NFC East 2008

The Game Room
281

furt, I can see your point about the stubbornness, and I stand corrected on most parts. It sure seems like Reid isn’t making any in-game adjustments and sticking to his guns far too often. I don’t have any stats for this, but I’ve had a suspicion that in the last season or two, the Eagles haven’t had many comeback wins. I know that when the Giants took the lead in this last game, the game was over. It doesn’t matter how close it ended up being, the Eagles weren’t in that game. I think this is mostly because the team has one true offensive weapon, and in the 4th quarter it’s too easy to negate that one weapon, but Reid’s stubbornness and seeming lack of adjustments have to be a big reasons for it too.

[QUOTE=furt]
WTF? You wanna reconcile the first part with the last? You don’t wanna see Kolb, but you *do *wanna trade Mac? And do what, sign a free agent to replace him?
[/QUOTE]

Those two statements aren’t exclusive of one another. People calling for Kolb are morons, there isn’t any way he can be more effective than McNabb, and we’ve seen bits of that. Kolb isn’t ready, and he isn’t McNabb. But, the reality is that this team isn’t winning this season and they don’t have but one or maybe two more after '08. I don’t want to see Kolb under center yet, but I want to see this team “rebuilding” even less. McNabb still has value, and he won’t carry the same value in two years, as you said. Move him now, let Kolb learn on the job, and start “rebuilding” two years before you have to. That’s the key to staying competitive (your argument against being n contention as opposed to winning championships is a pretty hollow bit of semantics. You can’t win championships without being in contention, and the goal is to be able to win consistently. Ask Phillies fans how winning one every thirty years feels.) is rebuilding on the fly before you’re forced to officially rebuild. The Eagles have been masters at this, so why stop now?

[QUOTE=furt]
Getting another weapon will not remake them; it will merely keep them in contention for another year or two, during which time McNabb and the rest will lose even more of their trade value.
[/QUOTE]

It will help them win this year, and winning is the goal, right? A play-making WR would absolutely put the Eagles in the top three teams in the NFC. The defense is stout, the special teams are finally even decent. This team is one clutch playmaker from an NFC title game, at least. On the flipside though, to acquire that playmaker means mortgaging the future, and I’d rather not do that.

[QUOTE=furt]
The team needs surgery, not a band-aid.
[/QUOTE]

100% agreed, but the band-aid could mean a title now. Bird in the hand and all, but I’d rather not go through five years of losing to finally be good again. Not when you can rebuild as you go.

282

This has been the Eagles problem for quite awhile now, with the TO years as the anomoly.

Every time I watch the Eagles play, I think “Damn, great QB, great defense, great RB…and Freddie Mitchell? Where’s the WR’s?”

DeSean Jackson is a start but he really needs to be a slot guy and the Eagles need a Calvin Johnson type on the outside to truly keep defenses honest. Decent defenses with a quality secondary can stack the box against Westbrook and force McNabb to throw to his TE and to, well, Westbrook, underneath.

And yes I know Freddie Mitchell is no longer with the team, but he was a 1st round WR, wasn’t he?

283

Mitchell: 25th overall in 2001, cut by the Iggles in 2005. Hasn’t so much as made a roster since. He tried out for the Ravens in May, interestingly.

I think you’re wrong about Jackson. I know little guys are always pigeonholed as slot receivers, but IMHO Jackson is a Steve Smith/Santana Moss type- the little guy with good enough route running skills and jumping ability to be an excellent #2 (as Moss really ought to be) or even a bona fide #1 as Smith is.

I’m not going to say that Jackson is in Steve Smith’s class yet, but he’s in his category.

284

Dude, I’m sorry, but you make no sense. From reading you, I have no idea what exactly you’re in favor of.

There are really only three sensible choices this offseason:

  1. Keep Reid and Mac, try to add players, and keep winning with the current core. They can do this and remain a “contender” (i.e. make the playoffs) for several more years. However, I do not think it is at all likely that they will win a championship. For me, that is the only thing that matters, so I do not advocate this option.

  2. Fire Reid and trade McNabb and rebuild. This means that the odds are very good they will be down for a year or two as Kolb learns; given that they’re old guys, you also drop the OTs, and think hard about anyone on the wrong side of 30. This option carries the great risk that they’ll stay down if Kolb proves to be a stiff. But, IMO, it also carries a greater chance of winning a championship than option #1, which is why I prefer it.

  3. Keep Mac and the core players, but fire Reid and bring in a new coach, hoping the shakeup puts them over the hump, ala Guden replacing Dungy in Tampa. The more I think about it, this might be the best option.

But if they keep Mac in 2009, he’s not going to have much trade value come 2010

Not for me. The goal is to win championships, and making a team marginally better in the near term may actually hamper that. Example: were I a Jets fan, I would have hated the Favre trade: it clearly makes their team better now, but they’re still not going to win a championship with him, IMO, so they’re just treading water.

I already did ask one: myself. And I prefer it to 30 years of losing in the playoffs.

So: keep mcnabb but also trade him, do everything possible to win now while simutaneously doing everything possible to build for the future … Why not wish for a pony, too?

Obviously, you want it all; everyone does But competition involves making hard choices, and one of those is deciding when a window has closed. IMO, if you wait until it’s glaringly obvious, you increase the chances it will stay closed.

285

You’re spoiled, you know.

Reid has the 12th-highest winning percentage of all NFL head coaches ever. Not just active coaches- all of them. Among active coaches, he’s second only to Dungy, and by about 2 games.

