No matter how hard I try, I can’t help thinking about the Dream Team.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t help thinking that this just isn’t the way to build a football team.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about Ronnie Brown.
Taken individually, the additions seem like reasonable ones. Byron Maxwell was the top corner on the market, Frank Gore is a future Hall of Famer, Kiko Alonso played like a beast at linebacker two years ago for the Bills.
Taken together and taken as a philosophy — build through free agency — I keep going back to 2011.
The whole city was giddy four years ago at the additions of Jason Babin, Nnamdi Asomugha, Cullen Jenkins, Ronnie Brown, Steve Smith and Vince Young. A truckload of Pro Bowlers that was going to help make up for years of terrible drafting.
And remember, Babin came cheap and was a sack machine. Asomugha was coming off a first-team All-Pro season with the Raiders. Jenkins had just won a Super Bowl with the Packers. Brown, Smith and Young were all Pro Bowlers.
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But we all learned pretty quickly that the Dream Team, as Young coined the group in a memorable press conference at Lehigh, was a disaster.
And we all learned that successful teams don’t build through free agency. They build through the draft and then pick and choose free agents at fair market value.
So far?
Maxwell seems like a terrific addition, but how will he manage away from Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas and Kam Channcelor? Will he be worth a staggering $63 million over six years?
Gore seems like a terrific addition, and he’s shown no dropoff yet, but the history of running backs 32 and older is not good. Consider this: There have been 46 1,000-yard rushing seasons by 29-year-olds, 23 by 30-year-olds, 12 by 31-year-olds, six by 32-year-olds and two by 33-year-olds. Gore turns 32 in May. Maybe he’ll be an exception. The math is pretty solid.
Alonso seems like a terific addition, but he’s missed two of the last five years with knee injuries, and the price was extreme — the greatest running back in Eagles history in his prime.
As soon as the Eagles started shedding salary — James Casey, Todd Herremans, Trent Cole, LeSean McCoy — and building this huge cache of salary cap space, Chip Kelly’s plan was clear: Fill as many holes as possible with free agents with the intent of trying to turn a ton of picks into Marcus Mariota.
History isn’t kind to teams that trade draft picks and try to build through free agency. The draft is the lifeblood of a franchise. The Eagles have hit on a few veteran acquisitions over the years — Jon Runyan, Troy Vincent, Ricky Watters — but free agency should supplement good drafting, not replace it.
The problem with that whole Nnamdi/Babin/DRC offseason wasn’t just that those guys weren’t good players anymore — in Babin’s case, he did put up big numbers for one year — it was that they didn’t fit into the locker room.
Draft picks grow up in your system and feel like they have a home here, feel like they belong, like they’re a part of something. Free agents generally are just passing through and have no connection to the team, the city, the fans. Jason Babin had 18 sacks in a season but hurt the franchise a heck of a lot more than he helped it.
I like some of the Eagles’ moves so far, but the big picture bothers me. I worry that Kelly is so blindly obsessed with doing whatever he can to acquire Mariota he’s risking the short-term future of the franchise.
What if the end game of all this really is Mariota and he’s just not that good?
It’s not that far-fetched. Since 2006, 24 quarterbacks have been drafted in the first round. Five have a career winning record. Two of those five are Mark Sanchez and Vince Young. And draft analysts are certainly mixed in their evaluations of Mariota. He’s not a can’t-miss.
So here’s what scares me: Kelly does everything he can to get Mariota, but it doesn’t work out. Then he bolts for another college job in a year or two, and he leaves the Eagles not only without a franchise quarterback but without Maclin, without Shady, without DeSean and, yes, without Nick Foles, the one guy in all this who we know can win football games and the next guy likely to be shown the door.
Maybe Kelly knows exactly what he’s doing. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe by rebuilding the defense and then creating an offense around Mariota, Gore, Josh Huff, Zach Ertz and whoever else he can scrounge up, the Eagles will end their half-century of frustration, win a Super Bowl and have a parade.
I just know this. This sort of plan rarely works.
I asked Ray Didinger the the other day who the last team was to trade a bunch of picks for one player and win a title.
He thought for a moment and then said the Cowboys with Tony Dorsett. Dallas traded the 24th pick in the 1977 draft and three second-round picks to the Seahawks for the second pick in the draft, took Dorsett and won the Super Bowl that year.
That was 38 years ago.