Tuesday Takes

Big Oil
Big Oil
Nov 6 · 11 min read

In which I mostly despair about the Eagles’ WRs and Howie Roseman.

  1. I usually try to lead things off with something positive after an Eagles win, and I’ll do that now: they won a game they absolutely needed to win and are 5–4 heading into the bye, only a half game behind the Cowboys. That’s about the only positive you can take away from a win as ugly and disheartening as that one.
  2. I have to rant about the awful job Howie Roseman has done providing Wentz with a group of quality pass catchers. And not that you need the stats to back up the eye test, but they really do stink. Here’s a chronological list of the moves Howie Roseman has made at the WR position in 2019 that ultimately led to a guy with more yards lost on penalties than receiving yards and who hasn’t caught a pass since September playing at least half the snaps every week:

— traded for 32 year old Desean Jackson, then extended him to a 3 year $27M contract despite him not having played 16 games in a season since 2013. The coaching staff has so far been unable to come up with a solution for the passing attack in his absence despite knowing going into the season that he would almost certainly miss time at some point.

— picked up the 5th year option on Nelson Agholor’s rookie contract, guaranteeing him a salary of $9.387M (26th highest in the NFL among WRs). This move meant that, combined with Alshon and Desean’s contracts, no team is spending more money in 2019 on their top 3 WRs than the Eagles.

— drafted JJ Arcega-Whiteside 57th overall in the 2019 NFL draft, ahead of rookie receiving yards leaders DK Metcalf (64th overall) and Terry McLaurin (76th overall), as well as Dionte Johnson (66th overall) and a host of other rookie WRs who have been far more explosive and productive so far this season

— Restructered Alshon Jeffery’s contract by guaranteeing his salary for 2020 in order to create salary cap room in 2019, making it nearly impossible to move on from the aging WR immediately before the least productive season of his career. Jeffery previously had no guaranteed money for 2020 before this move by Howie. (Howie hasn’t used the gained 2019 cap room for anything like a Malcolm Jenkins extension or splashy trade acquisition either)

— did not acquire a WR at the trade deadline (Mohamed Sanu for a 2nd and Emmanuel Sanders plus a 5th for a 3rd and 4th were the only two to move, Robby Anderson was also reportedly available), opting not to pay an inflated price for an in-season upgrade

— declined to claim a now-healthy Josh Gordon on waivers even though there was no acquisition cost, despite Desean Jackson’s injury, Alshon Jeffery’s overnight aging, and the ineffectiveness of Nelson Agholor, Mack Hollins, and JJ Arcega-Whiteside. Gordon signed with the Seahawks and is expected to play on Monday night against the 49ers.

I mean, objectively speaking, that all fucking stinks, and I’m having a really tough time deciding what was the worst move of the bunch. Instead of using Agholor’s money on a better player at either WR or another impact position (he costs the Eagles more this season than Jadeveon Clowney would have, just as an example), they’re paying top-30 WR money to a guy who can’t consistently catch passes or track deep balls. Instead of being able to move on from Alshon Jeffery after a season in which it looks like he’s aged in dog years with no salary cap implications, they’re essentially forced to bring him back for 2020 and hope he bounces back. Instead of claiming an explosive (and admittedly inconsistent) potential in-season upgrade in Josh Gordon basically for free, they decided to rely on the return of Desean Jackson which lasted for a grand total of 4 snaps. If he hadn’t won a Super Bowl 2 years ago I would be picketing outside of the NovaCare Center every day demanding for Howie to be fired or jailed, preferably both. I might still do it anyway.

