1 minute ago, downundermike said:

Not like it had anything to do with two straight atrocious drafts.  Gotta love afan staying loyal to his idol.  Apparently 7th rounders and UDFA’s are the true measure of a GM.

I worry that it is now pathological.

Howie "taking a gamble and losing” is equivalent to him putting all his money on black 22 in roulette, winning, and then going double or nothing on black 22 for the next spin. 

What’s the deal with Wayne Gallman?  I thought he ran well/hard for NYG last year.  Definitely wouldn’t mind him as RB2

3 minutes ago, garingovt2000 said:

What’s the deal with Wayne Gallman?  I thought he ran well/hard for NYG last year.  Definitely wouldn’t mind him as RB2

He’s on my short list at RB. Maybe he waits until after the draft to see if there’s a spot for him for playing time. 

25 minutes ago, schuy7 said:

Injuries to McLeod, Jernigan, and Wallace are what derailed the 2018 team? That team was atrocious until Foles caught fire in December.

Something about that team was atrocious 🤔

Late round QB's targets:

Kellen Mond

KJ Costello

Felipe Frank.

1 hour ago, schuy7 said:

Injuries to McLeod, Jernigan, and Wallace are what derailed the 2018 team? That team was atrocious until Foles caught fire in December.

Yep.  A safety, a DT who contributed 2.5 sacks the year prior, and a 32 year old WR who had already played his last snap in the NFL are what derailed the team.

Maybe the team was derailed because those 3 guys were considered central players to their success.  

1 hour ago, LeanMeanGM said:

Howie "taking a gamble and losing” is equivalent to him putting all his money on black 22 in roulette, winning, and then going double or nothing on black 22 for the next spin. 

Can't we say that about every crap GM in the NFL?  I don't understand how taking a gamble and losing makes doing a bad job OK.

The pre-Howie Eagles took a gamble on Mike Mamula over Warren Sapp and lost.  Bears took a gamble on Mitch Trubisky at #2 and lost.  

GMs get paid to refine this to something better than gambling...and to not lose.

17 minutes ago, eagle45 said:

Yep.  A safety, a DT who contributed 2.5 sacks the year prior, and a 32 year old WR who had already played his last snap in the NFL are what derailed the team.

Maybe the team was derailed because those 3 guys were considered central players to their success.  

So a starting safety, the starting DT who was the key to stopping the run (they allowed 3.8 ypc in 2017, 4.7 in 2018) and a WR who was never injured and had 1017 and 748 yards receiving the previous two years as a top deep threat would have had no value to the Eagles? Points allowed rose from 295 to 348, points scored declined from 457 to 367. You don't think a legitimate deep threat would have opened up the field for Jeffrey, Agholor, Ertz and Goedert?

They lost games by 6, 3, 2, 4, 7 and 6 points - you don't think improvements on both sides of the ball couldn't have turned a couple of these games around? And that would have given them a 11-5 record.

26 minutes ago, eagle45 said:

Can't we say that about every crap GM in the NFL?  I don't understand how taking a gamble and losing makes doing a bad job OK.

The pre-Howie Eagles took a gamble on Mike Mamula over Warren Sapp and lost.  Bears took a gamble on Mitch Trubisky at #2 and lost.  

GMs get paid to refine this to something better than gambling...and to not lose.

Until GMs get functional crystal balls, these decisions are ALWAYS a gamble.

Some gambles are better than others. Malik, Wallace were good gambles, highly durable, DeSean was a bad gamble. Wentz certainly looked like a good gamble in 2017, then he blew out his knee.

2 hours ago, austinfan said:

I mean talk about overreaction, you'd think the Eagles were say the Giants, who after winning their last SB, missed the playoffs 4 straight seasons, lost a WC game, then 4 straight 10+ loss seasons. 4 HCs the last 7 years.

Good times.

4 minutes ago, austinfan said:

So a starting safety, the starting DT who was the key to stopping the run (they allowed 3.8 ypc in 2017, 4.7 in 2018) and a WR who was never injured and had 1017 and 748 yards receiving the previous two years as a top deep threat would have had no value to the Eagles? Points allowed rose from 295 to 348, points scored declined from 457 to 367. You don't think a legitimate deep threat would have opened up the field for Jeffrey, Agholor, Ertz and Goedert?

They lost games by 6, 3, 2, 4, 7 and 6 points - you don't think improvements on both sides of the ball couldn't have turned a couple of these games around? And that would have given them a 11-5 record.

McLeod’s injury was the single biggest loss for the 2018 Eagles; even last season his absence had an immediate detrimental effect on the secondary.

It’s hard to take anyone seriously who couldn’t see or recognize that fact.

2 hours ago, ManuManu said:

It’s crazy. He says Howie is average at drafting yet the coaches can’t develop anyone. It makes no sense. 

Name all the players who played above expectations from 2017 to 2020, other than OL.

