What about Kolb?
Here's a detailed look at Kevin Kolb's performance Friday night against the Chiefs.
What about Kolb?
Sheil Kapadia, Philly.com
Every week during the regular season, I'm going to take a detailed look at Kevin Kolb's performance.
I've identified several different factors to measure, which you'll see below. This is a test run. I understand that it's the preseason, and while some of these things will factor into Kolb's regular-season performance, many of them will not.
Take a look and let me know what you think. If there are specific metrics you think I should measure that are not listed here, send me an e-mail and maybe I can account for them by Week 1 against the Packers.
PASS DISTRIBUTION
| Targets | Catches | Yards | YAC | |
| J. Maclin | 11 | 3 | 39 | 13 |
| J. Avant | 5 | 3 | 26 | 8 |
| K. Washington | 2 | 1 | 7 | 3 |
| M. Bell | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| L. McCoy | 2 | 1 | 8 | 5 |
| L. Weaver | 1 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| B. Celek | 1 | 1 | 10 | 4 |
| D. Jackson | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 |
As you can see, Maclin was Kolb's favorite target. Eleven of his 25 pass attempts (44 percent) were in Maclin's direction. Of course, Jackson's injury in the first quarter had a lot to do with that. Maclin had a chance for a much better game, but dropped three pretty well-placed Kolb passes. As I mentioned in Man Up, Celek did not get a look from Kolb until the 44th offensive play. That's highly unlikely to happen in a regular season game.
Yards after the catch were not a big factor. The most YAC picked up on any given play was the 10-yard crossing pattern to Maclin, in which 8 of the yards were after the catch.
THE BLITZ, ETC.
Who says coaches keep everything vanilla in the preseason? The Chiefs blitzed Kolb on 11 of his 25 pass attempts. On those plays, Kolb was 5-for-11 for 57 yards and an interception. On the rest of his throws, Kolb was 6-for-14 for 46 yards.
In the first two preseason games, we saw Kolb make quite a few accurate throws while on the run. That didn't happen here. Kolb was 0-for-4 on attempts outside the pocket and 11-for-21 on throws in the pocket. Perhaps he was making a concerted effort to stay in the pocket until the last possible moment, after he admitted to leaving a little early at times against the Bengals.
Kolb did not have a lot of success in the shotgun. He was 4-for-12 for 44 yards on those attempts and 7-for-13 for 59 yards under center.
The Eagles had no success on play-action passes, as Kolb was 1-for-6 for 8 yards on those throws.
THIRD DOWN, RED ZONE
Perhaps no stat tells the story better than third down. Kolb was 0-for-7 on third-down attempts. On three of those throws, he targeted Maclin. On the other four, he looked for Avant, Washington, Bell and McCoy.
Kolb attempted three red-zone passes, and they were all incomplete.
SUCCESS BY DISTANCE
Here's a chart of Kolb's throws by distance. I used the same ranges that Football Outsiders uses so we'd have a point of reference. Short is 5 yards or less. Mid is 6 to 15 yards. Deep is 16 to 25 yards. And Bomb is more than 25 yards. These are measured from the line of scrimmage to the point where the ball is touched, hits the ground or goes out of bounds.
| Completions | Attempts | Yards | |
| Short | 8 | 12 | 48 |
| Mid | 2 | 7 | 30 |
| Deep | 1 | 3 | 25 |
| Bomb | 0 | 3 | 0 |
With constant pressure, 12 of Kolb's 25 attempts (48 percent) were within a 5-yard window. He did complete a high percentage of those, especially when you consider two of the incompletions were on failed screen-pass attempts.
One of the bombs was the Maclin drop. Another was the interception that Kolb threw up for grabs.
OVERALL
Kolb was not sharp, but his teammates did not help him out. Three drops by Maclin and two false starts by Peters on third downs factored pretty heavily into the poor numbers. Same with the failed attempts to pick up blitzers. And Jackson getting knocked out after one play did not help either.
