Iggles Blitz

by Tommy Lawlor

Roster Work

Posted February 15th, 2024 | 1 Comment »

Free agency officially begins at 4 p.m. on March 13. Until then, teams can only sign players who are currently available. The Eagles decided to make such a move this week.

Who?

Good teams need depth. Okwara can help the Eagles at edge rusher. He’s not a future starter, but can be part of a good pass rushing rotation. Okwara is 6-4, 239 so he’s got more of a LB build than a DE. The fact the Eagles are giving him more than the minimum tells you this is a player they wanted and think has a realistic shot of making the team and contributing.

Obviously Okwara won’t be guaranteed anything. He’ll have to win a roster spot and earn any playing time. This is a low risk move with limited upside, but it makes good sense. The upcoming draft doesn’t appear to have great depth so you need to find players anywhere you can. Okwara isn’t anything special. All 32 teams had the chance to sign him. The Eagles either made the best offer or the only offer. We’ll have to find that out over time. Still, this is a player they wanted.

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This is interesting.

Jackson was due to make $12M this year so the Bears cut him. He turned 30 in December and isn’t the same guy who made the Pro Bowl in 2018 and 2019, but could be a good fit for the Eagles.

Reed Blankenship is a starting safety. Sydney Brown looks like he could be a starting safety, but is coming off a torn ACL. He’ll miss most of 2024. The Eagles could use a place-holder. Jackson knows Fangio’s scheme and could be a good fit as a band-aid for the upcoming season. He is coming off the least productive season of his career, though, so he’s hardly someone to get excited about.

The Eagles will add another young safety, whether as a mid-round pick or UDFA. Jackson would have value in helping to tutor the young guys in how to play Fangio’s scheme and how to deal with Fangio himself.

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Speaking of Fangio, here is an interesting piece on him from a former player’s perspective.

“I think that the gripe from the guys — it’s not that they don’t like (Fangio),” Quintin Demps, who played his first two seasons (2008-09) with the Eagles, told NJ Advance Media. “It’s just that they don’t like the demand. His meetings are long. It’s just a day and time now where like, ‘Do we need to meet this long and go over this?’ I doubt guys dislike him personally. It’s more so about how he’s old school about going about his business. He’s a great human being, but he is stuck in his ways, right? He’s an older coach, a veteran coach, got some swag. But I think if he can just adjust a little bit to the times, man, he would really, really get a defense to buy in again.” Demps said he was also “stuck in his ways” when Fangio introduced unfamiliar concepts to him that he didn’t want to learn as a 10-year veteran. But after reflecting, Demps wishes he could go back and embrace his former coordinator, whom he described as a “genius” and very detailed.

It will be interesting to see how Fangio and Nick Sirianni mesh. Fangio is an old school grinder. Sirianni is a grinder as well, but also embraces modern players. He is willing to dial back things to try and accomodate what works well with players these days. To be fair, Demps played for Fangio back in 2017. That was a while ago so we don’t know how much has changed since then.

I personally don’t care if Fangio forces the players to eat veggie burgers, drink non-alcoholic beer and watch Megaforce all day as long as he can build a good defense. Suffering through 2023 was miserable. Give me a good defense at all costs.

Even this.

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Context

Posted February 13th, 2024 | Comments Off on Context

The Eagles got off to a 10-1 start. That was the best record in the league, but anyone who watched games would agree that the Niners were the best team in the league. They lost some games when they had injured players. When healthy, SF was dominating most opponents.

What did that get them?

A trip to the Super Bowl (good) and a painful loss (not so good).

No one who watched the Chiefs during the season thought they were the best team. They went 11-6, which is certainly good, but they had a lot of issues. Dropped passes were a huge problem, costing them a couple of games. Penalties were an issue. Erratic blocking was an issue.

But KC won the Super Bowl.

Andy Reid made some adjustments to his offense. Receivers quit dropping balls and started making plays. The OL played better. And Patrick Mahomes continued to be Patrick Mahomes.

Sports can be so funny. You can have a team dominate the regular season, but a playoff loss ruins it all. Another team can be up and down during the season, but then get hot in the playoffs and they get a place in history. The Chiefs are now a dynasty, having won 3 Super Bowls. The Niners look cursed, having lost 2 Super Bowls in five years.

If a couple of plays go differently, KC has one title and the Niners have a couple of more Lombardi’s in their trophy case. There is a fine line between success and failure. Right now Kyle Shanahan is all too familiar with the bad side of that line.

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There is an old saying…”to the victor goes the spoils”. That is certainly true in sports.

A year ago Jalen Hurts got a lot of hype. He led the Eagles to the Super Bowl and played at a really high level. Hurts was listed as a top QB on all the offseason lists. He got a ton of praise.

This year didn’t end so well for Hurts or the Eagles. Hurts deserves his share of blame for how things went, just like he deserved credit for how things went in 2022. Hurts won’t be considered a Top 10 QB by a lot of people this offseason.

That is absolutely fair. You can’t take just the good. You have to mix in all of his results.

If player evaluation is done right, it is constantly changing. Very few players stay at the same level every single year. James Bradberry went from being a good CB to one of the worst in the league. Jordan Mailata was better in 2023 than he was in 2022.

You always take in the newest information and make your evaluation.

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The Eagles gave Reddick permission to talk to other teams so he could get a better idea of what his contract value is. They aren’t necessarily looking to trade him and he sure didn’t request a trade.

The Eagles want him to be happy, but they know he’s not right now. He wants more money, which makes sense on his production. But as I mentioned in the previous post, Reddick isn’t a fit for all 32 teams. That is going to affect his value. He’s also getting older and still lacks ideal size. Just how much of a raise do you give him?

The two sides need to figure this out in the next month so they can plan for free agency.

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We all get emotional when watching sports. We yell mean, sometimes awful, things at the TV.

“Cut that bum!”

“Get him the heck out of Philly!”

But players are people. They have real feelings and emotions. I feel terrible every time I rip James Bradberry because I’ve heard he’s a good guy.

Siposs really hurt the Eagles in the Super Bowl, but I certainly don’t wish ill on him in real life. I hate that he had to go through something like this.

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