Eagles Blog

The details of Michael Bamiro’s contract are out. And they’re interesting.

Eagles signed rookie tackle Michael Bamiro's three-year contract worth $1.486 million, including $248,270 guaranteed.

— Aaron Wilson (@RavensInsider) July 18, 2013

Michael Bamiro got a $1,170 signing bonus, a $53,750 salary advance; $140,000 base fully guaranteed this year and $107,100 of 2014 base gtd

— Aaron Wilson (@RavensInsider) July 18, 2013

Salary cap expert Sam Lynch offered some insight on these details, also on Twitter. Rather than show all the tweets, let’s focus on the contents. Quick note…PS=practice squad.

Note: likely that any prac squad sal offsets gty

Therefore, while the amount of guaranteed money is consistent with something between a 4th and 5th rd pick, guar sal = less valuable than SB (signing bonus)

Also, amount of guaranteed money is less than the minimum split salary (if player is on IR). If Bamiro not best 53, cuttable, PS-able.

Final note: Min PS salary for 2013 is $102k (17 weeks x $6k/week). It will be $107,100 in 2014 which is EXACTLY Bamiro’s salary guar in ’14.

In all, I'd say the Eagles guaranteed Bamiro practice squad spots in 2013-14, plus additional $39,170 — lower than SB of last pick in draft

— Sam Lynch (@shlynch) July 18, 2013

Thanks to Sam for clearing this up.

Remember his Fast and Furious episode (minus the beautiful Jordanna Brewster)? That’s all taken care of now.

per league source n confirmed by monroe, la. DA office all charges against jason peters from a drag racing incident in june were dismissed

— Derrick Gunn (@TheRealDGunnCSN) July 17, 2013

… flight, according to the Monroe, La. DA's office. Peters paid a fine of $656.50 on June 21, the office said, thus closing the case.

— Jeff McLane (@Jeff_McLane) July 17, 2013

So $650 saved him from being Public Enemy No. 1. I don’t mean to make light of what he did, but there seemed to be a bit of an overreaction to him “fleeing the police”.

All’s well that ends well.

The really good news is that Peters won his lawsuit from last year’s re-injury in the Roll-A-Bout. Dan Graziano has the details. Peters got $2M in the lawsuit.

Pretty good day. I’m excited to find a dime in the couch. Winning a major lawsuit and getting out of trouble is better than anything I’ve had in a while. Consider me officially jealous.

Geoff Mosher wrote a DL preview for CSN on the Eagles DL. He focused on the mystery, in terms of system and who will play where. Chip Kelly and Bill Davis won’t commit to anything. They want to find the right combination of players and the best system to use them in.

The only certainty is that none of the linemen will be pigeonholed into one position. The coaches spent all of the minicamps rotating personnel — and alternating three-man fronts with four-man looks — to gauge which players can do what and which can’t.

“Everybody was moving around, nobody had one permanent position,” the second-year Cox said. “I’m an end or three-technique or nose. You never know, so many different things.”

You would prefer the Eagles have set roles and experienced, talented players to handle them, but there will be lots of learning this year. The good news is that the DL can be a strength. Fletcher Cox, Isaac Sopoaga and Cedric Thornton can be good starters. There is lots of competition behind them. The Eagles just need some young players to step up and show they can be counted on to play well.

The Eagles signed OL Michael Bamiro on Tuesday. Bamiro worked out for teams last week, under the supervision of Tra Thomas. Les Bowen spoke to Tra to get his thoughts on the young man.

Former Eagles Pro Bowl left tackle Tra Thomas worked with Bamiro at Thomas’s 7 Deuce Sports gym in Cherry Hill. “I think he’s a solid athlete, someone that kind of fell through the cracks,” Thomas said Tuesday. “He has large hands, he bends well. We worked on both right and left stances; he’s coachable.”

The coachable comment is the key one. Bamiro has size. He’s got some athleticism. He needs work and guys like him will only make it if they have the right attitude. Good to hear that Tra thinks he is coachable.

Jeff Stoutland had some big guys on his line at Alabama. I’m sure he sees good upside in Bamiro.

Stony Brook RT Michael Bamiro wasn’t eligible for the Supplemental Draft. The NFL just declared him an outright free agent. The Eagles agreed to terms with him on Tuesday.