In totality, Howie Roseman’s series of compounding errors at the wide receiver position has led to a slow, plodding Eagles offense largely incapable of big plays that is forced to methodically string successful plays together on long drives to score touchdowns. It’s malpractice to surround Wentz with options this bad — far too often, he makes catchable throws to the outside WRs and sees them dropped for crucial, drive-stalling incompletions. A Desean injury this serious couldn’t have been expected, but it bears repeating that he hasn’t played a full season since 2013 — for the passing attack to be this dependent on him playing and this ineffective without him is inexcusable and clearly a design flaw in the offensive game plan for this season. For how much money the Eagles are spending on WRs (again, most in the league on their top 3 WRs) and the opportunity costs of both that salary cap space as well as the 2nd round pick used on Arcega-Whiteside, they simply have to be producing better. If the 3 best pass catchers on the roster are two TEs and a rookie RB, the GM simply hasn’t done a good enough job of providing his franchise QB with a quality supporting cast. I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for Wentz — especially because if Agholor and Arcega-Whiteside did their jobs and caught two very catchable balls in Week 2 and Week 3 (respectively), the Eagles would be 7–2 heading into the bye despite the defense’s flaws and would be 1.5 games ahead of the Cowboys. And what’s almost worse? Aside from better health for Desean next year, there’s not much hope on the horizon. Alshon is a lock to be back after his restructuring but is no longer a WR1, Arcega-Whiteside has shown nothing to suggest he’ll be a reliable contributor next year, Agholor is (mercifully) a free agent, Hollins is strictly a special teams player, and the free agent list at WR is barren outside of Amari Cooper (who is likely to stay in Dallas) and AJ Green (who turns 32 before next season and hasn’t played yet this season). They’ll need to invest another high pick into a WR, but as we’ve seen this year that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll find a contributor — especially not with Howie Roseman doing the drafting.

3. It’s tough to say how much of the blame for the complete and utter botching of Desean Jackson’s injury rehab falls on Desean himself, how much falls on the Eagles’ medical staff, and how much falls on the outside specialists the Eagles mentioned in their statement yesterday without knowing what was said in conversations that happened behind closed doors. It would essentially be pointless to even speculate who to point fingers at. That being said, it was a colossal mistake that has absolutely derailed the Eagles’ season and I need someone fired for it. Simple as that. I demand someone lose their job for how the Desean injury situation transpired, and I demand that this person is named publicly. Even if they are able to take advantage of an extremely weak back half of their schedule and win the NFC East to get into the playoffs, the ceiling for this team is much lower without him in the lineup. Based on what I’ve seen so far this year, I just don’t think the defense is consistent enough or good enough to win games against playoff caliber quarterbacks and teams with this kind of plodding offensive attack (21st in passing offense, 18th in total offense at the halfway point of the season) behind it.

4. Al Horford had a fantastic performance against Phoenix with a 32–5–4 on 20 shots (including a much-needed 5/8 night from beyond the arc, tying his career high for made 3s in a gane), and through 6 games I look extremely wrong about my summer opinion that the Sixers overpaid for an aging player. He’s been a godsend in the 3 games Embiid has missed so far this year, and the fit next to Embiid in the other 3 games has been excellent on defense and good enough (for now) on offense. It’s really tough to see the Sixers lose their first game of the season in a game where Horford had such a dominating night. It’s just one game in the grand scheme of things, but the offensive futility of Ben Simmons and Josh Richardson last night (a combined 14 points on 5–19 shooting from the field) was the main contributor to the loss and highlights 2 of the issues that the Sixers have been able to win in spite of to start the year: Ben Simmons’ inability or unwillingness to expand his offensive game (I mean, look at the shot chart) and Josh Richardson’s terrible shooting start to the season. Richardson is shooting 37.8% from the field and a dismal 22.2% from 3, both well below his career averages of 42.4% from the field and 36.5% from 3 entering the year. That the Sixers have been able to win anyway is a testament to how good their team defense has been and some stellar individual performances to open the year. But for this team to reach its full potential (which, to be clear, is an NBA championship), they need Richardson to be one of their best 3 point shooters and they need Simmons to be able to score in more diverse ways on offense.

5. One of the dangers of only writing on Tuesdays and Thursdays is that I end up being super late on some stuff, so let me be the last to say: Furkan Korkmaz’s buzzer beater to salvage a game the Sixers had absolutely no business winning (on the road in Portland without Embiid after trailing the entire game) is as good of a regular season Sixers moment as I can remember in a while. I had my doubts about some of Elton Brand’s moves this summer (the Al Horford contract and the devaluation of 2nd round picks in particular), but the early returns are extremely promising despite some warts. If the Sixers can shoot from 3 at even a roughly league-average rate (and like I said above, Josh Richardson needs to contribute to that), they are going to be the best team in the Eastern Conference and likely 2nd best in the league behind the Clippers. It may not be pretty to watch at times, but this team is clearly brutal for opponents to play against and has a clear formula for a deep postseason run. They’ve weathered the Embiid suspension, are halfway through the road trip, and look to bounce back with a win against Utah tomorrow night — I think Embiid is going to turn Rudy Gobert into BBQ chicken.

