Dumpster Fire: Why You Shouldn't Expect Much To Change For The Eagles

Dumpster Fire: Why You Shouldn't Expect Much To Change For The Eagles

By: Joe Kearney-Argow

    I waited a few days to write this. I wanted to calm down, see if more details would come out, see if I would get any inkling that things might change in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, from what I've seen, things may only get darker for the Eagles with no light at the end of the tunnel that has been the 2020 season. I say this because, despite the shake-ups at head coach and defensive coordinator, the real root of the Eagle's woes is still around: Howie Roseman. Nothing will change as long as he continues to call the shots for this organization. While there's a lot to unpack here, I'll try to go in chronological order. 

    First, there's Jim Schwartz, who announced he would not be returning next year as the Eagle's defensive coordinator. All year, I heard about how bad of a job he's doing, how he needs to go, etc. But let's look at something very significant that nobody is talking about... Jim Schwartz didn't get fired, he quit. Is it possible that he could have been fired once Doug was gone? Absolutely, but he didn't, because he decided he was so unhappy with his situation that he didn't want to be the defensive coordinator of the Eagles anymore. Here is why that is significant: if you were at a job where your bosses didn't listen to your input, didn't give you the tools and resources to be successful in your role, and when things didn't work out, you took all the blame, what would you do? Simple answer, you'd quit. 

    The Eagles ranked 30th in the NFL in money allocated to defense this year. On top of that, over the last five years, the Eagles have drafted just two defensive players in the top-50 picks, and only three in the top-100 picks. Two of the three, Sidney Jones and Rasul Douglas, are no longer with the Eagles. The third, Derek Barnett, has been mediocre at best; despite his historic collegiate production as a pass-rusher, he's never totaled more than 6.5 sacks in a single season and, aside from his heroics in the team's Super Bowl win in 2017, has served as a rotational depth piece much more so than someone you'd build your defense around. Schwartz wanted the Eagles to pick a linebacker in the first round this past year, either Kenneth Murray out of Oklahoma or Patrick Queen out of LSU, but Howie didn't listen. Instead, the Eagles drafted Jalen Reagor with their first round selection. If you don't want to spend money on defense and you don't want to use high draft picks on defense, guess what you're going to get? A shitty defense. To top it all off, you've got an offense that can't move the ball and turns it over way too much. Jalen Reagor, despite being drafted 21st overall, was a non-factor for the Eagles offense in 2020. Queen and Murray? Both have grown into effective starters for their respective teams, with some even drawings comps of Patrick Queen to Ray Lewis. The Eagle's defense ranked fourth worst in starting field position and the offense turned the ball over twenty-nine times, ranking third worst in the NFL. So you've got bad players, starting with bad field position, that have to be on the field more because we can't take control the clock or care of the football. Sure, that sounds like a recipe for success...

Even this guy deserves more respect than the 2020 Eagle's defense.

    In spite of all of the aforementioned statistics and realities, the Eagles defense ranked thirteenth in yards-per-play, eighteenth in yards-per-game, and twentieth in points-per-game. While eighteenth and twentieth are not great, they're certainly not terrible in light of the facts I just presented and I'd argue that Schwartz excelled with the limited tools he had to work with. Yet, many Philly fans are more than happy he's gone. Well, I hate to break it to you, but I've got news for you all... Jim Schwartz is one of the best defensive minds to coach in the NFL in the last twenty years. If you think we're going to find someone to do a better job with the current players on the roster, you're out of your mind. What defensive coordinator in their right mind would look at Philly's situation and want to come here!?! Oh, you don't like spending on defense, drafting defensive players, and your fan base is going to blame me when things don't go well? I think I'll pass, thank you. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see how anyone can fix this defense without a complete turnover of defensive personnel. There is no short term fix; this isn't a situation where one or two draft picks will serve as a band aid to patch up the failings of this defense. We're going to be in it for the long haul and it's this situation that we find ourselves in that falls squarely on Howie Roseman.

