27 minutes ago, mattwill said:

One thought about Saquon’s workload is the amount of yards his OL gave him before first contact.  The workload isn’t a 2,000 yard workload … probably less than 2/3 of that.

Yep. Just on his TD runs alone, he had about 600 yards of untouched runs. 

16 minutes ago, ManuManu said:

Howie’s no dummy, and we all saw first-hand how important Barkley was to a Super Bowl championship, but this is a risky extension. 

No doubt.  Not even saying I agree with it but I’m comfortable that Howie will figure out the cap

47 minutes ago, ManuManu said:

I can’t get on board with that. He had damn near 500 total touches this season including the playoffs. That’s an absurd workload.  

Blitz pickup blocks are just as rugged as touches.

But I understand your perspective.

Wear and tear comes from both quantity and quality.  You are focused on quantity, and my point was about quality.

I never realized Grossi's Eagles #11 jersey was for Tim freakin Tebow. I'm not sure if that's funny or sad.

40 minutes ago, ManuManu said:

Howie’s no dummy, and we all saw first-hand how important Barkley was to a Super Bowl championship, but this is a risky extension. 

I'm wondering if the plan is to either draft a RB high or make a move for someone who can split carries pretty evenly to lessen barkley's load this year, maybe around 200 regular season touches then let him run wild in the playoffs

2 hours ago, TEW said:

If we are trading a starting WR, Smith is the guy to move. Brown is not only a better player, but a much better fit for a run first, ball control and defense style.

That said, neither is going to happen.

Brown may be the better player, but I also have a hunch that he'll start to break down physically before Smith does. 

28 minutes ago, FranklinFldEBUpper said:

I never realized Grossi's Eagles #11 jersey was for Tim freakin Tebow. I'm not sure if that's funny or sad.

I have watched so much of him and that's the first time I saw the back of his Tebow Jersey.

24 minutes ago, FranklinFldEBUpper said:

Brown may be the better player, but I also have a hunch that he'll start to break down physically before Smith does. 

They are both awesome and they both have deep ties to Hurts. Keep them together and let the magic happen.

1 hour ago, FranklinFldEBUpper said:

Brown may be the better player, but I also have a hunch that he'll start to break down physically before Smith does. 

Brown is 27 years old. We are looking at a 3 year window to win the Super Bowl. Aside from 2023, he really doesn’t average a ton of catches per year. I’m confident he’ll play through 30 at a pro bowl level.

6 hours ago, FranklinFldEBUpper said:

Brown may be the better player, but I also have a hunch that he'll start to break down physically before Smith does. 

Brown is a similar player to TO who was still very productive into his mid 30s. I’m not worried about that at all. 

This is the single-season RB touches leaderboard. The chart doesn’t include playoff touches, so you don’t see Barkley on it. Barkley had something like 470-480. He’d be the oldest player on this list, and his game is predicated by elite athleticism. That’s a concern. People can discount it by saying a lot of his yards came on untouched long runs. That’s not the issue. It’s total touches.

8 hours ago, ManuManu said:

I can’t get on board with that. He had damn near 500 total touches this season including the playoffs. That’s an absurd workload.  

Yup

all data would suggest a falloff or injury, sadly

8 hours ago, bpac55 said:

Yep. Just on his TD runs alone, he had about 600 yards of untouched runs. 

Now add all the blitz pickups…

So Aaron Schatz of FO wrote about the curse of 370 carries. This was based on regular season totals, and not including the playoffs. Through Derrick Henry’s 2,000 yard season in 2020, 30 running backs had 370 or more carries — all but one had a decrease in production the following season.

Now you might say that’s understandable in Barkley’s case, given he had an all-time great season. I would agree. Regression is expected as his breakaway rate surely will go down. However, when looking at the list of 370-carry backs, they saw a decrease by about 40 percent in their production. Further, 21 of the 30 RBs missed time with injuries. However, it wasn’t just total yards, their efficiency declined as well. 

