EMB Blog: 2022 OTAs thru Pre-Season

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, The Blackfish said:

The highest the Eagles were in passing play % is 10th in 2021, that was on Oct 4th, and they stayed at 10th until Oct 18th, then it was downhill from there.  
 On November 22 they were 32nd, and they finished the season obviously at 32nd. 
 2nd pic is from 1/10/22. 

Here it is after the Cowboys game, 

[eagle45]

1 hour ago, 4for4EaglesNest said:

I have no issue with the player.  Love him.  The close relationship with the starting QB who is more than likely going to be replaced is something to be concerned about.  

When he goes 800 yards and 5TDs with Hurts under center and spends more time blocking downfield for the QB than catching passes, he’ll be just fine with that change.

[eglz1]

2 hours ago, 4for4EaglesNest said:

They were pass heavy against Tampa in the playoffs and he was terrible.  Because Tampa knew how to shut our offense down.  
 

 

Force Hurts to pass.  

All they had to do was study Jim Johnson's 2004 game against Michael Vick. And Vick was a dam site better than Hurts.

[BigEFly]

Read today that the cowpads played over 50% in Cover 1 last year.  Now that was from a reporter so I don’t know how accurate that is, but it is probably close enough. Still the best coverage but I don’t know if sustainable to play that much.  I don’t see Anthony Brown as excelling at press on Smith although he has good makeup speed.  I think Brown is the answer to Diggs press.  Lewis is a decent challenge for Quez.  But Kearse is big and a bit slow and Hooker has trouble staying healthy. This secondary can be exploited.  

[aptosbird]

1 hour ago, BigEFly said:

Guess maybe I actually do watch college football.  Flying poop guy (who blamed that avatar on losing an avatar bet yet claimed earlier this season that he never lost an avatar bet) obviously knows more about college prospects.  His schtick is telling everyone how wrong they are without a bit of depth showing he knows much about line play (yet he and his crew ran off @justrelax who actually does know a ton about line play).  If he actually watched any Georgia ball, they would know they put Davis in on offense on the goal line several times.  
 

If he actually watched Strong, he would know that one of his flaws was a tendency to stare down WRs.  Kind of reminds me in that aspect of Kevin Kolb. (Lot of differences between Kolb and Stong but they shared that flaw coming out of college.)  Not an unusual flaw for QBs coming out of college.  

You give Farmer Ted way too much credit...

[Swoop]

1 hour ago, downundermike said:

@Bacarty2 if you could find out which game our RB only had 2-3 carries in the first half.

Now we all know RTK is a lunatic if you two are joining forces.

[Wentz_Era]

7 hours ago, BigEFly said:

Muscle memory is hard to retrain.  Excellent chapter about Tony Dungy on that in the book The Power of Habit:

"Part of the problem was Dungy’s coaching philosophy. In his job interviews, he would patiently explain his belief that the key to winning was changing players habits. He wanted to get players to stop making so many decisions during a game, he said. He wanted them to react automatically, habitually. If he could instill the right habits, his team would win. Period.

"Champions don’t do extraordinary things,” Dungy would explain. "They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”

How, the owners would ask, are you going to create those new habits?

Oh no, he wasn’t going to create new habits, Dungy would answer. Players spent their lives building the habits that got them to the NFL. No athlete is going to abandon those patterns simply because some new coach says to.

So rather than creating new habits, Dungy was going to change players’ old ones. And the secret to changing old habits was using what was already insider players’ heads. Habits are a three-step loop -- the cure, the routine, and the reward -- but Dungy only wanted to attack the middle step, the routine. He knew from experience that it was easier to convince someone to adopt a new behavior if there was something familiar at the beginning and the end.”

https://productiveclub.com/the-habit-loop/
 

Now I think Hurts can break the crouch habit because he doesn’t always crouch. Look at that clip again.  His cue starts with the snap.  He can stand and catch the snap in the shotgun but he is stooped like he is under Center. No need to do so.  But the real problem is he stays crouched to often. Makes sense in high school when he probably ran more than he passed. He kept running in college.  But I can show you other clips where he stands tall.  Almost every throw in the middle of the field (few), he stands tall.  Stance also helps with consistency in foot mechanics and throwing mechanics.  I think it can be fixed. But it won’t be easy. 

There is an off chance that he can correct it, but he's been at the game for far too long for these to still be problems.  At some point you have to call the baby ugly.  I'm very familiar with muscle memory and this concept.  From game 1 last season you could see he was having trouble from the start because of sitting like a FB in the pocket.  That I'm 100% sure was addressed that week...it wasn't fixed over the course of the year by Hurts.  I trained kids to go to war for years and in 2 weeks I had them I saw more improvement on muscle memory issues with 10% (being generous to Hurts) the reps than Hurts has shown since his first start at Bama, in any salvageable ball of clay.

