Domowitch: With a few tweaks, Eagles should make playoffs next season

I'M NOT A glass-half-full guy. I come from a long line of worrywarts and woe-is-me pessimists.

But as we mourn the passing of a third straight playoff-less Eagles season, I'm going to go out of character for a minute and tell you that things aren't as bad as they seem right now for the home squad.

Seriously.

Yeah, they enter the offseason with several fairly urgent positional needs, including wide receiver, edge-rusher, cornerback and, depending on your belief in the potential of Wendell Smallwood and Byron Marshall, running back.

Yeah, they managed to win just one game on the road this season.

Yeah, they finished 16th in scoring and 24th in red-zone offense and went the last 13 games without scoring more than two offensive touchdowns, and gave up more run/pass plays of 30 yards or more (33) than all but two NFL teams.

I know all of that. But I also know that six of their nine losses were by seven points or less. I know that they had the lead in the fourth quarter in three of them and lost a fourth on a failed two-point conversion with four seconds left.

I know they had four wins over playoff teams. OK, 3 1/2 if you don't want to give them full credit for beating the Cowboys' "B" team Sunday.

I know they went 6-2 at home.

And I know they didn't have their starting right tackle, Lane Johnson, for 10 games, eight of which they lost.

"I feel if I would have played the whole season, we would have beaten Dallas the first time (they lost in overtime) and gone to the playoffs," Johnson said.

"You need two good tackles in this league. You saw what Brandon Graham did to (Cowboys right tackle) Doug Free Sunday."

The beauty of the NFL is that, unlike the NBA or Major League Baseball, being bad isn't something that requires a five-year "process" to reverse.

The Titans had a 3-13 record last year, but finished 9-7 and nearly made the playoffs this year. The Dolphins, 6-10 a year ago, finished 10-6 and are in the playoffs.

Last year, the Redskins made it to the postseason a year after finishing 4-12.

And let's not forget the Eagles' worst-to-first turnaround in 2013, when they won the NFC East with a 10-6 record a year after they won just four games in Andy Reid's final season in Philly.

So, cheer up.

Despite their obvious needs, the Eagles aren't without talent. Quarterback Carson Wentz is only going to get better.

Assuming nine-time Pro Bowl left tackle Jason Peters returns for a 14th season, and assuming Johnson keeps his urine PED-free, the Eagles' offensive line will be the second-best unit in the division behind the Cowboys' stack of first-rounders in 2017.

While they need to upgrade their outside receiving corps in free agency and the draft, they already have productive inside receivers in slot receiver Jordan Matthews and tight ends Zach Ertz and Trey Burton.

Defensively, they are solid up the middle with tackle Fletcher Cox, MIKE linebacker Jordan Hicks and safeties Malcolm Jenkins and Rodney McLeod. And end Brandon Graham is coming off the best season of his career.

"There was one play in almost every one of our losses where, if the ball had just bounced our way, or if we had just made one more play, we'd probably be in the playoffs," Ertz said. "I'm not making excuses. But it's a reason for optimism going forward."

The attitude in the Eagles' locker room Monday morning as the players packed up their things before heading to parts unknown was upbeat. Most of them see what Ertz sees: a team that, with a few personnel tweaks, should be able to make a playoff run next season.

"We feel good about where we are as a team," safety Malcolm Jenkins said. "We don't feel like we're trending downward. We feel like we're building something and moving forward.

"We'll go back and evaluate the film from the whole season and see where as individuals and as a team we can improve and what we need to do to get better. But we're encouraged when we talk about the future."

Before he signed with the Eagles last March, linebacker Nigel Bradham spent four seasons in Buffalo with the Bills, where losing is a way of life. The Bills haven't been to the playoffs since 1999, so he knows hopelessness.

In Bradham's four years there, they had one winning season (9-7 in 2014 when Jim Schwartz was the defensive coordinator). When Bradham expressed the same kind of optimism about next year as Jenkins and Ertz, I asked him if he also felt that at the end of any of his four seasons with the Bills.

"It was different in Buffalo," he said. "It was totally different. There was one year where we thought we were pretty good, then the next year we came out and didn't do so well. But that was a totally different situation."

And the Eagles?

"The potential is there," he said. "You can tell we're right there."

Said Hicks: "We have a lot to look forward to with this group of guys we have and this coaching staff we have.

"We're very close. If you ask anybody, they'll tell you we're very close. You look at every game we lost except for the Cincinnati game, we were right there. There's a lot of potential in this team. We feel how close we are. We understand how close we are."

@Pdomo Blog: philly.com/Eaglesblog