Eyeing The Eagles: Team Speed Kills

The Eagles blitz frequently on defense

This actually doesn’t appear to be the case anymore. The Eagles blitzed on something like 15% of pass plays against the Rams. And they blitzed a similar amount in the preseason. Under new DC Juan Castillo, this Eagles defense appears to be a more straight-up, rush-4 defense.

If the offensive line came out and blocked Jason Babin & Co. into next week,

This is the first time in years I’ve seen the Eagles defensive line referred to anything other than “Trent Cole & co.” It’s actually kinda nice to see since Trent’s been the best (still is) and virtually only player on the line in a long time. Nice to see another player referred to as the lead guy in the unit, but just giving you a heads up. Trent Cole isn’t too shabby either.

How do you counter (Vick’s scrambling)? In my mind, you put an athletic linebacker on him as a spy.

Every time a team tried this last year they got burned pretty badly. Vick is just too good in the pocket now to take another defender out of the equation. It seems like the best way to stop Vick and the offense is to confuse the heck out of him by continuously blitzing and moving around the LOS.

Other than those things, your post sounds pretty good. You nailed it with Jamar Chaney and the LBs. So far, Chaney seems to be the only bright spot of that unit. If you establish the run, attack the middle of the field, and keep Vick off the field, it could be a close game.

Nice write-up.

As much as I wanted to see how explosive our offense can be, this is a game where we need to pound the ball and keep Philly off the field. I had us penciled for a loss as well but I think if we keep it close, we may have a shot at winning. If we get behind, it may be a wrap.

this game is not about who’s faster or more talented. it’s about playcallers – how creative they are and whether they can make adjustments during the game.

history says Andy Reid and his assistants always had the edge against Smitty & Co. in creativity, so the only way we can win it is if MM and (to a slightly lower degree) BVG come up with something totally unexpected. it was the Baltimore game last year when MM came up with a plan nobody expected – everybody thought we’d run, and we came our slinging the ball. what are the chances we see a different MM and a different BVG? I don’t want to be over optimistic on this one, but I feel they’ve had the whole offseason to think about it, knowing that the opposition had their number for many years.

I think in the worst case scenario, Vick will come out throwing the ball and going after our secondary. passes to Maclin and DeSean if we play zone, and a screen to McCoy if we’re too agressive. we’ll be one or two missed tackles away from falling behind by two scores. and then we face the challenge – overcoming big deficits when the opposition has good pass defense. something we’re never good at. that’s when they unleash McCoy as a runner.

in the best scenario, we will not only run the ball well and use screens (!!!!), but will actually score. we need a solid game from our young punter too.

I think it has to do with the Peregrine Falcon that lives in my neighborhood. I’ve seen him around a few times and hear him quite often. Yesterday, he was calmly perched in a tree not 20 feet from my back door. He just looked at me for a minute before ‘rising up’ to take back to the air.

A comment and a question.

First, how do you guys like Jaquizz Rogers? I remember when we had in on our squad last year in TC, he was awesome. Kinda small, but still very powerful for his size, shift, elusive and good running technique. I was REALLY a big fan of his and pretty bummed out when he had to cut him.
Also, how is your safety play. I know a DeCoud is pretty darn good but I know nothing about your other safety (William Moore?). Anyway, what are theyre strengths and weaknesses? It seems like the biggest weakness is size, is that accurate?

Hopefully Vick tears it up tho, thats my feeling

But I just don’t think we’re built to compete with a team like the Eagles (Saints or Packers for that matter). This game will either be a blowout or a shootout, either way we’re most likely going to be on the losing end of it. Looking at the rest of our schedule, I’m starting to think maybe we should have kept that 2012 first round pick, especially if we’re not going to use the player we traded all those picks to get.

Maybe the Falcons prove me wrong but I just don’t see it, with the injuries and all. If I weren’t still somewhat of a Vick’s fan I probably wouldn’t watch this game.

Oh yeah, Vick biggest weakest is reading safeties, always has been. If you’re reading this BVG, move your safeties around a bit and try to throw him off and you’re guaranteed to get an interception (unless Decoud gets his hands on it).

38-21 Eagles.

I too saw this game as the worst possible game we could have played. And I see the Falcons coming out this week and actually showing up and beating the Eagles, barely but still win. With the Eagles pass rush not near as good as the Bears is, I see Ryan hitting some big plays on them. We’ll get hit for some big ones too, but Ryan gets the ball last and leads us to the come from behing victory with a TD pass to RW on the last play of the game. We win 31-30. We get the ball first to start the game, go straight down the field, with Ryan hitting JJ for a 56 yard TD pass, then first eagles series, Grimes pick 6’s Vick and whamm it’s 14-0 withim the first 4 mins of the game, then we basically have a few bonehead plays causing them to take a late lead at 30-24 on a super play from Vick, but he leaves too much time on the clock for Ryan and Co – and at 1:43 left, we all know how it ends after that.