Foles but only in the RPO. Who else? Ward? Edwards?  That's player development.

2 hours ago, ManuManu said:

And of course when the players he drafted sucked it was the coaches’ fault. 

He missed on two picks, Jones (an injury gamble, which like Metcalf is as much the medical staff's judgement) and JJAW.

The only bad draft was 2017, 2016 landed Wentz, Seumalo, Smallwood, Vaitai and Mills

2018 was a great draft given no 1st rd pick and only 5 picks overall:  Goedert, Sweat and Mailata

2019 depends on Dillard, if he's a starting OT, him and Sanders are a good haul from a 5 pick draft

3 minutes ago, austinfan said:

He missed on two picks, Jones (an injury gamble, which like Metcalf is as much the medical staff's judgement) and JJAW.

The only bad draft was 2017, 2016 landed Wentz, Seumalo, Smallwood, Vaitai and Mills

2018 was a great draft given no 1st rd pick and only 5 picks overall:  Goedert, Sweat and Mailata

2019 depends on Dillard, if he's a starting OT, him and Sanders are a good haul from a 5 pick draft

I wish when I was in college I had teachers like you who were eager to grade on a massive curve 

Jayson Oweh 40 time👀

2 hours ago, eagle45 said:

Can't we say that about every crap GM in the NFL?  I don't understand how taking a gamble and losing makes doing a bad job OK.

The pre-Howie Eagles took a gamble on Mike Mamula over Warren Sapp and lost.  Bears took a gamble on Mitch Trubisky at #2 and lost.  

GMs get paid to refine this to something better than gambling...and to not lose.

The draft is a gamble, and as any winning gambler knows, winning is a numbers game. If you have an edge, you may lose in the short run, or over a given period of time, but you will win over the long run.

In the abstract, without any partisan context like pro/anti Howie sentiment, team allegiance, or whatever, just about every knowledgeable football fan will acknowledge that the draft has an incredible amount of luck and randomness to it. The college vs pro games are wildly different, the NFL is the most high injury risk professional sport in the world, scheme and coaching plays a larger role than in any other sport, and so on. The statistics support this. About 50% of first round picks bust league wide. The numbers plummet from that point. So judging your draft conversion rate is working from a baseline well under 50%. 

Yet, whenever the draft becomes contextualized, everyone tosses this out of the window. Take two recent second round picks. Howie takes a chance on Sidney Jones -- a projected top 15 pick before an offseason injury -- and it doesn't work out. Well, Howie sucks, because he took a risk on an injury to generate value and it didn't work out. Yet the same people who point to this as a gaff will, sometimes in the very same sentence or paragraph, criticize him for passing on DK Metcalf who also had a medical injury that made him fall in the draft.  So which is it? Are we willing to take the chance on injuries impacting a player's performance or not? Because this is a numbers game. Some will work out and some won't. You're hoping your doctors can give you an edge here, not the GM, and you're judging their edge from a sample size of 2.

From my view -- and I say this as someone who was pounding the table for Metcalf before and during the draft as you well know -- the doctors were probably correct in their risk assessment on both players. Achilles injuries, while season ending, are no longer the career destroying problem they were in years past. Players routinely recover to top form post surgery. Back injuries are a different level of risk. So was taking Jones and passing on Metcalf the wrong decision? If we had a few thousand opportunities at similar situations, would our view change? I'm guessing we'd be viewing the Achilles injury as the better bet. And keep in mind, the Metcalf decision was after a few seasons of our roster getting wrecked by injuries, so the emphasis had probably shifted at an organizational level to prioritize health in order to minimize future risk. It's really easy to criticize decisions like this with the benefit of hindsight and without any of the information available to the GM, but I think it's quite a flawed argument.

You mention refining this process to something better than gambling. The problem with the NFL draft and rating GMs in this regard is sample size. How many GM's make enough picks in their career to truly evaluate their ability in a statistically significant way? Usually you would want at least a sample size of 100 to even begin to judge anything. And really, if we want to be accurate, that number needs to be an order of magnitude greater. I gamble. A lot. I am a long term winner in both poker and sports betting over a 20 year period, so I know of what I speak.  And let me tell you, there have been stretches along the way where I could not win no matter how sound my choices were. That's the nature of randomness. It gets smoothed out over tens of thousands of bets, but within that you are going to have stretches where nothing you do works. That doesn't mean you made the wrong choice, either. If your expected value is positive, you make the bet, and you do it knowing that many high EV bets are going to lose.

To wrap up my treatise on GMs, the draft and gambling, I really wonder how many careers have been made or broken by this randomness? Jimmy Johnson built a dynasty in Dallas off of the draft. Then he went to Miami and was just above mediocre. Same guy. Same high volume draft strategy. Totally different results. So is he the guy who created a juggernaut in Dallas, or the guy who was barely above .500 in Miami? And if he had an even greater sample size, would the outlier period of the 90's get balanced out by an outlier period to the downside? Who knows, but statistically, he would absolutely have a period where all of his drafts failed eventually. Now imagine a good GM who starts his career with a losing streak. He's done, even if over time he might end up being an all-time great drafter.

