for this goes to both Lurie and Howie. Lurie is willing to spend aggressively. Howie has hired terrific cap experts and they have allowed the Eagles to structure deals in the most beneficial way possible.

Will Laws over at SI.com had some thoughts on the Eagles and contracts.

Looking at that outsized figure made me wonder how much of this the Eagles have done. I knew they’d done at least some of it. Turns out, every big Philly deal has void years: Jalen Hurts ($97.55 million), DeVonta Smith ($35.78 million), Jordan Mailata ($35.6 million), Landon Dickerson ($35.09 million), Darius Slay ($24.94 million), Dallas Goedert ($23.83 million), Lane Johnson ($22.48 million), James Bradberry ($21.39 million), Josh Sweat ($16.39 million), Chauncey Gardner-Johnson ($13.76 million), Brandon Graham ($10.27 million), Jake Elliott ($8.61 million) and, of course, Brown.

By my math, those 13 contracts have more than $399 million in cap dollars moved into years that void at the end of those deals—and there’s more of that on shorter-term deals such as those the Eagles gave to Devin White and Zack Baun.

That’s a staggering figure, and it explains why Philly seems to have so much flexibility each year.

So, in practical terms, what does it mean?

First and foremost, and similar to New Orleans, it shows a very real commitment from ownership to winning, because all of that money being accounted for three and four and five years from now is matched with cash going out the door during the actual life of the deal. Indeed, last year, against a $224.8 million cap, the Eagles spent $257.2 million in cash, third league-wide behind only the Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens. This year, Philly is one of two teams set to spend more than $300 million in cash (Cleveland is the other one).

All told, Philly could approach $600 million in player spending over a two-year span through which the cap is at $480.6 million. Again, it’s a tribute to Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, because a lot of owners would not be willing to do that.

Second, that money doesn’t disappear against the cap. And this is where things get interesting. Because the figures have to be accounted for, the Eagles will walk a tightrope financially in offloading players at the right time (remember, the above numbers assume you see every deal through, and savings can be had if you cut ties early), spending on the right guys and drafting well to supplement years when more dead money is taken on.

In other words, GM Howie Roseman and the front office are gambling to win now, and that they’ll get a lot of things right going forward. Because a reckoning would come for them if they don’t.

There is risk in this approach, but it also gives you opportunities. That’s how you can afford to sign Saquon Barkley and star receivers and Bryce Huff and CJGJ and so on. Going for it on fourth down is a risk. So is this. When it is executed correctly, it gives the Eagles an advantage.

If you try to win playing by the same rules as everyone else, you better be incredibly good at picking players. The Eagles are smart enough to look for any edge they can get.

There are certainly things to be critical of when it comes to Lurie and Howie. Anyone owning or running a team is going to make mistakes and have some awkward moments. Those two get more right than wrong and that’s helped the Eagles to have a winning record in 6 of the past 7 years. They went to a pair of Super Bowls, winning one.

I’m really interested to see how the team does in 2024 after a miserable ending to 2023.

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