After watching the game, I noticed a few interesting things: 1) Phillys ground game built up speed the entire day. The later into the game we got, the more effective it was. 2) Phillys DL seemed more energized later in the game 3) Commentator said that "This years TC was the hardest in Eagles history since Andy Reid's 1st year here" 4) Gaffney couldn't handle the difficult workouts of the Eagles and got cut 5) Eagles have 2 entirely different DLs So what does all this mean? Well, our team was exhausted after the game. you could tlel by the way our D couldn't stop the Philly ball control during the final 9 minutes of the 4th quarter. Could it be from conditioning? Maybe. Gaffney's trouble in Philly and his success during TCs here are intresting to me. I think Philly's depth also helped The next thing I noticed that was of particular interest was that the Eagles have 2 DLs. Maybe I am noticing this wrong, but he didn't substitute individual players. He substituted the entire DL at a time. In this way, he got a fresh set of legs, while still building line chemistry. This makes the moving of Weaver and Williams around even more concerning for me. Johnson and Reid are both amazing coaches, and they feel that a good DL should play together. So much so that they substitute out their 1st string DL for their 2nd stringers.
The Eagles are loaded on the D line. The Eagles were able to rotate fresh guys in there almost every play. Also the Eagles always start off slow. I knew the Texans would score first.. they always get better as the game goes on.
It won't be long before someone comes up with a counter for this defense. Maybe substituting the the entire offensive line or calling audibles to counter.
You hit the nail on the head: http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/sports/15490011.htm Going for wholesale substitutions on the defensive line, defensive coordinator Jim Johnson borrowed a page from Ken Hitchcock's hockey playbook, bringing in the first line - Kearse, Mike Patterson, Darwin Walker and Darren Howard - for one series then turning to the backup line of Juqua Thomas, LaJuan Ramsey, Brodrick Bunkley and Trent Cole for the next. It was unusual, innovative and most important, extremely effective. The Eagles sacked David Carr five times and hurried him seven more, with the two lines splitting up the work. Cole had two sacks and two hurries, Kearse had one of each as did Thomas and Bunkley added a hurry. "Not in my 8 years in the NFL, 4 years in college and 4 years in high school [have I seen this]," Kearse said. "You just don't do this kind of thing, but it worked out for us __________________
Why don't you run the no huddle to counter the d-line change out? If you run a hurry up offense, they can't get fresh legs in and will tire rapidly, especially if they aren't prepared to play every snap of the game. I know our O-linemen would be tired as well, but atleast it levels the playing field and comes down to which tired team wants it more. Just my two cents....
I live in the Philadelphia and got up to TC a few times this year, so I will answer some of your questions about TC. This camp was the most intense camp that Reid has held. Matter of fact, it was as intense as I have seen since Buddy Ryan, who put guys in the hospital by working them so hard. There was full pad hitting at least one full practice every day, some days full pad in both practices. Going from one drill to another, the players ran between stations. Reid got into peoples faces if he didn't like what he saw, big time. Jumped guys with both feet. This is new. Before it was a look and things were said in private. Never did anything to show up a guy in public. My own thoughts on this attitude change are after what happened last year in camp with you know who, Reid was letting everyone know that he is the boss and no matter who you are you will do as he wants. He jumped on vets and rookies alike. I wondered the same thing about Gaff. With him it was not so much his playing ability, but his falling behind with the play book and he looked to be to not be able to keep up with the hard camp. Those three 100 degree days we had, Reid had them in pads for the first practice. This is when Gaff really fell behind. Looked like he last his legs. Look, those days were bad, as hot and humid as you guys get down there, so I wondered why it would get to Gaff so much. He was not out of shape or anything like that. I wondered just how hard the old staff worked the Texans, and correct me if I am worng, but in really hot weather, don't you guys practice inside? The Eagles kept 10 D linemen and 10 O linemen. Dressed 8 for your game. McDougle and Rayborn out.Went short at CB with 4. The idea is just what you saw, complete rotation to stay fresh and tire out the ol of the other team. The danger of this has shown up . Lito Sheppard was hurt early and might miss time. That left them with 3 cbs to play your game. Another corner gets hurt in your game and there is no nickle back unless they use a safety. Every thing has it's good and bad side.
That was likely a product of our OL. I don't know this for sure, but I'd bet we have the biggest OL in the NFL. Thomas is about 350, Herremans is 325, Jackson is 330, Andrews is 345, and Runyan is 330. That's a LOT of power right there. I mean, you guys have a pretty big DL, but they were still getting out weighed by like 30+ pounds a man. Even Williams was giving up nearly 50 pounds. Over the course of a game, our guys will wear any DL down - particularly from Herremans to Runyan (Thomas is huge, but is really a finess pass blocking type of player). As you mention, we rotated DLs. THis is also true. I went up to TC several times, and there was a lot of hitting. To be fair, we do move a lot of our DL around too. Kearse moves into a LB type of position called the "JOKER" in one of our nickle packages named the "Okie". This is basically a 3-3-5 defense, where Kearse is allowed to move around a lot and attack from different places while also droping into coverage. We also move Howard around. He plays DT in some of our more basic nickle packages. Walker plays LDE on occasion, as does Ramsey now. The thing is - and I don't mean this as a slight - the Eagles didn't really need to use our bag of tricks. We have the talent for a convincing win against the Texans playing vanilla football. We're competing for a SB, and we are in arguably the toughest division in football, so we want to save our big guns for the divisional games. Because the Eagle sub the DL for each possession, not from down to down.