So, is Howie a good or bad GM? Well, the results are mixed. He's won a ring. That's pretty darn good. His teams have mostly had winning seasons. Again, pretty good. On the negative side of things, his draft results of late have been poor. How much of that was due to the myriad of other factors like group consensus on players in order to make other people in the room happy, how much of it was coaching, or injury, etc. we will never know. If his job is to not lose and win championships and titles, he's done a good job of that overall. If his job is to refine the draft to something better than gambling, well, if we're being honest, the jury is still out on that and probably still will be even when he's out of the league. The sample size is just too small to make an accurate judgement. Of course, that's the job. Not For Long league and all of that. 

On 3/27/2021 at 10:46 AM, BigEFly said:

I am sure they looked at everything.  First off, I believe the original tweet was clarified. Second, if true,  basically they view it as a two QB race this year at best.  Let’s say they thought the Jags would pick either Wilson or Lawrence and one of the other or both they would think was an upgrade over Hurts.  Then definitely, they should ask about a pick to get that player.  Always upgrade.  Folks forget about Walsh and Aikman.  Johnson actually thought he was upgrading from Aikman.  Look what the Cards just did.  Third, sounds like the Eagles didn’t entertain it very long.  It is like they view Hurts as #3 pick worthy in this draft.  If Hurts can trust the protection a bit more and consider the progression a bit more, he may just succeed. If I was Hurts, I would have a chip on my shoulder as to Tua and even Mac Jones.  So if I was Hurts, I would look at the original tweet and Joe Flacco as both challenges and maybe, just maybe, unlike frail participation trophy Carson and more like Tom Brady, rise to the occasion.  So I would look at this as they value me but I have more to prove.  If I do that this year, next year they are loaded to spend that wealth to better my support.  And BTW, five picks in the first 125 is not too shabby either.   Hurts should also think that at the end of the day the coaching staff and front office chose me over Carson.  So I view this as tacit support for Hurts to show he can be the man.

1) I think Wilson has the best chance out of this years QB class of being elite/top 5 QB level

2) Our team needs to be torn down and rebuilt so not really the perfect time to take him and i.e. inefficient 

3) Don’t know exactly what we have in Hurts, yes I’m a glass is half full guy. I’m optimistic that there will be some improvement over last season but that should be excepted ... the question is how much. Wouldn’t mind another trade down like a trade with da Bears picks 12 and 150 for 20 and 52

 

4) I hate SPLASH trade up’s ( very apprehensive about ) and prefer SPLASH trade down’s especially when rebuilding 

On 3/27/2021 at 9:42 AM, ManuManu said:

 

Isn’t that the guy whose lips are firmly planted to Carson’s a** ... for now

6 hours ago, austinfan said:

He missed on two picks, Jones (an injury gamble, which like Metcalf is as much the medical staff's judgement) and JJAW.

The only bad draft was 2017, 2016 landed Wentz, Seumalo, Smallwood, Vaitai and Mills

2018 was a great draft given no 1st rd pick and only 5 picks overall:  Goedert, Sweat and Mailata

2019 depends on Dillard, if he's a starting OT, him and Sanders are a good haul from a 5 pick draft

So Howie only missed on two picks yet the coaches sucked at developing players?

You have to see that this is a BS argument. 

If any other team had those drafts , they would be considered bad to , af 

7 hours ago, austinfan said:

Until GMs get functional crystal balls, these decisions are ALWAYS a gamble.

Some gambles are better than others. Malik, Wallace were good gambles, highly durable, DeSean was a bad gamble. Wentz certainly looked like a good gamble in 2017, then he blew out his knee.

Goes back to our discussion. These are the known unknowns

high performers make good decisions based on incomplete data sets. Howie is a low performer.

31 minutes ago, ManuManu said:

So Howie only missed on two picks yet the coaches sucked at developing players?

You have to see that this is a BS argument. 

He will just claim he is taking that unpopular side of the debate to exercise his brain at some point...

I didn't realize Caleb Farley injured his back all the way back in 2019 and then took 2020 off due to Covid.  Why wouldn't he get the surgery done knowing that he had the year to recover instead of waiting a month before the draft?  Doesn't make much sense to me.  I'd feel much more comfortable if he had the surgery when he injured his neck and was through with his recovery. 

Good to see the Bucs are following the Lowie approved Super Bowl repeat method. Sign all of the FA starters from the team, regardless of play or development.  Licht must have learned from the master 😉

It's interesting that the Eagles let Ertz's agent talk to team to get a deal done and a deal has not been done as of yet.  The lack of deal is limiting the little cap space left.