Myths About the 2012-2013 Philadelphia Eagles

I've read a lot in the past couple weeks as the NFL is in the "dark ages" of news. All the opinion pieces come out, what if scenarios, and banter about what a team has to do to win. To write about the Eagles almost seems too easy. The common topics I hear on my local sports radio address a lot of the stuff I will list below. I will help you decide whether it is fact or fiction.

 

1. Michael Vick must stay healthy. I agree to a point, as no matter who your starting quarterback is you need that position healthy. You cannot instantly plug in a backup who practices with backups into your starting squad. Especially going from Riley Cooper and Chad Hall to Desean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin. That is not the same. However, I saw Vince Young confidently lead the Eagles to victory over the future Super Bowl champions the New York Giants. Vince Young had a decent game against the Patriots in a crushing loss (although his stats came in the last half). Young was terrible against the Seahawks four days later. That was Vince Young, though, and as Brandon Barrett says "Vince Young is a turd." Trent Edwards, Mike Kafka, and this rookie fella they drafted would not be the solution should Vick go down, but that makes me understand why people say Vick is the key. If Vick goes down, Andy Reid and his coaching staff have not ever shown fans in this city that they can handle a game change to find a way to best utilize different offensive pieces to the puzzle. They seemingly have no backup plan. I could not expect Trent Edwards to get the ball in time to DeSean Jackson as Vick would. But unfortunately, lately the Eagles are a boom or bust offense, which leads to several other bad things. Remember, in 2011, Vick went 7 and 6 in his starts. 2010 Vick did only a little better the year before. Still, the Eagles had a high scoring offense that Vick is integral to. The real answer to this myth is keeping the offensive line and Lesean McCoy healthy. Those pieces, under a normal coach, would be what keeps the offense moving, especially in this day when defenses are preparing for a pass happy league.

 

2. Andy Reid will be fired by the end of the 2012-2013 season. I think if the Eagles even made it to the Super Bowl and lost, the fans would be calling for his head. As an Eagles fan from only the Andy Reid era, I do not know how much more successful any other coach would be. I understand he was an offensive side of the ball guy and he was lucky enough to have an amazing defensive coordinator. Who died. And now our old offensive line coach is the defensive COORDINATOR. And that is Reid's decision, and he stuck with it. He obviously has some major game plan ahead. I think, regardless of my outrageous Eagles predictions, that if the Eagles make the playoffs, no matter how they struggled in the season, that Andy Reid stays, with one condition. The condition is that if Andy Reid can finally show that he has the ability to make changes in the game to stay competitive and handle adversity, and the Eagles have moderate success, then he is safe. The owner Jeffry Lurie does NOT want to fire Reid. I think he was just giving the fans some lip service back a few months ago during his now infamous (to Philadelphia fans) "fool's gold" speech. He was acknowledging (after 13 years) the complaints of the fans but also expressing his love for Andy. The fact is, the Eagles will never not be sold out, so Lurie does not really need to worry about appeasing the fans. The Eagles are one of the top 10 most popular teams in the NFL. I forget where I read that, but I did read that. What the Eagles really need is for Andy Reid to coach a game like there is no tomorrow.

He has not made any drastic coaching changes or personnel changes that he can hide behind as needing more time to develop. What I feel Reid always has done is design a game plan that he feels should work during practices and is a hit or miss against the actual opponent. If in 13 years he has made very few in game changes (at least in the fans' minds), what would make him start now? I hope I am wrong. As I was saying, he needs to coach more aggressively than ever. Throw the run in the face of the opponents, tear up the quarterback, and knock the shit out of kickers. Fans will appreciate losing that way in an all or nothing way rather than just handing the opponent a win (see San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Arizona, Giants [1st game], Buffalo, and ALMOST the Rams). A 10 win season means he stays. A Super Bowl win means he retires.