Bamiro started 36 games at RT for the Sea Wolves over the last 3 years. Bamiro redshirted in 2009. Prior to that he attended Pitt for a year, but didn’t play football.

I’ve watched a few game tapes of him. Simply put, Bamiro is a developmental prospect. You can’t coach size and he’s 6-8, 335. That’s Runyan/Tra Thomas size. He doesn’t jump out on tape the way you’d like him to. A guy with his size and experience should have dominated I-AA competition, but that wasn’t the case.

There are times when Bamiro will really impress you. He can come off the ball quickly, get to the second level and engage a LB. I think he’s impressive on run plays away from him. He will fire off the ball and take out a backside DL. Bamiro blocks to the whistle. Effort isn’t an issue.

The biggest problem for me is that Bamiro should have been more physically dominant than he was. He engulfed players occasionally due to sheer size, but rarely got great movement due to strength/physicality. He has long arms, but doesn’t extend them. He plays too much like a T-Rex.

Pass blocking is tough to rate. Stony Brook is a running team. The QB averaged 17 passes per game. I’d bet half or more were play-action passes. You didn’t get many chances to see just how good Bamiro’s feet were. He did show good movement skills as a run blocker. He’s big, but not stiff.

We knew Chip Kelly liked big guys, but Bamiro didn’t seem like a natural fit to me since he’s nothing special athletically. In the NFL he will need to play RT or OG. I do think he’s a player worth bringing to camp and seeing what you can do with.

In a normal draft, I’d have given Bamiro a very late grade. He has an uphill battle to make just the practice squad. I can see where the Eagles felt he was worth the risk since he does have such good size.

Here’s the PE.com story on why he’s in the NFL and with some other details.

Nice addition, but I wouldn’t get excited about him.

Over on Iggles Blitz I recently did a post featuring some “what if” scenarios. Since this is a quiet time of the year, I’m not alone in using that idea. David Bohr has done a similar thing over at PennLive. Here is one. What if…

… no one had ever come up with the name Super Bowl?

This entry is more about perception than anything else. But any Philadelphia fan over the age of 12 has been forced to listen to fans of other teams talk about how the Eagles have never won a Super Bowl. But what if the championship game were still just the NFL Championship game? Then fans and pundits would not be able to ignore the titles from 1948, 1949 and 1960. Yes, it would be a 53-year drought, but it would put a stop to the jokes about the Eagles’ trophy case being empty. What if rating: 4/10

This is an interesting question. The Super Bowl used to be a joke. It was winning the NFL Championship that mattered. Once the AFL and NFL merged, winning the Super Bowl took on a different meaning. And football has looked down upon the pre-Super Bowl era.

If they had never come up with that name and stuck with NFL Championships, the Eagles would have 3. The last one would be a long time ago, but it would still count the same. Does the Detroit Tigers 1968 World Series mean any less than their 1984 title? A World Series win is a WS win.

But NFL titles and Super Bowls are looked at as apples and oranges.

I rip on Mike Florio a lot, but he has an interesting post up in which he defends Donovan McNabb.

Plenty of fans complain that former NFL players won’t criticize current NFL players out of deference to their former brethren.  But then when one of the former players is willing to criticize current players, the former player gets criticized for it.

Donovan McNabb, who now works for NFL Network and NBC Sports Radio, is paid for his opinions.  And yet when McNabb gives his opinions, he gets ripped for it.

There is some truth in this.

Florio offers his thoughts in the post, but I’ve got a couple of my own. First, I don’t think Donovan ever made a clean retirement. You get the feeling if some team called right now, he’d be there in a heartbeat.  When a player truly hangs up his cleats, it is as if they cross a bridge and go from player to non-player. Has Donovan done that? I don’t say this as a criticism of him. I just think it gives him an odd vibe when he’s on the air.

Secondly, Donovan, like so many players that are new to broadcasting, doesn’t always communicate well. He might say something too casually. He might say something with too negative of a tone. You don’t just need the right content. You must present your ideas and opinions in the right way.