So falcons in 31-30 and play with a chip on their shoulder all game long and put some licks on people. Vick is sacked 4 times and we pick him twice. Ryan throws 2 TD’s, MT gets one , and Grimes one on defense,

Fingers crossed, praying my butt off.

Seeing as we’re at the midweek point, perhaps it’s time to take a gander at the Eagles upcoming opponent to see what we might expect out of this weekend’s game. On Sunday, the Eagles play the Atlanta Falcons in Michael Vick’s big return to the city he once reigned over. Remember, last year Vick was injured against his former team and Kevin Kolb led Philadelphia to victory in his absence. In preparation for the matchup, I went back and watched the Falcons week one loss against the Bears. Honestly, I didn’t find much to be worried about, but that is only one week.

Let’s start on defense, where the Falcons looks average at best. They mostly played a vanilla 4-3 scheme with infrequent blitzing. The Football Outsiders Almanac said that the Falcons had more zone blitzes than anyone else in the NFL in 2010, but I didn’t notice that. Not that I would mind if they did. Defensive end John Abraham, like Trent Cole the last few years, is far and away the best pass rusher they have and dangerous off the edge. Dropping him back into coverage only helps the offense. The Falcons defense added Ray Edwards in the offseason, and at his size he’s hard to miss. But even against Bears rookie tackle Gabe Carimi, Edwards made little impact. Sean Weatherspoon is a tremendously fast linebacker, but missed a few tackles that even Asante Samuel would be ashamed of.

One big takeaway: Atlanta had an especially hard time covering Bears running back Matt Forte on screen passes. Forte had two long gains, one for a touchdown and one that should have been a touchdown if not for a bad officiating call that put him out of bounds at the one yard line. LeSean McCoy must be licking his lips. The Falcons offense has far better weapons on paper than the Rams did, but they barely registered because Matt Ryan looked so mediocre. The typical pass play involved Ryan dropping back with plenty of time and then dumping the ball off to the open man underneath. I’m all for taking what the defense gives you, but Roddy White and Julio Jones were relative nonfactors against the Bears.

For a while I thought it might just be the Bears cover two scheme on defense, but then I checked the stats from last year. Ryan was 26th among quarterbacks in yards per attempt (6.5) and 28th in yards per catch (10.4). And while he’s decisive with the football, Ryan isn’t particularly mobile. That’s especially bad considering his left tackle Sam Baker had nine blown blocks in 2010 according to the FOA, third-most in the league. Overall, this looks to me like an overrated team. Last year Atlanta won 13 games but their Pythagorean wins were closer to 11. They don’t look significantly better, while the Eagles have improved substantially since their 2010 victory.

All in all this will be a much more difficult test than week one, and any further lapses in run defense or tight end coverage won’t make it easy on the Eagles defense. But if those holes can be patched up, I don’t see much reason to expect anything other than a 2-0 start.

But related to the title of this article.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytVyzMp5KAg

I think I lost a lot of brain cells. Some of those guys make the Saints trolls seem like geniuses.

Talk about hostile environment.

Were gonna be in big trouble, I say we play in dime formation the entire game to match their speed . The rams had success blitzing their corners.

Winning this game is as simple as this: If Turner gets less than 25 touches, we lose; 25-29 it could go either way; 30 or more, we win. Book it!

The playmakers won’t matter unless the line of scrimmage is disrupted. Vick has historically struggle against a good pass rush and blitzes. Playing at the Dome will exponentiate the problems of the Eagles o-line and I give the advantage to the falcons.

What the falcons should do is run the ball often, but limit predictability!! With the the talk about the falcons needing to air it out, they really need to run this game. Although I still think they need to air it judiciously because that opens up the run more. I mean really…if the Rams can run rough shot over the eagles that game….why can’t we?

If Abe can get consistant pressure on Vick and force him to run to his right that can disrupt his timing. Possibly running him toward RE or a DB/S/LB rushing off the left edge.

IF BVG would run a S/DB stunt inside of Abe that would put a lot of pressure on Vick.

He may not have many picks, but I think that can be chalked up to the fact the ball isn’t barely thrown to him. He had 8 picks in 06 and from then he has been considered a shutdown corner who just doesn’t get passes thrown his way. Also I hate to say it but I think he’s still getting better.