Eagles taking some big gambles to go from good to great

WE HAVE heard from Eagles chairman Jeffrey Lurie only once since the final game of the 2014 season, and that was on the lawn of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel way back during the owners' meetings in March.

Lurie talked about several things that day, but his overall theme was that you have to take risks to go from good to great, that this was the impetus not only for the Eagles' offseason roster shakeup, but for his moving of former general manager Howie Roseman out of football operations in favor of giving coach Chip Kelly complete personnel control.

So here we are, facing Week 1, with a starting quarterback who last threw a regular-season pass on Oct. 20, 2013, a completely reconfigured running game that has jettisoned the franchise's all-time leading rusher, a wideout corps led by 2014 rookie Jordan Matthews, two new offensive-line starters, and as many as six new starters on defense. It isn't clear what the team will do for a nickel cornerback, having traded Brandon Boykin just before training camp, rather than deal with his dissatisfaction with not being a starter.

Lurie said, basically, the Eagles had to get rid of key players and their contracts to add the guys Kelly felt were necessary to his process. He kept using such words as "optimize" and "maximize."

They're taking their biggest gamble at the game's most important position, the one you absolutely have to get right to make that leap.

Corner Byron Maxwell, a big part of the new nucleus, went through the good-to-great transformation in Seattle, arriving in 2011 as a sixth-round draft pick, winning the Super Bowl at the end of the 2013 season and coming within a miracle New England interception of winning it again last February.

"It's more of a feeling," said Maxwell, who noted that if he could really explain how the process works, he'd be running someone's team. "It definitely feels that way here. We have to go through some tough times and see what we're made of. We've got it, though."

Maxwell said he didn't recognize the benchmarks as he experienced them. It's only now, looking back, that he sees turning points in the Seahawks' journey.

A big one came on Dec. 2, 2012, he said, the season before the Seahawks won the Super Bowl. It didn't have much to do with the vaunted Legion of Boom defense. Rookie quarterback Russell Wilson led Seattle to an overtime victory at Chicago.

"Russ drove down the field, and I was like, 'OK,' " Maxwell said. "You definitely have to have a quarterback to win in this league."

Maxwell said he often argues with safety and corner Walter Thurmond, his teammate then and now, about whether it really was pretty much as simple as adding Wilson.

"I told him, 'We basically had the same team, and we went 7-9 , and then we add Russ, and we win 11 games.' But he doesn't seem to believe that."

Thurmond's counterpoint, Maxwell said, is that more pieces were added, and that, "We also grew up, at the same time - defense, everybody grew up."

Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins won the Super Bowl as a 2009 New Orleans Saints rookie.

"You really don't know 'til you get there," Jenkins said. "You have the confidence, but you really don't know until you make it."

Early in his March media session, Lurie made sure to note that the Eagles were one of only three NFC teams who won at least 10 games in 2013 and 2014, but his point was, "That's not what we are about."

What they are about, we are on the verge of discovering.

Greatness? The Eagles' offensive starters looked unstoppable in the preseason, the team leading the league in scoring, offensive yards and rushing. Sportsbook.ag this week made the Birds the favorites to win the NFC East, over Dallas, which captured the division last season with a 12-4 record.

Disaster? They exchanged Nick Foles, a 26-year-old starting QB a year removed from winning the Pro Bowl MVP award, for Sam Bradford, coming off back-to-back ACL tears. Behind Bradford is Mark Sanchez, the guy who was in charge last season when a 9-3 start went off the rails in a three-game losing streak that took the team out of playoff contention. If Bradford gets hurt again, the "good to great" gamble is almost certainly going to fail. Kelly and Lurie will be mocked. It will be the new "dream team."

If Bradford, playing the final season of his landmark rookie contract for $13 million this year, doesn't stay healthy, where do they go next? Sanchez is a very nice fellow, but he's had chances to redeem his early promise with the Jets. The bottom line is a career 74.1 passer rating. Even if Sanchez ends up taking most of the snaps, it's hard to believe the Birds will be bad enough to draft in the top five, where you generally need to settle to pluck a franchise quarterback, in the years when such things actually are available. Then what? Import yet another franchise's faded star?

