During this shelter in place football has fell to the back side, because there are WAY MORE important things going on. Thank you to all the essential employees especially in healthcare keeping things running during this time. It's time to take a break from COVID-19 and get back to business. If we don't, an opportunity may be missed by the Eagles organization. From a Fan's Perspective the Eagles need Howie to act now. He needs to make decisions he has been unable to in the past, he needs to get his essentials in this draft.
Howie Roseman is at a point in his career where he needs to make the biggest splash possible in this year’s draft. In ‘Eagles Critical Moment - The Draft’, Howie’s success, but recent decline, in value trades was covered. The history of the players selected was covered earlier this week. Today, let’s take a statistical look at the success of the organization and Howie in the draft.
First, some ground rules need to be set.
Obviously, no one draft or team’s situation in a draft is the same as another. The statistical analysis in this article isn’t meant to be a playbook for what Howie should do. This blog covers the past trying to project the future. To do this the statistics are used to answer the questions which have no forgone conclusions.
To measure an organization’s success 4 elements will be considered (# of players who had at least 1 year as primary starter, Years Played vs Years Started, Players w/ a Pro Bowl, Players still active in the NFL)
Each organization’s goal is to get the players who will start the soonest first, and players who will have the longest careers next.
The Eagles’ primary needs this season are: WR, DB (CB or S), LB
Eagles’ Secondary needs are: DT, DE, C/G
The Pederson/Roseman Era
Since 2016 Howie and Doug have been the face of the Eagles organization and their second season together they carried the Lombardi trophy back to Philadelphia. On the surface this sounds like a success story already. From A Fan’s Perspective is a little deeper than the surface though.
While the Eagles have drafted their undisputed (putting aside the push back from sub-groups) franchise quarterback, they haven’t gotten much else. They’re 29th ranked with 9 players drafted since 2016 becoming a primary starter. Those starters are Wentz, Mills, Seumalo, Barnett, Vaitai, Goedert, Nate Gerry, Joe Walker, and Miles Sanders. That is just a measure of how well they draft to get a starter, not necessarily how well they retain or continue to develop, because 2 of those (Walker, Vaitai) don’t start for them anymore. So, 7 of their draft picks since 2016 are current starters for their team, and hopefully (no offense to the white snake) Gerry is not a starter this year. Mills may not be a starter with how the offseason has shaked out.
The good news in all of this is they also had the 3rd least number of picks (26) since 2016.
Some other good news is their 1st round draft picks include: Wentz, Barnett and Dillard. They appear to be making good moves in the first round over the last 4 years.
Now back to the regularly scheduled criticism.
2nd to 4th round picks have been mediocre at best. This is where you should be drafting your long term players that become starters. The Eagles have only 33% of their draft picks starting regularly.
This is a measure of how well they’re drafting and developing, which in full disclosure you would only expect this to be 50% as a max since there are only 22 starters on a 53 man roster with 5-10 draft picks each year.
But 33% ranks among the bottom 5.
The shining stars in the midrounds are Miles Sanders, Dallas Goedert and Seumalo.
Outside of them we have Josh Sweat, yet to start.
JJ Arcega-Whiteside, jury is still out.
Shareef Miller, played in 1 game.
Sidney Jones and Rasul Douglas, barely keeping up (or holding on) to the NFL WRs, and both were in the 2nd round.
Mack “Special Teams” Hollins, good riddance. Donnel “who” Pumphrey, enough said.
Finally, Avonte Maddox who is actually the most impressive as far as value goes, he is a 4th round pick that finds the field more often than Sidney Jones.
Howie seems to want to get the hidden gem which over complicates it. He wants guys who are exactly like the old guys (see Donnel Pumphrey). Instead he needs to look to the standard and draft based on that, following is fine in the draft, you don't have to be the only guy who thinks the selection is a good one. In fact if you're explaining your selections afterwards, you probably made the wrong ones.
Let's hope that in 2020 Howie doesn’t try to outsmart other GMs, and just goes with the obvious. From a fan’s perspective, the optimism is teetering on the edge because back through 2010 there are few hits Howie has made. BG, Fletcher, Jason Kelce, Vinny Curry, Foles, Lane, Ertz, Wentz are the big names he got.
You can throw in Jordan Matthews, Mychal Kendricks, Agholor and Hicks if you’d like, but even with them of the 80 selections he made or helped make (only 13 of which were w/ Kelly) that's only a 8% to 13% success rate.
Eagles Since 2000
Now let's look at the statistics on a broader basis.
