[NOTE: I'm providing this as a reference point for the purposes of comparing where we are right now with where we've been over the last few years]
Let's do some 2020 Eagles preseason prognosticating. Remember my position-by-position grading system:
9-10: the unit belongs in the conversation for “best in league”
7-8: Really good, maybe can use some work
4-6: average to mediocre
1-3: weak to awful
The units we'll look at: QB, SKILL, OL, DL, LB, DB, ST:
QB grade: 6/10. Spoiler alert: I'm not as excited about Carson Wentz as the rest of the Eagles' fandom. I thought about making an entire separate post about this, but here's the cliff notes: Wentz must, absolutely must, do a better job protecting the football and his body. We know about the injury thing already (he's missed 24% of most or all of of his available games, including playoffs). What most don't know is that he's led the league in fumbles (48) since he was drafted, and is second to Jameis Winston in interceptions dropped by the defense in that time (24). That's 72 potential additional turnovers that would be added to Wentz's count; the only reason they weren't is dumb luck. Over the last four seasons, the only two players in Wentz's stratosphere in terms of hidden turnovers are Winston and Ryan Fitzpatrick, two guys who just lost their starting jobs. Bottom line: Wentz has MVP upside, and is by all accounts a good guy, but the turnover thing has to improve. As far as the depth is concerned, Jalen Hurts is perhaps overqualified as a QB2, but we'll see. Nate Sudfeld is a fine emergency QB. NOTE 1: most will defend Wentz by knocking his WR group, which is fair. I'd push back by noting that he's benefited from the best TE group in the game (over that time frame) and an elite OL group. He's had above-average RB play in his good seasons as well. These advantages more than offset the WR thing, in my opinion. NOTE 2: turnover stats from FBO.
SKILL grade: 7.5/10. I know last year I gave this group a solid ten, and then we all proceeded to watch injuries destroy the unit completely. I mentioned ten players by name in this section; six of those ten were KO'd by Thanksgiving. That's water under the bridge now. What we do know is that Philly still has the best 1-2 TE punch in the game. Miles Sanders, if healthy, is about to have a “Shady McCoy in 2010” type coming-out-party. Boston Scott will be fun to watch. The WR group can't possible be as bad as last year, right? Right?
OL grade: 6/10. For the first time in a decade, we have real issues across the board here. IF Jason Peters can be talked into moving back to LT and IF he's healthy and motivated and IF Matt Pryor can do a decent Brandon Brooks impression and IF age doesn't catch up with Jason Kelce and IF we don't have to lean on our depth much... we'll be fine. You're aware that those are some big ifs. The projected starting group of Peters-Seumalo-Kelce-Pryor-Johnson is fine, but we literally have no depth with any NFL starting experience. That's a real concern this year, and is a big change from previous seasons when we had 2-3 starting caliber players coming off the bench.
DL grade: 10/10. Finally some optimism! The DT combo of Cox-Hargrave-Jackson-Ridgeway is as good as it gets. Initially I had concerns about DE depth, but here's an interesting stat that isn't widely talked about: if you define pressure rate as “percentage of snaps that turn into a QB knockdown” (a better pressure stat than sacks), the group of Graham-Barnett-Sweat-Curry all landed in the top 50 leaguewide last year. Graham's rating of 1.95% was actually the lowest in the group. No other team had more than three such players. Obviously this assumes decent health, and I know several of these players have been dinged up. The good news is that the third tier depth looks solid (Joe Ostman, Shreef Miller, Anthony Rush and Casey Toohill all have flashed either during camp or last year). I think they'll be fine here.
LB grade: 3/10. Nate Gerry is about the only player here that projects to be a solid starter, and he lead the league in missed tackles last year. TJ Edwards is productive but is so unathletic it's almost comical. Duke Riley is an athletic special teams ace. The rest of the group has no NFL experience. I actually like the upside here but I think we're a couple years from seeing an above-average unit at this spot.
