How will young Eagles defense navigate the learning curves?
CALL IT THEIR redshirt year. That's how Quintin Mikell views last year's defensive effort by the Eagles. One new starting linebacker goes down. Then another. Then Ellis Hobbs.
CALL IT THEIR redshirt year. That's how Quintin Mikell views last year's defensive effort by the Eagles. One new starting linebacker goes down. Then another. Then Ellis Hobbs.
Trying to fill the shoes of Brian Dawkins, Mikell was often reminded that he did not.
And for the first time in Andy Reid's regime, no Jim Johnson.
"It was frustrating," Mikell was saying yesterday. "At times it was like, 'What's next?' But we always stayed true and we always played hard. And that's one thing I was proud about last year. We gave ourselves a chance. And we made it to the playoffs. And I'm proud of that, but at the same time we didn't get to where we wanted to get to."
The Eagles won 11 games and reached the playoffs last season with the fifth highest-scoring offense in the NFL and a defense that finished 19th in points allowed. And yet of the 20 questions put to Andy Reid on Wednesday, just three had to do with his defense. One had to do with the lack of injuries on that side of the ball this preseason as compared to the last. The other was a followup to a question about starting two rookies, Brandon Graham and Nate Allen on defense.
It's human nature to want to talk offense, to want to talk about quarterbacks and receivers. That's especially true when your team has a guy like Aaron Rodgers or Jermichael Finley as the high-flying Packers do.
Or in the Eagles' case, when you're replacing your longstanding quarterback with his backup.
But not to the proportion we have this summer. Not when the story lines on the other side of the ball are so compelling, whether it's Stewart Bradley's return from knee surgery, renewed resolve from Asante Samuels, the edge that Ernie Sims might give them, or even leaning on rookies in two key spots.
There was a time when 17 new faces, 12 rookies overall, a rookie starter at safety and another at defensive end, would translate into rebuilding. That was before the Giants leaned on eight rookies to win the Super Bowl.
Now instead of rebuilding, "energy" crops up a lot, as it did when I asked defensive coordinator Sean McDermott yesterday if rookies were viewed differently now than they were 5 years ago.
"Yeah, the league changes all of the time," he said. "And I think professional sports changes in general, so you see more and more young faces being given playing time. And in this case, you're seeing a young Eagles team overall, but that is good. We're energetic, we're fast. Are there going to be learning curves? Yes, there's going to be learning curves, but we welcome that. We welcome the energy that that brings."
McDermott, of course, is another good story line. It's his second season as coordinator - first, really, given the long dark shadow cast by Johnson's passing last summer, and the injuries that followed. "The experience factor for myself, No. 1, having been through the job now going on a year or so is big," he said yesterday. "But also having the timing that I mentioned at the start of training camp with the staff and with the players certainly helps out, for sure."
The Eagles can have a successful season if the defense is as solid as it has seemed this preseason, if Graham and Allen are more real than mirage. It's a big if, bigger than Kolb's performance.
They can make Kolb's job easier, or harder, make him look like a stud or a dud. The Packers were 6-10 in Rodgers' first season not because he was bad, but because his defense was. Those who doubt the Packers' Super Bowl pedigree this season do so because of how their season ended last January, a 51-45 overtime playoff loss to the Cardinals.
Similarly, those who fret an incomplete or inaccurate read on Kolb this Sunday cite the likelihood that he may be playing from behind all day Sunday.
"Nobody believes in us except for us," Mikell said. "And that's the way it always is. We'll see what we got on Sunday. But I'm proud of the way we're playing right now.
"And I think we're going to surprise some people."
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