Eagles Blog

Some coaches think any good idea can work. Big mistake. A play might work on paper but the paper wont be blocking Reggie White #Parcellsisms

— Bill Parcells (@Parcellsisms) July 4, 2014

So true.

Pretty good 12-year run.

#NFC East W-L rec since ‘02: #Eagles (113-78-1), #Giants (104-88), #Cowboys (102-90), #Redskins (78-114) #NFL

— Russell S. Baxter (@BaxFootballGuru) June 22, 2014

Apparently Earl Wolff likes Malcolm Jenkins.

Jenkins is mentoring Wolff on and off the field. This should help the young player’s development.

Me and the big homie @MalcolmJenkins  after mini camp practice. NO FLY ZONE Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Big Homie

Receiver Ifeanyi Momah was a major disappointment last summer. There was a lot of curiosity around him, but he never impressed. Momah is playing much better this summer. He still might be a long shot to make the team, but at least he has a chance this time around.

Momah is trying to use his size advantage this time around, something he didn’t do last summer.

“Last year, I was playing down as just a regular receiver. Now, I’m trying to use my size. If anybody is around me, it doesn’t matter, I’m the biggest guy out there. It’s kind of like basketball, box them out. Take the ball and stay up and score. Right now, I’m realizing my size and I’m using it to my advantage,” Momah said.

“I feel a lot more comfortable with my routes, just overall as a receiver. Now, I can play freer and I feel better. I feel like I have a little more talent, a little more hop in my step. I feel good. I feel like this year is a big difference from last and I’m ready.”

I look forward to seeing him in action this summer.

Kinda funny.

@lawlornfl have you seen Chip Kelly's profile at http://t.co/aB5YdDN12h? Priceless. pic.twitter.com/sUZGudaof8

— Dan Thies (@danthies) June 19, 2014

Happy Birthday to the best Eagles WR of the early 1990s.

#PhillySportsBirthday June 17, 1966: Fred Barnett (Eagles) [48 years old] pic.twitter.com/p7Rg2exbnQ

— PhillySportPast (@PhillySportPast) June 17, 2014

Fred was a lot of fun to watch. He was a terrific deep ball receiver and made some huge plays over the years. He also had an unusual style of running that helped him to stick out like a sore thumb when he was flying down the field.

Geoff Mosher posted some Eagles Observations today. I’ll start with his final point for the one that I liked the most.

10. This year will be my 10th season covering the Eagles, third for CSN Philly. Hard to believe a decade has passed since I started doing this, not to mention all the surreal news events that happened in between. One of my first Eagles assignments at the Wilmington News Journal was the infamous “next question” press conference staged by Drew Rosenhaus at T.O.’s mansion in Moorestown. Seems like yesterday. I probably think about that day once a week. If there’s one thing that’s stayed consistent throughout the years, it’s the Eagles’ keeping reporters on their toes. I’m thankful for that.

And now for some football talk.

7.  I don’t think first-round pick Marcus Smith is working on Connor Barwin’s side merely because the all-encompassing “Jack” position presents an opportunity for Smith to learn everything about the position. If Smith can play the “Jack,” Barwin can occasionally slide over to “Predator” (Trent Cole’s spot) and get more chances to rush the passer. Barwin played a similar role in 2012, when he racked up 11 sacks as a second-year pro with the Texans. At the very least, if Billy Davis can get Barwin and Smith on the field at the same time, it creates more guesswork for the offense than when Cole and Barwin are both on the field. Teams will have a harder time figuring out which one’s rushing and which one’s dropping.

I do agree that the coaches would like to see Barwin and Smith on the field at the same time. That gives them size and versatility.

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Chip Kelly is a coach’s coach. He loves the game of football. He loves going to clinics and talking/learning about the game. While at Oregon, Kelly visited NFL teams to see how they did things. He was always looking for new ideas.

Now the tables have turned. Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury came to Philly recently. Sheil Kapadia covered this in a recent post.

Chip Kelly crossed paths with several coaches in his various travels this offseason.

One coach who came to see Kelly in Philadelphia was Texas Tech’s Kliff Kingsbury. The Red Raiders averaged 35.8 points and 510.7 yards per game in Kingsbury’s first season there.

Speaking to FoxSports.com’s Bruce Feldman on The Audible podcast, Kingsbury explained what he got out of his visit.

“I went to Philadelphia and met with those guys, the Eagles coaches, just to see what they were doing differently at that level,” he said.