Think about that for a second. I’d guesstimate that there have been around 350 men who have been NFL head coaches, not including interim guys. Assuming that figure is roughly accurate (and if not, I think it’d be on the low side), your chance of hiring someone better is infinitesimal.

Sure, you have trouble in the playoffs. So does everyone else. Every year, only one team goes undefeated in the playoffs… and let’s face it- there’s a lot of luck involved. Nobody would have argued last year that the Giants were the best team or even the best coached team. By the end of the 2006 regular season, everyone was jumping off the Colts’ bandwagon. The Rams were supposed to blow out the 2001 Patriots. Winning in the playoffs is about getting hot at the right time, and not really about who’s the best.

Even if you do blame Reid for the playoff stumbles, he’s achieved everything in his tenure with Philly that Bill Cowher had 10 years into his tenure with Pittsburgh. Would you have fired him, too?

286

Actually, he’s 27th among 145 coaches with more than 50 games.

And assuming that winning percentage is the end-all be-all of how to measure a coach. Since that would mean that Wade Phillips, George Seifert, and Barry Switzer are all better than Chuck Noll, Tom Landry and Bill Parcells, I don’t find the logic compelling.

Honestly, yes, I would probably have fired Cowher after the 99 or 2000 seasons. So that would make me wrong for failing to predict his second run of success, including a championship.

Your turn: Were the Bucs wrong to fire Tony Dungy? Were the Broncos wrong to fire Dan Reeves? Were the Packers wrong to fire Mike Sherman? They all did better in their last three seasons than Reid has done in his last 3, and they all went on to do better under the new guy.

Of course it doesn’t always work that way; sometimes you fire the good coach, and the team goes downhill. Sometimes you keep sticking with the guy, and the team stays stuck in the rut and never gets over it: Marty Schottenheimer is a few spots higher than Reid on that winning % list.

Every situation is different.

287

I’m not so sure about that. Going into the 2007 playoffs, I think most people – myself included – would’ve described the Giants as “not a contender.” At that point they seemed like a classic perennial wildcard team: Not a real contender, but they need 6 teams per conference so somebody has to fill those last couple spots.

I figured they could beat the Bucs despite being underdogs, but c’mon, anyone who says they were confident the Giants could win the next three games is lying.

288

I thought we could beat the Bucs and Greenbay but I didn’t think we could beat the Cowboys or the Patriots. That was an extremely pleasant surprise as was the entire run.

289

I meant all three, not any of them.

I figured they had a puncher’s chance in all of them but if I had to bet straight up I would have bet against the Giants in all three. (I would have bet the house on the Giants against the Bucs, though, the Curse of Garcia be damned.)

290

Sorry, I knew what you meant but I was just posting that I thought we would be the two and did not think we would beat Dallas or New England.

291

Ahem. December 31st, 2007, early Super Bowl pick thread:

Ok, maybe I wasn’t confident, but I did call it…

292

Cowboys 31
Redskins 20

Prediction coming off their bye. Dallas turns it around.

I also predicted Dallas would be 8-0 or 7-1 going into their bye last week. :mad:

293

I think Dallas will win though I am rooting against it. I feel if they lose that they are done. So I would rather see the Skins win and then have the **Giants **have to take care of their own business than Dallas sticking around. But yeah, I too think Dallas turns it around this week.

294

Count me in the “Eagles fans are malcontents” camp.

I think, at this point, it’s fair to say that Reid is a pretty bad game-day coach. He clearly handles challenges and clock management poorly, and he *seems *to be fair at best at in-game adjustments (though this is one of those things that’s hard for a fan to speak to with any confidence).

But how much of a Head Coach’s job actually takes place on Sunday? By putting up with Reid the game-day coach, you also get Reid the game-planner and Reid roster-manager. Most importantly, you get Reid the GM, who’s done a great job.

Now, there’s a legitimate disagreement to be had about a “boom & bust” approach to personnel versus a “steady state” approach, but Boom & Bust only makes sense, I think, if the other option is steady mediocrity. You don’t blow up a team that can pretty easily win 9 or 10 games every year (unless they’re obviously about to hit an age-wall). Instead, you just try to make incremental, small-downside improvements and take a *relatively *small annual chance of breaking through to a championship. In the meantime, your fans get to see meaningful, high-quality football year after year. Eventually, something might click, like with the Giants, who were just a pretty good team for three years prior to Week 17 of 2007. If you put a pretty good team on the field every year, I think they’re at least as likely eventually to improve to “great” as a bad team.

295

#1 NFC East 18-6 75%
#2 NFC South 17-7 71%
#3 AFC East 16-8 67%
#4 AFC South 15-9 63%
#5 AFC North 9-13 41%
#6 NFC North 7-15 32%
#7 AFC West 6-18 25%
#7 NFC West 6-18 25%

#1 NFC 19-17 53%
#2 AFC 17-19 47%

296

That was an impressive game by the Giants. The rushed for over 200 yards against the best Rush Defense in the NFL. The Defense looked damn good and the entire team contributed to the win like Coach Coughlin likes.

297

A tie? The best the Eagles could do against the Bungles was a tie?

Hahahaha. They’re finished.

298

Just keeping tabs.

299

I am there with you:

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
I think we’ll beat Baltimore and Arizona.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, yes they are!

If Dallas loses tonight they too will be done so oddly enough, I fine myself rooting for the Skins even though they are closer.

300

Rooting for the 'Skins? You should fine yourself. :stuck_out_tongue: