Eagles have to hope secondary isn't a negative again

THE MOST uncomfortable man at the NovaCare Complex might be the guy who was standing behind the podium in the media tent yesterday morning. Maybe Bill Davis was just a football coach saying football coach things, but he certainly sounded like a guy who understands that paper champions often falter, and somebody often pays the price.

Yes, the Eagles made some changes in their defensive backfield. Yes, the third year of a new scheme should feature fewer hiccups than the second year.

At the same time . . .

"The game will tell us if we are there or not," Davis said.

That's a precarious position for one of the few people the Eagles haven't replaced in their quest to fix the NFL's worst secondary. Granted, the expectations for the group are well south of championship-level. But they are well north of where they were in Davis' first two years as defensive coordinator.

Back then, it was difficult to blame Davis as you watched Bradley Fletcher struggle to stay in the same frame as opposing wide receivers. Is there a better position to put a cornerback than directly in front of the man he is supposed to cover? Is there a way to prevent Cary Williams from biting on a double move? Does Nate Allen come with a joystick? Did somebody spill coffee in the joystick?

Those questions no longer exist. Nor do those players' top backup or their position coach. That leaves Davis as the only variable that has not changed since he took over. Chip Kelly does not seem like a guy who enjoys treading water, particularly after he has replaced his entire depth chart at a position that has nowhere to go but up. One thing we have learned over the last six months is that the head coach is just as impatient off the football field as he is on it. It does not matter if you are a hotshot running back or a hotshot quarterback or a hotshot personnel man. If he thinks he can do better, he will not hesitate to exile you to a crumbling, post-industrial ghost town. Or, worse, a second-floor office.

But you don't have to use much imagination to see how the expectations for the Eagles' new personnel might exceed their capabilities. Sure, Byron Maxwell is a big man with a big contract, but what will he do without the margin for error he enjoyed while surrounded by one of the game's best cornerbacks and two of its best safeties? Sure, Walter Thurmond won a Super Bowl ring in that Seahawks secondary, but he has played in just 22 regular-season games over the last four seasons, including two last year, when he tore a pectoral muscle as a member of the Giants, and now he is learning a new position. Sure, Nolan Carroll isn't Fletcher or Williams, but he wasn't Fletcher or Williams last season, either, when he played behind the dynamic duo, working mostly in dime packages against opposing teams' third- or fourth-best receivers.

The Eagles are essentially putting their faith in the Peter Principle and the inevitability of progress. Davis has talked at length about the elimination of what he calls X-plays: those of 20-plus yards, of which the Eagles allowed 72 last year, most in the NFL. But to eliminate those plays, something has to change.

While Maxwell has looked like a dramatic upgrade thus far in camp, to the point where Davis said yesterday that they will consider playing him against a team's best receiver regardless of where that receiver lines up, the new cornerback has never had that level of responsibility. The guy opposite him, Carroll, still has to prove he is a different guy from the one the Eagles did not trust to play last year. All it will take for a similar situation to develop at the second safety spot is one injury to an injury-prone player.

In a perfect world, Davis will run his single-high-safety scheme the way he did last year, except with the personnel to pull it off. But he has spoken obliquely about schematic changes he can make. Maybe that means taking a guy out of the box in order to ensure deep help for whoever is guarding DeSean Jackson, whose two catches of 50-plus yards over Fletcher last December set up two touchdowns in the Eagles' crushing, Week 16 loss at Washington. Maybe it means using Kiko Alonso instead of a safety on a tight end. Maybe it means taking fewer chances like blitzing Jenkins and leaving Emmanuel Acho to cover Delanie Walker (which resulted in a 68-yard reception against the Titans last year).

Yesterday, Jenkins said he expects the Eagles to be the same aggressive, one-deep-safety team they were last year. Everybody just needs to execute their assignments.

Thing is, everybody might not execute. And that might make people wonder if everybody isn't the problem. The game forces a coordinator's hand sometimes, Davis said yesterday. In this case, the fates of the game and the coordinator could align.

Blog: ph.ly/HighCheese