 

3. The Eagles' secondary is awful. Well, I don't agree with that. I like Kurt Coleman. He is raw, and it is a shame that there is no veteran presence back there minus OJ Otagwe. Brian Dawkins was awesome in that sense. Quinten Mikell was awesome with the Eagles until B-Dawk left. Then he was meh. Then he went to St. Louis to sabotage them. A committe of safeties would not be so bad, and I did not envy anybody on defense last year. For a long stretch of the season, the strong safety Kurt Coleman was the leading tackler. That position is typically the last defensive player in the open field. It should not come down to this position so often. The Eagles just got a veteran presence in the middle linebacker position, allowing the two outside linebackers to play to their strengths. I like Jamar Chaney and this Rolle kid could be decent to really good. And Casey Mathews can maybe become the next Moises Fokou. That would not be a bad thing. Dominque Rogers-Cromartie can play his natural position better with Asante Samuel traded to get burned in Atlanta and Asomugha can maybe play in the role that made him good. The fact that the Eagles tried to use Asomugha in a manner he was not best known for cost them big time. It also hurt Asomugha in the eyes of his peers as he was in the 70's on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2012. That's a big drop. I feel that if you are a pro athlete, commanding a shit ton of money, you should best play your best no matter what. You need to create a scheme that you think would best disrupt offenses and then find the appropriate players, not the other way around. Yes there is the need for some compromise of scheme and players, and I think with the trade for Demeco Ryans, the ouster of Samuel, and the heavily defensive rookie draft class, the Eagles are creating their own form of defense that hopefully keeps offensives guessing for a while. I am FINE with Juan Castillo as coordinator. I was not fine with the original selection last year, but I did see the defense develop last year much like how the offensive line geled as the season progressed. I think the youth will show in some spots, but less than the Eagles defense will be lauded for playing well.

4. A full off-season will help this team become the contender they were hoping to be last year. Maybe. Everybody had the same season, and the programs with the least change for the past couple years won the Super Bowl. But somebody had to win it, right? Some surprises came along the way like the development of Victor Cruz and Rob Gronkowski, but every pro football player had the same opportunity to make their splash. The Eagle's scrapped and rebooted their defense, but so did other teams. The Broncos had a new coach and won a division and home playoff game in which they were the underdogs. Perhaps we should look at 2011 as a 16 game pre-season. Yeah that's fine if you are okay with mediocrity. Perhaps the Eagles coaching staff tries too hard to come up with complicated packages. Some of these players are not too bright, but they can read a playbook better than I can. We have a former criminal mastermind as our quarterback, so at least we know there is something working up there. The Eagles were able to have some heart in 2010, which is why it was such a shame they lost in the playoffs as they seemed to be playing without it by that point. You cannot teach your players the will to win, in a regular off-season or shortened off-season. That must come from within. Even the 0-16 Detroit Lions had the will to win, they just couldn't do it. The will to win showed up on the Eagles in the last couple games of the year with flashes of it starting in the VY led victory in New York (New Jersey). You cannot teach heart, but hopefully somebody on that team, in all three phases of the game, has it and can share it with his teammates. Perhaps the best scenario would be for the coaches to design gameplans for when they may be down by two scores rather than try to start the game with a 7-0 lead after 1 minute of play. I once saw the Manning/Colts score a touchdown over the course of 7 minutes. Brady does it too. So can Eli. (and their coaches are responsible for calling those plays as well). That's what the Eagles need to adjust and take advantage of this time and actually get input from the players on this as well.

5. Nothing will ever make the Eagles fan happy.

Should, and possibly when, the Eagles do not win the Superbowl, and let's just say they don't even make the playoffs - then we can expect the dreadful rebuilding years. If Vick goes down more than a Latvian street merchant, he's out. If Reid cannot have at least one dominating playoff victory, he is out. And probably all of his coaches to a degree. The replacement coach would not be good enough. The coordinators would be hammered, and rebuilding the franchise would be more painful than buying a space heater in Russia. If Andy Reid wins the Super Bowl and goes out on top, fans will be clamoring for his return, because his plan finally worked. As the late great Mitch Hedberg once said, "You can't please all the people all the time, and last night all those people were at my show." Our city is known for appreciating the positive, but only highlighting the negative. And that is how it will stay.