It’s been suggested the Philadelphia Eagles already improved markedly on defense this offseason. Really? That’s an interesting statement, considering the team has yet to so much as hire a starter at safety or convincingly address the No.2 cornerback position.
I know people were sick of Nate Allen, and Bradley Fletcher was truly an abomination in 2014, but are “nobody” and “anybody” honestly better alternatives?
The one area on defense where the Eagles have definitively and significantly upgraded thus far wasn’t even a huge problem last season. Yes, DeMeco Ryans is getting to be over the hill, but it says something that there wasn’t a huge drop-off from the two-time Pro Bowler to a platoon of Casey Matthews and Emmanuel Acho at interior linebacker.
Obviously, the offseason isn’t complete, and there are still free agents and a draft to fill holes. Yet to sit here in March and claim the defense as it stands today is vastly superior to what the Eagles were fielding back in December, I’m sorry, I just don’t see it.
Despite the addition of Kiko Alonso to the front seven, the most pressing issue continues to be the secondary, which remains a glaring weakness. Byron Maxwell was a nice Band-Aid—although likely not the shutdown cornerback he’s getting paid to be—but aside from that signing and Malcolm Jenkins, the Eagles seemed to have forgotten how many players a defensive backfield is traditionally comprised of.
Walter Thurmond III was the other get for the secondary, a soon-to-be 28-year-old cornerback who’s appeared in 27 of 71 possible regular-season and playoff games over the past four years. Fletcher may be bad, but this guy doesn’t even play.
Thurmond also spent the majority of his remarkably limited time on an NFL field lining up in the slot, so even with good health, how he would fare on the outside over the course of a full season is a mystery. Almost certainly no worse than Fletcher, but there isn’t much frame of reference for that, not to mention the added bonus of not knowing how many Sundays he’ll even suit up.
Chip Kelly said Brandon Boykin and Nolan Carroll may be in the mix to start as well, but seeing as they apparently couldn’t beat out Fletcher for the job last year, that’s not incredibly promising.
Then there is safety, where ??????? is the current starter alongside Jenkins. One thing I’ll give ??????? credit for is he has intangibles, for instance, that he is, quite literally, intangible.
If you had to pick somebody off of Philadelphia’s roster right now, it would probably be Earl Wolff, a third-year player who missed all of ’14 more or less with a knee injury, or Chris Maragos, a career special-teamer. If the Eagles eventually settle on a free agent, the options are extremely limited at this point, while this year is said to be a very weak draft class at safety.
Allen blew some key assignments over the top last season, and his time in Philly was filled with generally spotty play. Regardless, the fact of the matter is the Eagles haven’t replaced him at all yet.
Not sure how a defense could be better off with 10 players as opposed to 11.
Even Maxwell, while probably an upgrade over Cary Williams and no doubt Fletcher, fans seem to be assuming will solve a lot of the secondary’s problems. If Maxwell does somehow manage to live up to his massive contract, that’s great—also far from a given—but if opponents can just pick on the other half of the Birds’ defensive backs, it might not matter much.
Again, there’s a lot of time between now and September. Perhaps Philly’s D ultimately will shape up to be better than the ’14 edition.
So far, I’m not sold on the supposed tremendous improvements that have been made. The front seven is largely the same, plus Alonso coming off a torn ACL. The secondary, on the other hand, while it sure looks a lot different, wasn’t necessarily fixed.
We’ll wait until the final product is assembled to pass judgment. However, at this stage of the building process, what exactly is so much better about this unit as a whole?