IS TALKIN' SOUL WITH DONOVAN MORGAN
Nobody is more relieved than Jason Babin that the Eagles are staying with the “Wide nine” alignment, and with their coaching structure from last season.
Babin tied for second in the NFL in sacks, with 18. He made the Pro Bowl for the second year in a row. He also seems to be the definition of a “system” player – Babin bounced around the NFL for six seasons after being drafted in the first round by Houston, before Jim Washburn put him in the Wide 9 for Tennessee in 2010. After defensive line coach Washburn moved to the Eagles last offseason, Babin signed here for five years and more than $27 million.
“The sooner we got some clarity on those situations, the sooner we could move forward,” Babin said today during a photo shoot at a Pitman, N.J., gym on behalf of a nutritional supplement company through which he hopes to market a protein bar.
Washburn indicated at the Senior Bowl a few weeks back that he was hugely frustrated to see his Wide Nine blamed for much of the Eagles’ defensive struggles in 2011. Babin is just as weary of jousting with reporters and fans, after the Birds tied for the NFL lead in sacks with 50, but somehow still managed to rank 30th in red zone defense, and 24th in touchdown passes allowed.
“When something isn’t working, and you have a new component, what’s the first thing people look at? The new component,” Babin said. “It’s human nature. If we would have won, what’s the first thing (analysts) would have looked at? The Wide Nine.”
Read more from Babin in tomorrow's Daily News.
Les
Bowen has covered the Eagles for the Daily News
since 2002.
Before that, he spent nearly 13 years covering the Flyers. It took Les
only a few seasons after the switch to figure out that there was no
penalty box at the Linc, and that the time really wasn't his, despite
what Andy Reid kept saying. Les came to Philadelphia and the Daily News
from Charlotte in 1983. In the intervening years, he has pretty much
lost track of NASCAR, and his accent. He, his wife Barbara, and their
two sons live in Haddon Township, New Jersey.
E-mail Les at bowenl@phillynews.com
and follow
him on Twitter.
Paul
Domowitch has been with the Daily News since 1982.
He has spent most of his nearly 3 decades with the paper covering the
Eagles and pro football. For the last 10 years, he’s been a
selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A native of Wilkes-Barre
and a graduate of Wilkes University, Domo started his career in Texas,
working first for the Midland Reporter-Telegram (1976-78), and then for
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where he covered some god-awful Texas
Ranger baseball teams. His first beat at the Daily News actually was
boxing, which he covered just long enough to lose 2 sports coats to
blood spatter before moving on to football. Domo and his wife Shelley,
a University of Oklahoma grad who still hasn’t gotten over
that Fiesta Bowl loss to Boise State 5 years ago, have 2 terrific
daughters -- Allison, 28, who is an attorney in South Jersey, and Amy,
25, who works in administration for a professional baseball team.
E-mail Domo at PDomo@aol.com and follow
him on Twitter.
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