The Eagles (for lack of a better title)

If there would be one way to accurately describe, for the most part, football fans, it would be that they think they are better than the pros. Us fans tend to look at plays and think, “Hey, I did that in the back yard, why couldn’t he?” This leads to bashing the quarterback when a sneaky defender jumps a pass for an interception, holding our heads in our hands when a receiver drops a pass that was fired at his feet, and especially, ripping our team’s front office for their decisions regarding who to keep, who to get rid of, and who to get. For this reason, I always try to be slow to disagree with personnel moves made by professional GM’s and coaches. However, the Eagles front office has finally made enough inexplicable moves that I can no longer stifle my dissent.
So what did they do this year that at last put me over the top? Simple. Nothing. Nothing is what they did as long time Eagle Brian Dawkins left for the Denver Broncos. Now there are several reasons for not resigning a player:
-Salary Cap: Probably the single reason why the NFL is currently the best sport going is the salary cap which limits how much a team can spend on players each season. Sometimes, no matter how much they want to keep him, a team simply doesn’t have enough room under the cap to resign him. Going into this off season, the Eagles were $48 million under the salary cap. Okay, that must not be it.
-The Player: Sometimes, plain and simple, the player wants nothing to do with his current team and is going to leave unless they empty the bank for his services. Brian Dawkins said many times that he wanted to stay in Philadelphia. Now a lot of players will say that, but when a bigger offer comes from somewhere else, they’re gone. From every piece of information I’ve heard or read, Dawkins’s “I want to stay” statement was the most legitimate of it’s kind. All it would have taken was a reasonable contract offer from the Eagles and #20 would still be in midnight green (Here I’ll clarify that while we all like to complain about athletes wanting more money, the truth is that they are the driving force in a mega million dollar industry, so they are very deserving of the profits). I recently heard that the Eagles are one of four NFL teams worth over 1 billion dollars. Brian Dawkins was the face of the team’s defense. If not the entire team. Do the math I think we can all agree that he is worth more than the 2 year, 4 million dollar contract the Eagles threw at his feet.
-Age: Sometimes a team will decide that as a player gets older and loses some ability, and just not worth the money anymore. Now, we fans have a knack for being overly nostalgic about our long term players. We hate to see them leave. But the Eagles strategy of letting older guys go to let their young prospects onto the field has worked out pretty well so far (think of when they let star cornerbacks Bobby Taylor and Troy Vincent go and replaced them with Lito Shepherd and Sheldon Brown. Taylor and Vincent fell into oblivion and I barely heard their names again, while Shepherd and Brown rose to Pro Bowl or near Pro Bowl status. Or Hugh Douglass the ferocious pass rusher who left for the Jaguars and suddenly lost his ability. The list goes on). But Brian Dawkins is not just a player. He’s a team leader. He shows up biggest when the lights are brightest. He plays every down of every game like it’s the last play of the Super Bowl. He makes big plays when they count. Need I say more? If I was managing the team on Madden, which doesn’t take experience, leadership, or intensity into account, I’d say he’s an old player who has lost a step in pass coverage and should go. But Dawkins is so much more. Even if he isn’t on the field for every play, he’ll earn every dollar he gets paid by keeping the team fired up and ready to go.

The way I see it, if none of the above three criteria are reason for letting a player go, then you resign him. It seems that the Eagles management thought the Age factor was a problem, but that was a miscalculation if you ask me (due to leadership, etc.). A criteria that I didn’t mention above is when another team comes out and way overpays a guy. That argument could be made given the Broncos 5 year contract to a 35 year old player…but if the Eagles hadn’t just sat around and done nothing, Dawkins never would have been in free agency.

Okay, so they made a bad decision with Brian Dawkins…in what other ways have the Eagles blundered?
Primarily, in the often stated belief that the wide receiver position is over rated. There’s some truth in the statement. You can run an effective offense with a group of average receivers; a star wide out isn’t a necessity. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to get one. The Eagles have five receivers that I think could be in the top three for a lot of teams, but none that would be the #1 go to guy on most teams. A squad like this will do fine over the course of the regular season. They aren’t going to keep the team out of the post season. But when the playoffs come around and defenses start playing better, a big time, playmaking receiver is an undeniable asset. Just think of what Larry Fitzgerald did for the Cardinals in their Super Bowl run. When he wasn’t beating two or three defenders, he was opening up the field for the other guys. Meanwhile, the Eagles receivers got off to a very sluggish start in the NFC championship game that caused the offense to sputter early, putting them in a huge first half hole (I believe McNabb is equally to blame, but he is a whole topic in himself, so I’m intentionally leaving McNabb conversation out of this).
Do you think it is a coincidence that the year Terrell Owens was with the Eagles (and on good terms) was the only year out of their recent NFC championship seasons that they could be defined as “Dominating” rather than “Good?” The Eagles defense that year wasn’t much better if at all. Their running game wasn’t as good as it is now. I rest my case.
It seems that the Eagles strategy has been to try to field a team that is a safe bet to make the playoffs, and then hope they catch fire and make a run to the Lombardi Trophy. Not a terrible plan, but after five out of eight years making the NFC championship game with no Super Bowl wins, it is time to re-evaluate things. After all, they’ve come into the playoffs in just about every way imaginable; from the dominating 13-1 team that didn’t play the last two games of the season, to the 6-seed team that had to make a highly improbably late season run just to get into the playoffs; and no way they have done it has worked. The only year they even made it to the Super Bowl was when they went out and took chances with a controversial wide receiver (T.O.) and a freakish pass rusher with injury problems (Javon Kearse). The long term wisdom of those moves can be questioned with our prescription hind-sight glasses, but they were a big part of why the team was as great as it was that year and almost got that championship. And trust me. Any Eagles fan you talk to just wants one. Yes we’d cheer just as strongly for another should the Eagles win a Super Bowl, but getting that one championship is all that really matters. Yeah, a dynasty would be pretty cool, but those are for pretty boy quarterbacks, obnoxious coaches, and lead to one thing: Arrogant, pampered fan bases.
So overall, it’s not really that the Eagles decision makers have done a horrible job…it’s that they do a good job. Yes, good. Good enough to send the team to the playoffs 80% of the time. Good enough to keep everyone’s hopes up only to smash them year in and year out. Most of all, good enough to keep their jobs, and good enough that no one will call loudly enough for change (Yikes! I just sounded like President Obama! Let me rephrase that). Good enough that no one looks at them when the team comes up short again…and again. Good enough that there’s always some validity in the old Eagles adage, “There’s always next year.”