Again, it is the preseason, and the players on the offensive line could be different Week 1 against the Packers, depending on how much progress is made by Jamaal Jackson, Nick Cole and company.
So let me know what you think of the breakdown, and like I said, we can tweak once the real games start. It's still a work-in-progress at this point.
Oh, and thanks to friend and loyal MTC reader MC for coming up with the name for the feature. And to the future Mrs. MTC for putting together the spreadsheet that lets me chart this stuff.
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borntosuffer - of course I do, we all expected #5 to do that for the past 11 years. Why would that change now? Thanks for proving my point though buddy ha— EaglesBleedMoney- Dean1....agreed....we will get blown out by GB....and Kolb will throw a pick-6 as well.— philly449
- It's all about the o-line.— LA Mike
- borntosuffer.....are you for real??!! You are the same person who SLAMMED McNabb for every loss last year. You're full of SH__! Enough with the hypocrisy...blame Kolb for everything, just like you and all of the other braintrusts on here did with McNabb.— philly449
Whip that was the last game only. Dean, I hear you, Rodgers is scary good, especially to Finley who I think is the #1 TE right now. However, when pressured, Rodgers can be flustered, you have to get to him and keep him on his back foot, which he is still pretty good. Without pressure, that guy will kill you. Packers might be best in NFC if the defense plays a little better, and they stay healthy.
Comment removed.- whiplash, hes talking about this last preseason gm, not the 1st preseason gm? Dean1 is being an objective observer but with a tad of exaggeration. GB is going to whip the eagles, I hope our D keeps it competitive but cmon. GB is on the up and should go deep in the playoff, eagles lucky to be above .500 this yr. Im just hoping for a close game but eagles could lose by over 10 pts, easy. BD20 is spadaro— peteike
This article is about Kolb, not Rodgers, and there is no comparison whatsoever between the two. I'm sick of hearing about the offensive line being the reason for Kolb's lackluster play to date. McNabb, who I'm not a fan of, had no talent whatsoever around him for years and that was never a valid excuse. So it shouldn't be an excuse for Kolb either, especially since the number one selling point for Kolb was that his "quick release" would mitigate the offensive line issues. Kolb is going to be horrific this year - but the silver lining is that the defense looks to have potential to be scary good, as long as they're not on the field 59 minutes per game.— CosmoK- I think the lack of activity toward Celek's way will change once the season starts, and the offense will look better. It's pre-season and they are trying other things. In the 2 games that Kolb played last year, Celek had good games.— watsonmr
- I think the fact that Kolb dumps his pants when he sees a blitz could be a big concern for this team....— EaglesBleedMoney
- Im amazed at all of the " there's no chance of beating Green Bay" people on the board. Didn't both teams finish 11-5? Didn't this Packer team bow out in the first round of the playoffs, just like the Eagles? Wasn't Arizona's output in that game something like 51 points? Yeah, the Eagles got killed that week too, but you guys are making it out to be Detroit vs Green Bay. The Eagles upgraded their defense in the offseason, they almost have to be better there; the Pack didn't, and lost Johnny Jolly to drugs. The Eagles offense is run by Kevin Kolb now, but it has run just fine under people like AJ Feeley and Jeff Garcia.I'm sure that both teams will put points on the board on September 12. Kolb will be fine. My opening day prediction is Birds 28, Pack 24.— drbob1
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- Good stuff Shiel. You might want to take the number of times he is pressured, forced out of the pocket, or sacked into account in the spreadsheets - maybe as percentages of total passing plays. I have a feeling that will be a theme this year.— duder
- I agree that the Eagles will get killed the first game of the year. The Eagles usually play poor in that game anway. The Packers may win the Superbowl this year. Then, you will be able to separate the real fans from the idiots. Judge the team at the end of the year and not the first game. They could be a new team by the end of the year with the young guys getting more reps as starters. Just have patience and call out the loonies who complain after week one.— quentin1978
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