    The next log to be thrown onto the dumpster fire that was the Philadelphia Eagle's 2020 season was the disastrous performance by Doug Pederson. I'm actually okay with Pederson's expulsion from the Eagle's organization considering his in-game decision making this year, especially in week three and seventeen. It was fairly plain to see that this season was over after week three, not necessarily because we tied, but how we tied. Doug passed up a sixty-three yard field goal for the win and decided to punt to play for the tie. Now, sixty-three yards is an absolute bomb of a kick, but Jake Elliot has the leg for it. He has proved he can hit those kicks in big moments in the past. I think we all remember him hitting a game winning, record setting sixty-one yarder against the Giants in 2017. At this point in time, Jake Elliott is entering a season where he's been signed to a deal that would purportedly contend he's one of the leagues best kickers (well, we saw how that turned out) and we know that he is capable of performing in clutch situations (well, that's what we thought so at the time). By punting, Doug told the team he doesn't trust his kicker, and he doesn't trust his defense to stop a Bengals team with fifteen seconds left on the clock, a Bengals team whose quarterback had been sacked eight times thus far that day and was making only his third career start. I get that Joe Burrow was highly touted coming out of college, but you treated him like he was 2007-era Tom Brady. At 0-2, the Eagles needed to win that Bengals game and what did Doug do? He opted for the tie. Come on, Doug!

    If Doug didn't lose the locker room then, he sure as hell did when he benched Jalen Hurts in the fourth quarter of week seventeen. I initially defended this move; I think getting the sixth overall pick is very significant and I didn't think it was worth injuring Hurts in a meaningless game. A reality often overlooked in our critique of this game is that it wasn't as if Hurts was lighting up the scoreboard in his performance against Washington. He'd gone 7-for-20 for seventy yards and an interception. While he did rush for two touchdowns on eight carries (34 yards), it was clear that Hurts was struggling against a stingy Washington front-seven. As more information has come out, though, it sounds like this move really pissed off a lot of the Eagles players because they didn't know it was coming. I'm ok with benching Hurts and taking a loss in a meaningless game, but you can't ask the team to prepare 100% all week, play hard for three quarters, and then pull the rug out from under them. That isn't right. Doug's explanation that he wanted to see what the team had in Nate Sudfeld is an unequivocal lie. Nate's been in the Eagle's organization since 2017. You know damn well what you have in Nate Sudfeld and saying otherwise isn't fooling anyone; you knew that taking Hurts out snuffed out any chance the Eagles had of winning that game (however slim that chance was) and then lied to your own team, the media, and the fans about it. Shame on you, Doug.

    Despite the flash-in-the-pan, weeks fifteen and sixteen performances against New Orleans and Arizona, Doug's play calling was atrocious throughout the year as well. Much has been made of Doug's aversion to moving the pocket for his quarterbacks, despite statistical evidence that doing so yields more positive results for both Carson Wentz and Jalen Hurts. I get that Carson Wentz had a terrible year. I fully, 100% agree, but Doug wasn't exactly putting him in positions to succeed with his play calling. Miles Sanders is arguably one of the premier backs in the league, yet he averaged less than fourteen carries a game. Why?!? 

    All that being said, though, Doug Pederson is still not the root of the Eagle's issues. Because at the end of the day, Doug was told to win games with an offensive line that lacked any sort of quality depth, a wide receiver room composed of has-beens and never-wases, and a coaching staff that wasn't even of his own choosing. Think of this team as a plant, with Doug Pederson being sunlight, Jim Schwartz being water, and Howie Roseman being the soil. You can adjust how much sunlight you give the plant and you can adjust how much you are watering the plant. But, if you're trying to grow that plant in a pile of rocks with no nutrients, nothing will grow no matter how much sun and water you give it. That's what the Eagles are trying to do, they are trying to grow a healthy plant in a pile of rocks. Howie Roseman's inability to make the right picks on draft day, his inability to sign or extend good players who aren't entering the nadir of their careers, and his repeated failure in overpaying players and signing them to bad contracts is why the Eagles are where they are and why nothing will change next year (or the year after that and so on...). It's hard to fully quantify how poor of a job Howie Roseman has done as GM of this team, but here's a fun stat: since 2016, Howie has drafted one Pro-Bowler in Carson Wentz. To put that in perspective, Chip Kelly drafted more Pro-Bowlers in his first two picks (Lane Johnson and Zach Ertz) than Howie has drafted in his last twenty-six picks. I don't think I need to go into all the busts (looking at you, Sidney Jones...), but I've been beaten to death by all of the JJAW over DK Metcalf and Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson memes.