[Wentz_Era]

6 hours ago, downundermike said:

I don't think they can be fixed.  As another poster pointed out, he has always had this top notch work ethic.  So in 3 years at Alabama, 1 year at Oklahoma and 2 years in the NFL, with the supposed highest work ethic and will to succeed in the history of football, he still has not corrected these issues.

In the military we use the skill vs will thinking to look at failures.  Hurts seems to have the will (at least the media paints it that way), but he blatantly lacks the skill.

[Shalodeep]

5 hours ago, RememberTheKoy said:

 

Ones the starting QB, the other will be fighting to make the roster or practice squad. 

One has the best arm on the team, the other is Jalen Hurts 

[RememberTheKoy]

22 minutes ago, Shalodeep said:

One has the best arm on the team, the other is Jalen Hurts 

 

Arm so great not a single team drafted him.  

[Shalodeep]

4 minutes ago, RememberTheKoy said:

 

Arm so great not a single team drafted him.  

Long term health questions. There is a reason we paid him so well to join our squad

[Bwestbrook36]

4 hours ago, downundermike said:

Adding to this, the BUCS actually broke the record for the least amount of hand offs to running backs  derp tom Brady don't play that game deeerrr

 

[RememberTheKoy]

58 minutes ago, Shalodeep said:

Long term health questions. There is a reason we paid him so well to join our squad

 

Metcalf had long term health questions.  He dropped to the 2nd round.  Jay Ajayi had long term health questions.  He went in the 5th round.  Players with long term health problems drop.  But talent is talent and even with health concerns, players that are truly talent in the eyes of the scouts and GMs will be drafted despite those health concerns.  Especially when you are talking about the most valuable position in football.  Tua had major health concerns after his hip surgery and he still only dropped to the 5th overall pick.  Eagles hand out a couple "big" contracts to UDFAs every year but that doesn't mean they believe or intend for them to become the starter on the team especially at the most important position on the team.  You take stabs in the dark and hope you can land a guy who can maybe be good enough to actually make 53 man roster.  

[BigEFly]

11 minutes ago, Shalodeep said:

Long term health questions. There is a reason we paid him so well to join our squad

He signed a three year $2,560,000 three year contract (basic UDFA contract, the minimum salary for three years) with a $20,000 signing bonus and guaranteed $320,000. Basically his signing bonus plus $300,000 is guaranteed. Basic contract for an UDFA except the bonus. But let’s contrast that with Brock Purdy, who came the closest to an UDFA 262 pick in the seventh round.  Four year contract at $3,750,660 with a $90k signing bonus. Pursy’s salary is higher than Strong’s.  So basically what Strong’s agent was able to maximize was a decent sized guarantee.  Well, $320k is peanuts in the grand scheme of things.  Last year, Stoll got a bigger bonus, $22,500, and $122,500 guaranteed.  Stoll will make a bigger salary than Strong this season if both make the roster.  By mid season the guarantee is dust in the wind.  So basically, the Eagles are gambling $300k that Strong can (1) hold up physically and (2) beat out Sinnett. 

Just for some contrast:  Goodrich (CB from Auburn) has $217k guaranteed. Jobe, $135k guaranteed.  Josh Blackwell ($137,500 guaranteed). (Yep, Jobe got the least). That’s CBs challenging Scott, Gowan, Vincent and McPhearson, all of whom the Eagles invested draft capital to acquire (or less draft capital for Ertz in the case of Gowan.). That’s over 50% more than they guaranteed for Strong for three CBs unlikely to make the roster.   

How about Kennedy Brooks? $240,000 in guarantees   Or Noah Ellis?  $240,000 in guarantees. Now both have as good of a shot as Strong to make the roster.  Heck, Jarid Williams got $145k guaranteed. Josh Sills, $135k. 

Suddenly, the $320k in guarantees to Strong don’t seem so big. 

[Wentz_Era]

9 hours ago, schuy7 said:

The team is absolutely built to win now. I think you made a better case for it than against it.

The team is more so built to put Hurts in the best position to show he's the guy.  We still don't have LB's or S's....so the D is not in any position to be competitive.

[RememberTheKoy]

6 minutes ago, Wentz_Era said:

The team is more so built to put Hurts in the best position to show he's the guy.  We still don't have LB's or S's....so the D is not in any position to be competitive.

 

Eagles built a team to win.  Not to create some ultimate test for Hurts as the purpose.  Eagles stand as one of the most complete rosters in the league with a mix of veterans with championship experience in various leadership roles and a lot of young talent surrounding them.  This team is built to win.  If they don't suffer an onslaught of major injuries then this team will contend this season.  

