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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no one knows how many games eagles or any team will win this year..let it play out. washington gave up 1 sack to the jets last week with three new o-lineman and handled the jets blitz well(jets #1 defense in the nfl last yr) eagles gave up 4-5 sacks to the chiefs(#30 defense last season) mcnabb's injury is not serious he will start against the cowboys to open the season.— only 9
Comment removed.- He has been a back-up for 3 years and the cheat sheet on his arm is getting longer and longer every day?— keepitreal1234
- BABYARM! What can I say?! YOU ARE WHO I THOUGHT YOU WERE!!!— BooDuhBud
- Being realistic has nothing to do with being a diehard Iggles fan. I am one of the most diehard of all diehards. However, it doesn't change the fact that this front office is all about the bottom line and will finally get what is rightfully coming to them this season. An extremely difficult schedule, zero leadership, a weak secondary, an even weaker offensive line, a first year starter with a questionable arm, and yet again 8 figures under the salary cap will allow this team to win no more than 7 games. My call, as it has been from Day 1, is 6-10. Week 1....they are going to get f'ng embarrassed on national TV against Green Bay.— Dean1
- I agree Dean! abd I agree TBear and Phatwhiz, it's ashame how so many fans can easily forget the bubby brister, rodney pete, and bobby hoying experiments gone wrong after MR.12(cunningham left) and the football Gods gave us another chance with Big 5, who basically ran a team without a number one wideout not even a decent number 2 wideout for years and he manage to do a lot with lil talent around him, and when he finally gets weapons we say thank you for everything you've done for us but you have to go now, we have the second comming of joe montana at quarterback(kolb) more like bubby brister. you should never bite the hand that feeds you, we let reggie white and keith jackson and seth joyner go to Greenbay and win a ring, we let keith byars go to the patriots and earn another pro bowl nod and played in the super bowl for parcelss,fastforward to 2008-09 Dawkins the heart and Soul gone, if he's there last season no doubt in my mind we are contending for a superbowl birth, sheldon brown coming off of his best season as pro sent to clevland, Mcnabb is in washington. Dont be surprise after this season that Eagles games will not be televised nationally and local tv will be blacked out, you should never turn your back on people who gave there all for your franchise. We deserve a championship here but we don't appreaciate the stars who give us there all McNabb,Cunningham,K.Jackson,Clyde Simmons, Seth Joyner, and many other ealges,Dr.J, Moses Malone, Allen Iverson, Barkley, Schmidt,Daulton Kruck,Dykstra, don't forget this guys made us perenial contenders night end and night out and its ashame we had to deal with Harold Katts and Norman Braeman(the guy in France) and now Movie Producer turn Nfl Owner Mr. Lurie, get a grip people. in order to know were we are going you have to know were we came from and to be honest with you i dont want to go back 4-12, 7-9- and 8-8 seasons but when you let special players go who still have something left in the tank, diasater's happen.— jarid29510
- Remember that opening game against "up and coming" Green Bay and Ol' Dandy Andy forgot a punt returner; thin he had penciled McNabb in but McNabb whined; the audacity of that darkie not to go field punts!!!— RoastedBird
- Sheil, I would add the stats of hurries and sacks. Also, on the split by receiver, you could add the number of passing plays that each receiver was on the field. That would show the Jackson injury pretty clearly, plus if one of the tight ends not named Celek gets a catch, you can see how often he was on the field. In fact I would include all the receivers and backs with the number of pass plays they were in on whether they were thrown to or not. It would only expand the list by a couple a few names.— TomH1
499, hypocracy is absolutely correct. Don't the Kolbettes sound exactly like the "apologists" that they claimed McNabb fans were? My, my, my, but it's so easy to make excuses isn't it. It's preseason, it's the OL, it's AR, we don't run enough, KK is a rookie, blah, blah, blah. Now they see a whole football team wins or loses, not just one player so keep throwing their BS right back at them. They wanted "change", and we'll all live with it. The difference is even if you aren't a Kolb fan, a true Eagle fan wants him to succeed but a little proof would be nice before the HOF induction, no? Speaking of hypocrites, where is wiffless today? As for GB, blowout extraordinaire IMO. The ONLY thing that will save us is if JJax AND Herremanns are playing up to snuff. We'll also need Cole to play RG in place of Andrews. Otherwise, you are correct, when KK is doing one of his quarterback fades because a D lineman said "BOO" and he throws off his back foot again you can put up 6 for GB. If all the lineman can play we may have a shot, slim, but a shot.— tpizza- I love it. This is great. Good job Sheil.— PhillyFanSince86
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