    Every now and then, though, we do get a good player, either through free agency or through the draft, but, when we do, we can't keep them. Let's just look at the defense from that 2017 Super Bowl team. Malcolm Jenkins, gone. Timmy Jernigan, gone. Mychal Kendricks, gone. Jordan Hicks, gone. Ronald Darby, gone. Nigel Bradham, gone (though, he was getting old and injured so perhaps the Eagles chose right in jettisoning him despite not having a viable alternative in his place). Now we're looking at letting Zach Ertz walk as well. Despite his weak 2020 season, marred by off-the-field contract disputes and on-the-field ineffectiveness, Ertz has been the backbone of this offensive line, a sure-handed presence over the middle of the field. I have to believe that injuries played some sort of part in his poor play this season. In all likelihood, though, he won't be back next year and the Eagle's inability to retain good players or replace them through draft or free agency will continue to absolutely kill them. 

    Then, there's the contracts. I realize everyone was high on Carson Wentz, myself included, after his dazzling performance in 2017, but after two straight season-ending injuries in 2017 and 2018, we extended him for $32 million a year? Are you high, Howie?!? Even if Wentz got healthy (which he has), there was no guarantee he would return to MVP form (which he has not). Now, we're stuck with an absolutely albatross of a contract with a player who doesn't want to be here. Perhaps the firing of Doug Pederson salvages this relationship, but I highly doubt it. Let's keep digging. We've gotten about one and a half good years combined out of Alshon Jeffery and Desean Jackson; those two contracts are killing us. This doesn't even mention what kind of presence Alshon Jeffery has been in the locker room. We signed an aging Malik Jackson to a 3-year/$30 Million contract. What have we gotten in return? He's started seven games in two seasons. So, yeah, that's going well. Brandon Brooks, who had been a staple on the offensive line during his tenure as an Eagle, tore his Achilles at the end of  the 2018 season. While he was able to come back and play in 2019, he was still aging and we had to have known that he'd be an injury risk moving forwards. What did Howie do with him as he entered his age thirty season? We signed him to a 4-year/$56 Million, and he promptly tore his Achilles again before this season. At age 31, and under contract through 2025, I have a bad feeling that this contract is going to serve as a major roadblock in our ability to sign free agents in the future. It's hard to predict injuries, but you've got to be smarter than to continue to sign these aging players with injury histories to big money, long-term contracts.

    I'm exhausted. I've literally been angry at this team since week three and it all came to a head this week. I know many people were split on Schwartz and Pederson, on who deserves the onus of the blame for this debacle of a season, but, from most of my conversations with fellow Eagle's fans and even with outsiders looking in, the consensus has been that Howie is the real issue here. Unfortunately, the one guy we need to realize this just held a press conference babbling about how he stands by Howie Roseman and how Philly will be a coveted head coaching destination. Seriously, Jeff? Do you really think any coach wants to come into a situation where there's a QB controversy, a salary cap issue, an aging roster, and an over-controlling GM who thinks he's smarter than everyone else? Good luck with that. There is absolutely NOTHING attractive about the Eagle's roster situation nor is there much hope in their front office. So, we can all hope for a better defense and better play calling in 2021, but, as long as Howie is at the helm, the Eagles will continue to disappoint us. Fly Eagles Fly, I guess...