The Chiefs beat the Titans today to improve to 5-0. And there’s this note from trainer Rick Burkholder (formerly with Eagles, now in KC).
With our win in TN, Andy Reid has recorded a win against all 32 NFL teams.
— Rick Burkholder (@proatc) October 7, 2013
Very cool.
I like this.
Eli has lost 7 of his last 9 starts to Eagles. But he has 96.4 passer rating in those 9 games (58.5 completion, 7.4 YPA, 23 TD, 8 INT)
— Paul Domowitch (@pdomo) October 6, 2013
Let’s make it 8 out of 10.
Football coaches like to break seasons down into quarters. That keeps players from getting too far up or down, and also from looking too far ahead. For my PE.com piece, I wrote about where the Eagles stand after the first quarter of the season.
One of the key points is that we don’t know much about the team yet. Last year the Eagles were 3-1 at this juncture. This year 1-3. Last year’s team fell apart. We’ll see what happens with this group. I feel pretty confident there won’t be a 1-11 finish.
LeSean McCoy likes facing the Giants.
11–82-1
10-28
14-111-1
10-64
24-128-1
23-113
23-123
10-45
Career numbers: 125 carries – 694 yards – 5.6 ypc
Average game: 16 carries – 87 yards
I’ll be surprised if Shady doesn’t surpass both numbers on Sunday.
Over the last 2 years Michael Vick has taken a lot of heat for holding the ball too long. He’s hearing that criticism now and isn’t happy.
“Listen, whoever’s saying I’m holding the ball too long, they don’t know anything about football,” Vick said later. “They need to go watch the film. I’m gonna post some film up for y’all and I’m gonna have a clicker right here. And we’re gonna go through every play so I can break it down, verbatim, play for play for you.”
That’s a bit over the top from Mike. There are plays when he holds the ball too long. I do think some plays are by design so in those cases it is what he’s supposed to do.
As for watching tape with him…I’d love that. I don’t know that Mike would be prepared for how smart some fans/media are these days. My guess is that he’d be shocked at some of the things that people noted.
I don’t like this one bit.
Panthers source says they are working a trade that would send pro bowl LB Jon Beason to the Giants, who sorely need defensive help
— Jay Glazer (@JayGlazer) October 4, 2013
Late round compensation being discussed in exchange for Beason
— Jay Glazer (@JayGlazer) October 4, 2013
Beason has had multiple surgeries, and passing a physical is no given. That said, if he passes, he'll be a member of the Giants
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) October 4, 2013
The Giants need LB help and Beason is still a good leader and okay player. Reportedly one reason he’s available is that he’s a FA at the end of the year.
Sheil Kapadia posted his notes on the offense from the Denver game. Here’s what he had to say about Michael Vick.
* This will probably surprise some, but I thought Michael Vick was the least of the Eagles’ problems on Sunday. Coming off of a horrendous performance vs. the Chiefs, he made several “tight window” throws, and the first half was probably as accurate as he’s been all season. Vick finished 14-for-27 for 248 yards, but two of those balls were throw-aways, and I counted four drops (two by LeSean McCoy, one by Brent Celek and one by DeSean Jackson). In other words, of Vick’s 25 aimed throws, 18 were catchable.
* Specific plays that stood out: Vick showed good patience and made a nice throw to Celek for 24 yards in the first. Good ball placement to James Casey, allowing him to pick up yards after the catch. Great throw into a tight window to Jackson for 14 yards on 3rd-and-5 in the first. Terrific throw to Riley Cooper near the sideline as he was getting pressured for 15 yards in the second. Nice job reading the blitz and dumping the ball off to McCoy for 21 yards in the second.
* How did the Broncos attack Vick? On 36 pass plays, they only blitzed him eight times, or 22.2 percent of the time. On those plays, he was 4-for-5 for 77 yards. He was also sacked twice and ran once. On non-blitz throws, he was 10-for-22 for 171 yards.
* Vick had seven total rushes for 41 yards. None was by design. All were called pass plays where he took off.
Sheil always has an interesting take on things. Good stuff.
On a beautiful day in Denver, it was hard to imagine Peyton Manning being better. Ever. We’ve been saying that for a month now, since the seven-touchdown-pass extravaganza on a stormy opening Thursday night rout of the Ravens. But Sunday, the 37-year-old quarterback living out his wildest dreams continued this run of greatness that is unprecedented even to him.
On Manning’s final four touchdown drives of the day against Philadelphia, Denver never ran a third-down play.
Denver had 12 second downs on the four drives. Manning converted all of them into first downs.
Eleven plays, 80 yards. Ten plays, 80 yards. Eight plays, 80 yards. Seven plays, 65 yards.
That’s 36 plays, 28 points, 305 yards. And no third downs.
The Eagles weren’t able to make 3rd down stops because they couldn’t even get him to 3rd downs. Yikes.
Mark Saltveit wrote a piece for BGN where he checked out every snap by Vinny Curry. Here was the conclusion.
There is no real pattern (that I could detect) to Curry’s deployment, except that there were no run plays. (With Andy Reid coaching, though, that tells you nothing.) Vinny was a consistently disruptive force and made even more plays than the scorekeepers gave him credit for. Curry played left defensive end in 3-4 alignments, exclusively. Hopefully Billy Davis can find a different position for Curry (or Fletcher Cox) to play, and get both men into the game at the same time. We could use some serious pass pressure on Peyton Manning this week.
The coaches mixed Curry in last week. They will likely have a different plan after seeing how well he played. I hope he plays closer to 20 snaps, if not more.
This Broncos-Eagles piece is just brilliant.
I hope everyone gets the reference.