It is difficult to measure success based on just 4 drafts, so let’s compare the Doug Era (since 2016), Howie Era (Since 2010) and 2000s Era (Since 2000).
Eagles Draft “Success”
Source: Data from Pro Football Reference
Over the last 20 years the Eagles selected the 12th most draft picks and only ranks 26th in number of years started vs played by their selections. This indicates they select players who don’t become sustained starters.
Less than half of their selections became a primary starter, although that ranks at 11th versus the 32 NFL teams. Since 2000, they have also selected 15 different players that became pro-bowlers, ranked 21st.
Since Howie came on board those numbers stayed pretty consistent as far as rankings go. The exception to that is the number of pro-bowlers selected since 2010, coming in ranked at 11th. That's a 10 spot jump since 2000. 5 of the 6 players are still on the team (Wents, Ertz, Lane, Cox, Kelce) the exception being Foles, who did go to the Pro-Bowl (and win MVP) while on the team.
Now when Doug came into the picture they began selecting fewer picks, which was mostly due to the fact they had to compensate for the negligence by Chip. This required trading some draft assets in the process, and in some cases trading draft picks to get players who they drafted (DeSean Jackson comes to mind). Regardless with those fewer picks they did not do very well. While the Pro Bowl may not be as important of a measure, Wentz is the only Pro Bowler in that group. Only 9 players have become starters which is about one-third of the selections and ranks 29th.
You might think that the number of selections in the 1st and 2nd round may account for this but they had 39% of their picks in the first two rounds Since 2016 which is right in line with 2010.
To compound this, when you look at players still active in the NFL, the Birds have 23 draft selections still active in the NFL and 17 on the team, which both rank in the bottom 10 of the league. A team like Seattle has 34 players still active in the NFL and 27 on their team. That is an additional 10 selections that are just coming off their rookie contracts.
Now let’s make sense of this.
Howie’s Move
This year Howie has 7 picks to work with, the 8-13% success rate mentioned earlier means it will be optimistic to hit on 1. But that can change if Howie only selects the essentials.
The Eagles are at a point where they are very offensive heavy in the draft and yet have so many holes on that side of the ball. Every Pro-Bowler selected in Howie’s era has been on the Offensive side outside of Fletcher Cox.
The offensive line is aging, while Peters replacement may have been found, Kelce will be gone soon.
Brandon Brooks and Lane are both in their 30s soon and players behind them don’t have much time under their belt.
Wide receiver needs to be addressed immediately as well. While Alshon, Desean and..... well they are the star power. They’re both aging, and we aren’t certain Alshon will be back yet.
Behind them we have JJ Arcega-Whiteside and Greg Ward. While Greg Ward was a great story last season, he’s not a player you should put the future on.
Then once you get through that there’s the defensive side. Fletcher and Brandon Graham are aging.
There’s virtually no Linebackers on the team outside of the newly acquired Jatavis Brown.
The corner back situation got better this off-season and hopefully Robey-Coleman and Slay can help develop the younger guys with potential (Maddox and Douglas).
Safety we have Rodney McLeod and Will Parks. McLeod is here for this year but who knows how he’ll do or how long he’ll be able to play because he didn’t look the same after his injury.
There’s a lot to fill on this team but for this year we need Howie to focus on : linebacker, wide receiver and defensive backs. The Essentials.
The Wide Receiver can not be just an average Pac12 receiver, it is infuriating to see pure bred talent from the SEC overlooked. From a Fan's perspective it is so clear to select outright talent in the first round. Don't stretch for a player that fits your mold.
If Howie can focus on the essentials early he might be able to get a serviceable edge rusher for the D-Line rotation which would be a nice touch. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Until Howie makes good draft picks it will be difficult to believe he can pull any of those off simply because of his history:
That list does not exude confidence. But to Howie’s credit those holes don’t exist because of lack of trying. He tried to fill these positions; he just can’t figure them out in the draft.
When we look back at April 2020 it seems like COVID-19 will be what is remembered. But in Philadelphia From a Fan's Perspective the hope is Howie Roseman will ease the pain spread by this pandemic and eradicate his own draft issues by sticking to the essentials. Draft the obvious. Don't try to outsmart yourself. These are the tough decisions Howie was brought back for.
For once can Howie find a way to understand the skills needed to be a stud receiver, or a shutdown corner? Can he hit on an edge rusher or linebacker that can stop any running back, or at least some? From a Fan’s perspective the draft will be watched very closely on April 23rd. Because what else is there to do in this quarantine?
In the next post what Howie should do in the first round and beyond will be discussed From a Fan’s Perspective with some facts backing the strategy.
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