DB grade: 6/10. Obviously the big add here (Darius Slay) provokes excitement. Philly has had enough trouble with importing corners of his age that I will take a wait-and-see approach. If he's the player here that he was a couple years ago, he's a clear improvement, and this grade is too low. Of course, we lost our best overall DB in Jenkins and replaced him with Jalen Mills, who has the athletic chops to do the job but lacks experience. I thought that rookie K'Von Wallace might take that spot but he hasn't impressed in camp. Rodney McLeod is the only starter that returns to his position. Maddox may be a solid CB2, or maybe not. The depth is “experienced”, if you count bad experience. Not sure what to make of this group. The staff usually has this group playing well in December, and they can't possibly be destroyed with injuries a third year in a row, right? Right?
ST grade: 8/10. The specialists all return and are solid and steady. They'll find capable return specialists from their deep group of young playmakers. I think we're fine here, just like the last few years.
Coaching/Management grade: 9/10. I've had my issues with some of the Roseman moves (and his drafting) as well as with coach Pederson. However, here are a few stats that keep the grade high. Let's create a group of NFL teams with the following characteristics: won at least 30 games over the last three years (including playoffs), made the playoffs at least twice. Here's the list: Patriots, Chiefs, Saints, Rams, Ravens, Vikings, Seahawks, Titans and Eagles. Of these, only the Patriots (#16) and the Eagles (#9) ranked in the top half of the league in total adjusted games lost due to injury. Additionally, the Eagles have had to start a backup QB due to injury 24.1% of the time during this stretch; that's #8 in the league and only the Vikings (32.7%, #4) of the successful teams I mentioned have done so more often. The point is that it's difficult to be successful with the level of injuries that the Eagles have sustained over the past three years, yet Philly has managed it. That speaks will to the work that Roseman and Pederson have done here.
As you can tell, I've got three real points of concern, that I'll state as questions:
Can Carson Wentz protect the ball better?
Will the OL stay healthy?
Will the back seven hold up?
If we can answer at least two of these questions with a “yes” by year's end, Philly will be in playoff contention. If not, I think 8-8 is about the best I can hope for.
A few random thoughts on the Eagle's schedule for 2020:
Home field advantage, usually something Philly depends on, will be all but irrelevant this year unless the NFL allows fans in the seats.
Strange but true stat that I didn't believe till I looked it up: the Eagles under Doug Pederson are 4-2 in the regular season against team that ended up playing in a conference championship game. That may bode well for our chances to grab an upset or two in games against the Ravens, 49ers and Saints.
Philly is 8-3 in games in which you would have said “they're a solid favorite” before the season began. Naturally this is a somewhat nebulous stat but what my conclusion says is that we'll drop at least one of our five combined games against the Redskins (or whatever they're called now), the Giants or the Bengals.
Seems reasonable to say that the Birds will split with the Cowboys; they've done so every year but 2018 under Pederson. In regulation, Philly has outscored Dallas 157-147 in eight total games in this timeframe (Dallas scored 12 points in overtime).
Philly has beaten the Rams in LA twice running. They host LAR this year, and the Rams are clearly weaker this time around than they've been in years.
Doug is 0-4 all time against Seattle.
The home team has won four straight in the Keystone Series between Philly and Pittsburgh, by 17 points per game.
That leaves only two games with no meaningful trends to speak to: @Cardinals, @Packers and @Browns. These are three teams that we don't know much about, but I think all three will be in the playoff push at one point or another. Frankly, I think we're 1-2 against these guys. All three games come late in the season, when our lack of depth will likely be in play. If home field advantage ever comes back, that will work against us too.
Add it all up, and an 8-8 prediction seems reasonable. The range of 7-10 wins seems most likely; the only way we exceed that range would be if we finally get good injury luck, Wentz fixes his turnover issues and our defensive back seven holds up. Back luck on these counts will send us on a pretty grim path.
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