Can Derek Barnett deliver right away? It sure would help the Eagles | Mike Sielski
The rookie defensive end can fix a lot of problems for the Birds if he's as good as advertised.
Before each of his games at the University of Tennessee, Derek Barnett spent several days studying film, honing his focus to the opposing offensive tackle or tackles he would be facing. At 6-foot-3 and 259 pounds, Barnett combined enough raw strength and speed to rack up a school-record 33 sacks at Tennessee; he could beat most college tackles, even if he told them what move he was planning to make before he made it. I'm gonna take two strides straight into you, pivot off my left foot, spin to your outside shoulder, and arrive at your quarterback in a bad mood. Getcha popcorn ready. But Barnett relished having a psychological edge on his competitor, knowing that, through all that study, he had uncovered a weakness that he could and would exploit.
"Mentally. You have to be tuned in mentally," Barnett said Friday during the Eagles' camp for their rookies. "As physical a ballgame as it is, it's just as much mental. You try to get in his head."
An example: There was a tackle in the Southeastern Conference who, Barnett noticed, "had bad eyes. He'd always look at the ball, so he was slower when he backed up. So if I widened out just a little bit, I'd beat him with my first step."
How did he fare against this tackle?
"Pretty good," he said, the grin on his face making it clear that he had been better than pretty good in that particular game.
Barnett didn't mention whether he was playing right or left defensive end that day. He lined up at both spots during his career with the Volunteers, on the right more frequently. "To me," he said, "defensive end is defensive end. If you can play, you can play." To the Eagles, though, where Barnett does and can line up might matter very much.
In a perfect world for the Eagles, Barnett would . . . well, let's be honest. In a perfect world, he might not be on their roster, because they wouldn't have selected him with the No. 14 pick in this year's draft, because they wouldn't have needed to. They'd have Vinny Curry chasing quarterbacks down from the right side and Brandon Graham terrorizing them from the left and Marcus Smith - their first round pick in 2014 - lining up wherever he felt like he could cause the most chaos.
Instead, after signing a five-year, $46.25-million contract last year, Curry had just 21/2 sacks and underperformed so badly that defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz moved Graham over to right defensive end during the season and cut Curry's playing time. That move made sense. Graham proved he was the Eagles' best pass rusher. But a team's best pass rusher usually has to contend with an opponent's best and highest-paid offensive lineman - the left tackle - which means that a team's best pass rusher expects to be paid accordingly. Which explains why Graham, as the Inquirer's Jeff McLane first reported, hasn't been attending workouts and would like the Eagles to renegotiate the four-year, $26-million contract he signed in 2015.
Oh, and Marcus Smith might not even make the team. Which is why the Eagles signed Chris Long, a 32-year-old veteran, to be part of their defensive end rotation.
So yes, if Barnett can play the left side, and if he can play right away, it would solve a lot of problems. It's also asking quite a lot from a rookie.
"Right now, it's a matter of getting him out there and seeing which side he's comfortable on," head coach Doug Pederson said. "We want to work him on both sides of the defensive front, right and left. Right now, it's just rookie camp, so it's kind of hard until we get him in here with the veterans and really get him working with our guys. It's a matter of him just picking up the system right now. It's a long time before we play football games, and we've got some time before we make those decisions."
The Eagles haven't exactly tamped down expectations for Barnett. They have been quick to compare him to the Baltimore Ravens' Terrell Suggs, and they valued his productivity at Tennessee more than they did his modest readings at the NFL combine. They cared about how he played football, not how high he jumped or fast he ran in an all-Under Armour outfit in Indianapolis. "What Derek is highly proficient at is at the top of his rush," Joe Douglas, the team's player-personnel director, said on the night the Eagles drafted Barnett. "So when the D-lineman gets to the top, he is excellent - excellent ankle flexion, excellent ability to bend at the top and finish. He can really close, and he uses a variety of moves. He uses speed rush. He uses power. He can go speed to power on people."
Sounds pretty good. The Eagles would settle for that from Derek Barnett this season. So would he.