“I thought he’s done a great job of staying consistent in who he was at Oregon, bringing it up there and believing in it and excelled. A lot of the same concepts they were successful with at Oregon, they’re running and being successful with in one of the top offenses in the NFL. So it was fun to see that. Everybody says, ‘Well that offense can’t work in the NFL.’ He kind of went up there and showed everybody it could. So it was fun to be around that, and hopefully we take some stuff from what I saw up there and incorporate it into our game and get better this year.”

This also keeps the Eagles-Pats-Kelly-Belichick thing going since Kingsbury was drafted by the Pats back in 2003 and spent that season with the team.

The Eagles had a dynamic offense last year. Can they repeat that? One thing that will help them is facing the mediocre to awful defenses of the NFC East.

Mike Tanier put together a rating system for the best front sevens in football. Two of the worst groups in the league belong to the NFC East.

29. New York Giants

Losing Linval Joseph and Justin Tuck is going to hurt. Joseph was a mountainous presence inside, and while Tuck’s competitive fire was starting to look like the barbecue pit after a long weekend, he could still ramp it up and dominate in short stretches. Youngsters Johnathan Hankins and Damontre Moore hope to step up, and Robert Ayers provides some depth as a rotation defender, but that is not a fair exchange, at least this year. Jason Pierre-Paul is either a Comeback Player of the Year candidate or vaporware.

The Giants line has gotten younger, but the linebackers have gotten older. The plucky late-round and free agent rookies of the 2011 Super Bowl run are still here — Spencer Paysinger, Mark Herzlich, Jacquian Williams — and they still would look much better as a special teams brigade than as regular contributors (though Paysinger has become a decent run defender). Jon Beason is back after his 2013 rebirth, while Jameel McClain arrives to test the theory that if your idea to improve your defense involves someone from the 2012 Ravens, you need a much better idea.

The Giants defense recorded just 33 sacks last year, 14 of them from linemen who are now gone. Most of the team’s rebuilding resources went to the offense. Maybe Hankins and Moore will pay dividends in a year or two, but they will need additional reinforcements, particularly at linebacker.

And…

32. Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys lost DeMarcus Ware, Jason Hatcher and (in the saddest, most ridiculous minicamp story of the year) Sean Lee from a defense that allowed 2,056 rushing yards and recorded just 36 sacks last year. Henry Melton arrives as a younger, more system-suited replacement for Hatcher, but everything else is a shambles. Bruce Carter, Justin Durant and DeVonte Holloman form the most anonymous linebacker corps in the league, and only Carter has any significant starting experience. Anthony Spencer may start the season on the PUP list as he battles back from microfracture surgery on his knee. And of course, the Cowboys are so cap-stressed that they wouldn’t be able to sign a veteran reinforcement, even if one becomes available this late in the offseason.

The wisest thing the Cowboys could do is insert rookies Demarcus Lawrence and Anthony Hitchens into the rotation quickly and let them learn on the job. The Cowboys did not get into this predicament by doing the wise thing. But they are so thin and talent-poor that they may not have a choice.

Ouch.

As for the Eagles…they didn’t get mentioned. Only the best and worst teams got covered. My guess is that they would have been middle of the pack (15 to 20).

* * * * *

Sheil Kapadia did a roundup of NFC East notes.

Sounds like Jerry Jones was just dying to pick Johnny Football. And life is never boring for DeSean Jackson.

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Cary Williams was the hot topic last year, but for the wrong reasons. This spring he is at the OTAs and trying to help the defense take the next step.

“Did I miss some of these? No doubt,” he said. “But I am a team player and a family guy and someone who is seen in the locker room as a guy who can be trusted. I missed out on that at this time last year, and some of my actions were misunderstood to a degree. At the end of the day, I still don’t regret what I did. I felt like I was doing the right thing for me and for my family. That was the first time I had ever missed OTAs, and I had neglected a lot of family things for a while.”

Williams is still trying to get the defense to play with more of a nasty streak.

“It’s just about being physical at the point of attack,” Williams said when asked to define nasty. “When you’re getting 11 guys to the ball, you’re getting guys swarming, getting guys hitting, and you’re hearing contact. You’re getting guys with no YAC [yards after the catch]. We have a lot of guys in our locker room who are capable of doing that, and now that we have a year under our belt in this system, you can look forward to us being a lot more physical and a lot more dynamic on defense.”

They can’t do much about that now, but hopefully the physicality will show up in Training Camp and the preseason.