Of course, there's no way to answer that question, but it will perch squarely on Bradford's shoulder all season. He can be Pro Bowl-caliber for a dozen weeks, but if he goes down in Week 13, is he here next year? What if it happens in the playoffs? Does that make him a decent bet for 2016?

It's comforting that Bradford has experienced not a hint of soreness or swelling in his knee, hasn't missed a practice or even a rep. He could hardly have looked better in leading four touchdown drives in the four preseason series he played, as small a sample size as that was. He took hits and popped up unfazed, which was a big hurdle. He did not seem rusty, another hurdle.

Maybe just as important is the sense that even though Bradford had never run Kelly's offense in a full, 11-on-11 practice until training camp started last month, he seems fully in command. He runs Kelly's demanding tempo without confusion or delay, runs it more smoothly than Foles did, at least judging from the preseason.

"No matter what offense you're in, whether you're in it for four weeks or four years, you're still constantly learning," Bradford said. "You're constantly trying to get better. I think the good thing about this offense is that it's not like we have 5 million different plays. Compared to some of the other offenses I've been in, we don't have as many plays, so you get a lot of reps with the stuff that we're going to run, so I feel good with our base package and the things that we've talked about."

The Eagles won't know whether they can go from good to great with Bradford until they've actually done it. It is possible, though, to know before the end of a year that you can't get there, that you aren't good enough.

That was what happened last season, how 9-3 became 9-6 and out of the playoffs before the Eagles prettified their finish with a meaningless win over the Giants. The 2014 Eagles were dominated physically by Maxwell's Seahawks, losing 24-14 on Dec. 7 at the Linc. They sat in the locker room afterward knowing they'd been beaten by the Cardinals, the Packers and now the Seahawks, three of the six NFC playoff teams they'd faced.

They were not just a few breaks away from being a championship-level team. They then went belly-up the next two weeks, against Dallas and Washington teams they'd beaten earlier.

"When you lose those games like that, obviously, there's going to be changes in the offseason," center Jason Kelce said recently. "There's something that's obviously eye-opening, that the team's not ready. Something needs to be changed."

"At the end of the season, I think we looked up and saw where we needed to get stronger," Jenkins said. "Offensively, taking care of the football, defensively, not giving up those big plays outside. Whether that's scheme or personnel, something's got to change there. I think we've done a good job of adjusting that this offseason."

Taking care of the football pertains mostly to quarterbacking. Foles and Sanchez threw 21 interceptions, nine more than the Eagles' defense was able to get back. Bradford threw no picks this preseason, in completing 13 of just 15 passes, and he seemed to take care of the ball well in practice.

Defensively, the 2014 Eagles led the league in 20-plus yards plays given up, with a whopping 72. They brought in Maxwell, Thurmond and potential nickel corner E.J. Biggers, moved Nolan Carroll into a starting corner role, drafted corner Eric Rowe in the second round, and maybe most important, jettisoned secondary coach John Lovett for Cory Undlin, a teacher who emphasizes technique, and who seems to have made a big difference in the unit's confidence.

In New Orleans, Jenkins said, Saints coach Sean Payton was able to get Drew Brees, stabilizing the Saints' QB position for the first time in many years, "and he just built a culture that culminated into a championship team. Every player was invested in what we were doing.

"It was a combination of having the right guys in the locker room, having the quarterback who can take you there, a little bit of luck here and there, and just staying healthy in the right places. All of those kind of came together, for that one year."

Kelly has made the point that Brees was only available to the Saints because he was coming off shoulder surgery, just as Bradford, the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2010, was only available this offseason because of his knee problems. (Of course, the analogy isn't perfect - Brees didn't miss any seasons with his shoulder.) Miami and then-coach Nick Saban decided Brees was too much of a risk. New Orleans went for it.

Lurie talked in March about how you can't be "risk-averse" and win big.

"There was an opportunity to do an upside gamble with an outstanding young quarterback who you hope can become healthier throughout his career," he said. "It is so hard to get a franchise quarterback, as you know. It sets the ceiling on what you have as a team, and do you want to take upside gambles or not?

"You gotta make that decision."

And live with it.

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian