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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Kolb will be fine. Just be patient people.— pflynn20
Please keep track of number of air guitar performances, if any. I want to see if Kolb has the same inspirational spark as LowThrowMcBlow- On a positive note, I'm seeing consistency here. Unfortunately, it's been consistently bad.— mjc1
as an die hard eagles fan, i'm pulling for kolb. but he(along with the oline) is scaring the pants off of me.
I hope Kolb & the rest of the O gets it together by the time GB comes to town— Mabus
Kolb and the O-line will be okay when they open the season against GB on Sept 12. Aaron Rodgers is good but he is overatted and so are the packers. People say he is better than brees, manning and brady which is not the case. Prediction: Packers 17 Eagles 31— briandawkins20- Cornonthe COBB will be more of the same as McSpazz.. just as frustrating but at least he has a tolerable personality. 7-9 at best— Skena
- GB will destroy us, let Kolb get some games in him before judging. Rodgers was 6-10 his first year.— fman727
- The breakdown is fine but the key is how much did the poor performance by the offensive line effect his overall results. Clearly Maclin's drops effected his results. And what about the low yard per catch and limited RAC. What is the reason for the inability to complete the long passes with frequency.— izzylangfan
- Why does every article state "but his teammates did not help him out"...sounds like we got a bunch of apologists here on the Philly.com staff.— EaglesBleedMoney
Seems like a good kid, and certainly has the intangibles to be a successful quarterback, but he does not have the skills to be an above average NFL quarterback. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise at this point, but I hope I'm wrong. Also, the things I've heard - quick release, accuracy, etc - have not been shown. In fact, he's been teriibly inaccurate (cut some slack for dropped balls), and he has been slow to get rid of the ball. Vick by week 3 and put Kafka on fast track.— CosmoK- BrianDawkins20: I will bet you any amount of $$ that you'd like, ANY AMOUNT on that game. The current line is GB -2 1/2. I'll even give you 3 and give up a little edge. The Eagles are going to lose that game by at least 17 pts, and it might be closer to 30. Have you watched the Packers over the last 1+ years? a) Rodgers is ridiculously accurate, has a cannon for an arm, and deceptively fast. b) They have the deepest wideout corp in the league. c) Their TE, JerMichael Finley, is top 3 in the league. d) Their O-Line has developed into one of the top 5 or 6 in the league since the middle of last year. They're going to score a minimum of 38 points on the Eagles in week 1. Rodgers may throw for 400 yards.— Dean1
- "Celek did not get a look from Kolb until the 44th offensive play. That's highly unlikely to happen in a regular season game." Didn't Kolb hit him in the End Zone on their first offensive drive of the preseason but Celek dropped it? Or was that on another drive?— whiplash240
- Sounds like EaglesBleedMoney expects the QB to do it all - throw, catch, block. "Kolb was not sharp" is hardly apologizing for his performance. If you saw Sheil's breakdown of Kolb's performance, he was rightly critical. It's not like Kolb has all day to stand in the pocket each play and he misses receivers or throws interceptions. Believe it or not, the offense has 11 players and Kolb is not the only one who hasn't been sharp.
- Dean1, give me 14 points on the Green Bay game and I am in. After all, you are predicting at least a 17 point crush by Green Bay. Rodgers is an excellent quarterback and Green Bay is a good team. But don't sell the Eagles short after 3 preseason games. If you are right I will give you your due, but I think it will be a much closer game than you are envisioning.— JohnFC
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