[blindside]

Why do I constantly feel the need to feed the troll with reality? It’s like, I know he won’t listen. But I just want to say it. Weird. 

[Wentz_Era]

5 hours ago, BigEFly said:

Read today that the cowpads played over 50% in Cover 1 last year.  Now that was from a reporter so I don’t know how accurate that is, but it is probably close enough. Still the best coverage but I don’t know if sustainable to play that much.  I don’t see Anthony Brown as excelling at press on Smith although he has good makeup speed.  I think Brown is the answer to Diggs press.  Lewis is a decent challenge for Quez.  But Kearse is big and a bit slow and Hooker has trouble staying healthy. This secondary can be exploited.  

Zeke is a year older....they lost their #1 and #4 options on offense.  The D won't have anywhere near the flexibility they had last year.  Diggs will continue to be one of the most picked on CB's in the league as well, but his luck will run dry.  Still crazy that he got such accolades last year for some flashy plays while being one of the worst CB's in the league outside of his INT's.

[Wentz_Era]

10 minutes ago, RememberTheKoy said:

 

Eagles built a team to win.  Not to create some ultimate test for Hurts as the purpose.  Eagles stand as one of the most complete rosters in the league with a mix of veterans with championship experience in various leadership roles and a lot of young talent surrounding them.  This team is built to win.  If they don't suffer an onslaught of major injuries then this team will contend this season.  

Who do we have at LB and S?  What % of the roster has championship experience?

[RememberTheKoy]

Would the blog be able to handle a potential scenario where the Eagles are 5-0 or 4-1 heading into their Week 6 SNF matchup against the Cowboys in Philadelphia and NBC, playing off the nationwide hype surrounding the Eagles and specifically Jalen Hurts, have Hurts shoot a pre-game promo where he recreates the Willie Beamen music video?

 

 

 

[Bwestbrook36]

3 minutes ago, RememberTheKoy said:

Would the blog be able to handle a potential scenario where the Eagles are 5-0 or 4-1 heading into their Week 6 SNF matchup against the Cowboys in Philadelphia and NBC, playing off the nationwide hype surrounding the Eagles and specifically Jalen Hurts, have Hurts shoot a pre-game promo where he recreates the Willie Beamen music video?

 

 

 

So that means he loses in the playoffs cause he won't stop hogging the ball and goes else where in free agency  with a shoulder injury? Sounds about right to me lol. 

[RememberTheKoy]

19 minutes ago, Wentz_Era said:

Who do we have at LB and S?  What % of the roster has championship experience?

 

Safety is a concern but it's really the only major concern on the team.  Every team is going to have concerns.  We only have one and it's at safety.  I think we are good at LB.  As good as we need to be.  I think Dean falling to us in the 3rd will end up being the biggest steal in the draft.  I think he could end up winning Defensive Rookie of the Year.  If John Gannon is worth all the hype around him then now having a defense that has a good bit of talent littered throughout it should provide us a really good defense.  And I think Dean plays a part in that.  Beyond that you have Edwards who was our best LB last year, although that isn't saying much and now White as well to the mix who could be an average to above average NFL LB for us since we haven't really had since Bradham and maybe Edwards if he becomes that.  Reddick is also going to be playing some OLB/joker sort of role.  

 

I would say the % of our roster that has championship experience is higher than it was in 2017.  And that 2017 roster had some valuable veteran championship leadership additions to it.  Our Super Bowl championship experience is homegrown though.  

 

Our 2017 roster had Long, Blunt, Torrey Smith and Chris Maragos.  Anyone else beyond that who I'm missing?  Our current roster has Kelce, Lane, Seamalo, Ward, Graham, Cox & Elliott.  Any one else beyond that who I'm missing?  Roster also has a decent number of NCAA National Championship experience in some of it's young core.  

[RememberTheKoy]

18 minutes ago, Bwestbrook36 said:

So that means he loses in the playoffs cause he won't stop hogging the ball and goes else where in free agency  with a shoulder injury? Sounds about right to me lol. 

 

Beamen led the Sharks to the Championship Game (the Pantheon Cup) where unfortunately lost to San Francisco.  So he won in the playoffs.  His first playoff win was the climax of the whole damn movie!

 

 

[KDUB1510]

27 minutes ago, RememberTheKoy said:

scenario where the Eagles are 5-0 or 4-1 heading into their Week 6 SNF matchup against the Cowboys

Not happening but we can make a bet. If the Eagles have 2 or less wins heading into the bye week, you take a break from posting for a month. If they have 4 or more wins heading into the bye week, i'll take a break from posting for a month. Deal?

[Allhaildawk]

Not for nothing guys but the personal vendetta between you two is killing the blog. This used to be the place to come to get away from Tater crap. Food for thought.