The biggest difference Saquon made over Swift, Sanders, etc. was his vision.

He may actually be better individually next season, but not get the wide open holes for untouched 70 yard gains.

Honestly...the Eagles are probably going to have to pivot a bit on offense becoming more pass heavy....especially to start games.  You know teams are going to stack the box to stop Barkley, no need trying to run him into a wall.  Come out play action, try and get on top of teams, then run Barkley.  Just my 2 cents.

4 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

The biggest difference Saquon made over Swift, Sanders, etc. was his vision.

He may actually be better individually next season, but not get the wide open holes for untouched 70 yard gains.

He’s also bigger stronger and faster 

9 hours ago, eagle45 said:

This is why they gave Barkley a raise, which was otherwise irrational.  Playing for the Eagles is on the cusp of becoming a thing.  A real draw. 

Before anyone says it already is…I’d disagree.  No slight against the Eagles.  It’s just business in the nfl lately.  Careers are shorter and money (for players) is tighter.  No one wants to play for the handful of perennial disaster franchises, but aside from that…the focus with players and agents is to get as much money as possible for the 2nd or 3rd contract, team and location be damned.  You get a few years to amass life, family, and maybe generation changing wealth and then it’s over.  

It doesn’t quite work that way for impact players in other sports.  

The fact that you’ve got a top 5 pick and a future HOF FA making (only semi serious) comments about wanting to play for the eagles is a big deal.  For the select few players in the league each year that may change teams and are not prioritizing financial considerations, it’s wild to know that the Eagles may be the destination.  

That was obvious in the moment it was announced.  The Eagles have been a classy organization that really does care about winning and is always willing to spend cash.   That's going to grab the attention of players.  And you see the way that Bradberry put out what he did after his cut was announced.  Players really like it here.  Its not lip service.  

And the league is starting to catch on.  Dallas, for whatever reason, still has some weird mystique over some, likely because of their overexposure in the 70s and the re-overexposure of the early 90s.  But that's a franchise in disarray.  Players that want to play there want to do it for nostalgia reasons, because their father told them about the 'great days of the past'.  But, I've said it for years, they have become the Lions.  Both play on Thanksgiving day, they wear the same colors (basically) and they will both be disappointments in the post-season, IF they make it.   The Cowboys now have THE longest conference championship drought in the NFC (1995) and hold that record by 15 years over the next contender, da Bears!   (In the AFC, the Dolphins (1992) and Browns (1989) remain ahead of them.)
 

But, we've heard players saying that they WANT to come here.  Slay said it the other day.  He turned down more money to come back here.  Barkley turned down more money elsewhere to play here.  Players that want to win, and want to make CASH, come here.  And, on top of all that, the Eagles do right by their players.  The Haason Reddick situation sits out there as a weird anomaly and frankly, I think that there had to be other things bubbling under the surface.   Interestingly, I've seen rumors that have him going to the Cardinals, Bears, Falcons and Saints in free agency.  And, to a certain extent, that tells you about all you need to know about him as a player now.  The teams that are in hot pursuit are the ones that are generally poorly run franchises.  

 

But, yeah... the Eagles ARE a destination spot in the NFL.  They aren't alone in that, but their reputation around the league is second to none in terms of how they do things, how they win consistently and how they treat their players.  

9 hours ago, Alphagrand said:

What’s the furthest trade-up a Super Bowl champion team has ever made at the following draft?  I suspect not all that far.

 

EDIT.  Looks like in 1995 the Niners traded up from 30 all the way to #10 to draft J.J. Stokes.  That’s further than I expected.

That's the one that sticks out to me.  I remember watching that live.  It was nuts in the moment.  And, in retrospect, it was an awful decision.  Ironically, the 3rd round the very next year they drafted a much better WR... Terrell Owens.  

8 hours ago, ManuManu said:

I can’t get on board with that. He had damn near 500 total touches this season including the playoffs. That’s an absurd workload.  