6. It is an absolute joke that Penn State’s 8–0 vs. 8–0 matchup against Minnesota is kicking off at noon (11am local time). Especially since Alabama — LSU is kicking off at 3:30 (and how dumb does CBS look now for choosing Notre Dame vs. Georgia as their only SEC primetime game of the season before the year?), there’s no reason this shouldn’t be a night game. It was reported that Minnesota’s AD had the opportunity to play the game at night and decided not to, which was a really sad and dishonest move from a sad and dishonest man. People are saying the Big Ten doesn’t like to schedule November night games because it’s cold — who cares? There’s a high of 32 degrees on Saturday. That’s downright balmy for Minneapolis.

7. Good news for Penn State on the injury front, as James Franklin said that both Noah Cain and John Reid would play on Saturday. I get that Minnesota is a ranked and undefeated team, but they literally haven’t beaten anyone good. Their best win is one of 5–3 Georgia Southern, 5–4 Illinois, or 4–5 Nebraska. That’s not impressive in the slightest, and a healthy Penn State should have no reason to not be able to take care of business this weekend. Ricky Rahne and James Franklin need to make sure that they are getting the ball in the hands of their best players as often as possible against the Gophers: KJ Hamler, Pat Freiermuth, and Noah Cain. If they need to shorten the RB rotation to feed Cain in particular, so be it. It would also be an awesome week for Justin Shorter to break out and give Sean Clifford another option in the passing game but that is definitely more wishful thinking from me than anything else.

8. The Eagles have a brutal first 2 games out of the bye vs. the Patriots and Seahawks, but then they close the last 5 weeks of the season with: @ Miami, vs. Giants, @ Washington, vs. Cowboys, @ Giants. Compare that to Dallas the rest of the way: vs. Vikings, @ Lions, @ Patriots, vs. Bills, @ Bears, vs. Rams, @ Eagles, vs. Washington. If the Eagles can survive the next 2 games with their health and dignity intact (and winning even 1 of them would be huge), it looks like they’ll absolutely have an opportunity to make up ground on the Cowboys headed into what will likely be a de facto NFC East championship game Week 16 in Philly. I think they have a much better shot to beat the Patriots than the Seahawks — Russell Wilson owns the Eagles and I don’t trust them to be able to cover Seattle’s explosive WR group of Tyler Lockett, DK Metcalf, and Josh Gordon. The fact that 2 of them could (and as I strenuously argued above, should) be Eagles will make that game even more frustrating.

9. Saturday’s shootout loss to the Maple Leafs opened a really tough stretch for the Flyers: vs. Toronto (OTL), vs. Carolina, vs. Montreal, @ Toronto, @ Boston, vs. Washington. They’re 6–5–2 right now and on the outside looking in of the playoff picture (don’t laugh, the season is already 16% over — it’s not exactly “early” anymore). A bad few games during this 6 game gauntlet against good teams could drop them even further down the Metropolitan division. If they can sync up the nights where they get good goaltending and drive play, however, they have a chance to assert themselves as a legitimate contender in the division and a win tonight against the 9–4–1 Hurricanes (they just went up 1–0 as I type this) would be a nice statement to the rest of the Metro.

10. I can’t believe that I’m pretty excited for Jordan Matthews to be back on the Eagles (not confirmed yet, but seems to be trending that way), mostly because he can’t be worse than Hollins or Arcega-Whiteside but also sadly because I think he might be better than Agholor at this point too. Matthews has a previous connection with Carson Wentz and actually did make a couple plays down the field last year (the TD against the Saints in the Divisional Round immediately comes to mind). However, I can’t help but repeat myself: it really does boggle the mind that Howie Roseman didn’t put a claim in on Josh Gordon last week, then decided he needed to go outside the organization for a WR this week. Even if he was sure Desean was making a full recovery (which shouldn’t have been assumed at all), what was the harm in adding another talented pass catcher to the mix? Was there really no role for him on an offense with such luminaries as Mack Hollins and JJ Arcega-Whiteside soaking up crucial snaps? Yikes. Hopefully the Matthews move isn’t the last one at WR — Gary Jennings (recently waived by the Seahawks because they claimed a much better player at the same position, Josh Gordon) or JJ Nelson would be potential speed threats down the field that they could add to the mix. It’s largely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic that is the Eagles’ WR group at this point, but they have to try something else right?

Big Oil

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Big Oil

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