Bill Davis faces make-or-break season

Bill Davis gives a great news conference. He's expansive and informative and never condescending to a questioner. He maintains excellent eye contact, moves his hands in gestures that are both welcoming and non-distracting, and often tells the truth. When he speaks about the Eagles defense, even if the defense is not performing well, he is reassuring, because once Davis is finished speaking, one comes away from the conference thinking, Well, at least Bill knows what he's doing.

The trouble with Davis' news conferences - those he has given over his first two years as the Eagles' defensive coordinator, anyway - is that he's had to be reassuring too frequently. In 2013, among the NFL's 32 teams, the Eagles ranked 29th in total defense, last in passing yards allowed, 30th in first downs allowed, last in number of plays allowed per drive, and 26th in yards allowed per drive. Last season, they ranked 28th in total defense, next-to-last in passing yards allowed, 26th in first downs allowed, 28th in touchdown passes allowed, and 25th in the percentage of drives against them that resulted in a score.

Whatever improvement there was, it was minimal. Marcus Smith, because he rarely was on the field, and Bradley Fletcher, because he rarely wasn't, became the walking, talking, coverage-blowing embodiments of a unit that wasn't close to championship level. Changes had to be made.

So the Eagles made them. They have two new defensive-back coaches. They will have, at a minimum, three new starting defensive backs, including cornerback Byron Maxwell (to the tune of six years and $63 million). They traded for inside linebacker Kiko Alonso. They said goodbye to Trent Cole and re-signed Brandon Graham so they could slide him into Cole's starting spot at outside linebacker. They selected six players in this year's draft. Five of them play defense.

Here's one thing they didn't change: the man in charge. If the Eagles offseason was an exercise in learning what kinds of players Chip Kelly wanted for the offense - if this season would show, finally and fully, exactly what Kelly wants to do and how he wants to do it - the same principle holds true for Davis. And the same responsibility and accountability, too. If the expectation is that this season will be the great reveal for Kelly, it will be a greater reveal for Davis, and with greater potential consequences if the defense isn't much better.

"We're hoping," Davis said Thursday when asked if he expected significant improvement. "That's the goal. But the game will tell us if we're there. Right now, the expectation is yes, to answer that question, but [the opener at] Atlanta will tell us where we are."

For all the rightful concern about Sam Bradford's left knee and DeMarco Murray's mysterious practice schedule, the questions about the Eagles defense are as important, if not more so, to the team's fortunes. How will the new players and coaches assimilate into Davis' system, and how quickly will they do it? (The expectation is, pretty darned quickly. "The growing pains happen here in the preseason," safety Malcolm Jenkins said.) What will the new secondary look like? And even if all the pieces fit as the Eagles planned them to, will Davis deploy the players in the right way?

Remember: Already during this training camp, Davis has copped to making a major mistake last year in keeping Fletcher in the starting lineup for as long as he did. Now, it's possible that Davis is protecting Nolan Carroll, who is Fletcher's prospective successor. It sounds better for a coach to say, Hey, I messed up than it is to say, The guy who's going to start for us this year wasn't good enough to start for us last year.

But if Davis is telling the truth, if he does indeed regret his decision to stick with Fletcher, then he's made a troubling admission, because last year there was an awful lot of first-guessing his loyalty to a cornerback who became a liability.

Say this for Davis: Troubling admissions do make for terrific news conferences. It just would be nice if the most reassuring parts of Bill Davis' 2015 season came when he was coaching the Eagles defense, and not just talking about it.

@MikeSielski