It is a big number, no doubt.  And I expect that early on next year, they will be load managing his use a whole lot.  I'd figure that he'd be topping out at about 15-18 carries... and no more than 20 touches.   They desperately need to find a RB2 that they can count on in pass protection to spell him.  They seemed very reticent to use Shipley in that role last year.  Gainwell is a free agent.  So, who is that guy moving forward?  A veteran makes the most sense to me... at a reasonable number. 

32 minutes ago, ManuManu said:

So Aaron Schatz of FO wrote about the curse of 370 carries. This was based on regular season totals, and not including the playoffs. Through Derrick Henry’s 2,000 yard season in 2020, 30 running backs had 370 or more carries — all but one had a decrease in production the following season.

Now you might say that’s understandable in Barkley’s case, given he had an all-time great season. I would agree. Regression is expected as his breakaway rate surely will go down. However, when looking at the list of 370-carry backs, they saw a decrease by about 40 percent in their production. Further, 21 of the 30 RBs missed time with injuries. However, it wasn’t just total yards, their efficiency declined as well. 

To me this might be correlation and not causation.  There are some other factors to consider:

370 carries are not given to bad RBs behind poor OLs. This is a list mostly composed of very good RBs on very good teams.  Nothing can be said for the following seasons--maybe the team wasn't as good and defenses geared up to stop the run, which will surely happen to Saquon next year.

 

370 carries are not given to injured RBs.  By definition, this list will include those who had relatively healthy seasons and exclude those who weren't.  So clearly, there will be a bias in the data. Two of Edgerrin James' 10 seasons are on the list, two of Ricky Williams' bizarre 10 year career are on the list, two of Eric Dickersons 10 full seasons, two of Emmitt Smiths 15.  It's like when people say, "See? Take away those 70 yard runs and we shut him down!"....well yeah, when you remove the most productive seasons from someone's career, it's not as productive.

 

370 is also relatively arbitrary and convenient to their argument.  Like they made a conclusion, and then went about finding the data to confirm it.  For example, Edgerrin James had over 300 carries for 5 straight years when he was 25-29 years old (after the seasons on this list).  Emmitt Smith had seasons of 365, 368 (immediately before a 377 carry season), 327, 319, and 329 carries, none of which made the cut.

 

You said it yourself, these are historic, extraordinary seasons on the list.  It's tough to take these exceptional cases and make a ton of assumptions about RBs at large.

It's a risk but not really a huge risk after already bringing him in and winning the SB based largely on his impact 

 

All that said, despite the heavy investment in Barkley, I think we do need to draft a running back that we believe us the capability of handling 15+ quality touches a game. I love Gainwell as a role player, but that’s not his game. Maybe Shipley becomes that guy, but this draft is too good not to add a good prospect from late round 3 and on.

8 hours ago, ManuManu said:

Howie’s no dummy, and we all saw first-hand how important Barkley was to a Super Bowl championship, but this is a risky extension. 

All extensions are risky.  At the time, no one questioned the extension he gave to Brandon Brooks in 2019 making him the highest paid OG in NFL history, but after that, he played 9 games total.  7 to finish that season, and only 2 after that... a full missed season later.

This contract, I assume, is going to be backed by insurance, mitigating the risk.  Howie is a lot of things, but fool hearty isn't one of them.  He knows the risks, and I'm sure he's doing everything he can to cover his butt on that front.

8 hours ago, bpac55 said:

Yep. Just on his TD runs alone, he had about 600 yards of untouched runs. 

Not if you count him slapping himself in the head.    

1 minute ago, ManuManu said:

All that said, despite the heavy investment in Barkley, I think we do need to draft a running back that we believe us the capability of handling 15+ quality touches a game. I love Gainwell as a role player, but that’s not his game. Maybe Shipley becomes that guy, but this draft is too good not to add a good prospect from late round 3 and on.

I'm interested to see what the team think of Shipley.  Part of me thinks they look at a Vet backup rather than a draft pick to let him develop, but another rookie makes a lot more sense from a cost control perspective. I guess STs could be a hidden factor in what they do