When Michael Irvin talks about WRs, I want to shove my head into a vat of boiling acid. He worships WRs and annoys me. When Irvin talks about some other players and positions, he can offer really good insight. The first time I heard him on Jim Rome’s radio show I was shocked at how good he was. On ESPN, he ranged from pretty good to nightmarishly bad. They replaced him with Cris Carter, who ranges from bad to nightmarishly bad.

If Donovan ever gets a good role and can just be himself, he’ll do fine. He’s smart. He has a good personality. Just takes time. And finding the right role takes some luck.

I was going through a stack of old papers. Stumbled across a list from 2003 titled “Eagles Interested In …”.  Here’s the list:

Willis McGahee
All front seven
Aaron Hunt
Kevin Williams
Tyrone Calico
Wade Smith
LJ Smith
Ivan Taylor

Ivan Taylor is better known as Ike Taylor. I had to look that up. Couldn’t remember Ivan Taylor to save my life.

I was getting this info back in 2003 from mainstream websites and media outlets. This isn’t any inside stuff. I loved Kevin Williams. He reminded me of Reggie White.

Calico is a name that will ring with the old EMB crowd. He played at MTSU and was the subject of much discussion. Calico was a big, fast WR. All Eagles fans wanted a WR like that back then.

Juan Castillo spent a couple of days with Wade Smith. He spent most of his time with Miami and had a solid career.

* * *

While cleaning, I also found Dell Curry’s autograph from his days as a Charlotte Hornet and one for Phil McConkey, the former Giants WR. I would really appreciate it if no one would break in and steal these “priceless” heirlooms from me.

I actually didn’t get the autographs. My mom did. Any time she saw or met an athlete, she got the autograph and hoped it was something good.

A for effort.

Joel Corry, a former NFL agent, has written a good piece on some ongoing contract issues. One of the situations he addresses are unsigned Top 10 picks.

Here is what Corry had to say about Lane Johnson.

Dion Jordan and Lane Johnson, the third and fourth picks this year, might have the most difficult time of the remaining unsigned top 10 picks in avoiding offsets. The Dolphins have been adamant about offsets with Jordan because they don’t want to set an unfavorable precedent in contract negotiations. The guarantees in the contracts signed during Miami’s free agency spending spree — including Mike Wallace’s five-year, $60 million deal — contained offsets. The Dolphins will try to convince Jordan to take a similar tradeoff as Tannehill in order to preserve their precedent. Tannehill received a better payment schedule on his signing bonus (first-round picks usually have some portion of their signing bonus deferred) and minimum base salaries in 2013 through 2015, with the rest of his annual compensation in sixth-day-of-training-camp roster bonuses.

Johnson has stated he only wants the same treatment as last year’s fourth pick but doesn’t want to hold out. The Philadelphia Eagles are sensitive to offsets because of Nnamdi Asomugha’s 2011 deal, which made him the NFL’s highest-paid cornerback. Four million of Asomugha’s 2013 base salary was fully guaranteed without an offset. The Eagles released him in March after he refused to a take a substantial pay cut. Asomugha will receive $4 million from the Eagles and $1.35 million from the one-year contract that he subsequently signed with San Francisco 49ers this year because of the lack of an offset.

I expect Johnson and the Eagles to work this out. This isn’t like the old days when they could be millions of dollars apart.

If you want to better understand “offsets”, go read the article. Corry explains them in there.

Former Eagles scout John Middlekauf points out some excellent assistant coaches around the NFL. One of them…Duce Staley, the Eagles RB coach.

I am obviously biased here, but I fully believe Duce has a chance to be the best running back coach in the NFL. Staley garners immediate respect from players because of his success on the field. He is not afraid to get on players and has the unique ability to get them to respond quickly. He also learned from arguably the best RB coach in the NFL in Ted Williams, who happens to still be on the staff. It’s no coincidence that Chip Kelly retained both coaches.  Lesean McCoy’s career took off in 2010, when Staley arrived, and he played a key role in Bryce Brown’s development last season. With Chip now running the show, and with the uncertainty at the QB spot – look for Staley to really stake his claim as one of the game’s best young coaches. I’d be shocked if the Eagles don’t have one of the best running attacks in the NFL in 2013, with Staley factoring heavily to that success.

Some former players don’t have an interest in the grind of being an NFL assistant. Duce seems to enjoy the challenge. It isn’t for everyone, but some people really love it.