Will cornerback be Eagles' big flaw again? | David Murphy
At most other positions, there is hope for improvement. At cornerback, there is desire.
THERE WERE a couple of plays during Tuesday's minicamp practice at the NovaCare Complex that offered a decent glimpse of what Jim Schwartz currently has at cornerback.
The first was a long completion on which third-round draft pick Rasul Douglas got himself twisted in the wrong direction and practice squadder Marcus Johnson took advantage, relegating the rookie to a speck in his rearview with no over-the-top help.
The second was an interception return for a touchdown that began with a check called by safety Rodney McLeod, which enabled second-year corner Jalen Mills to play outside leverage on rookie wideout Mack Hollins and then pounce on the ensuing throw.
Every NFL roster has holes and the Eagles were never going to emerge from the offseason with a team capable of testing that maxim. The question is whether their biggest hole from a year ago will prove to be a fatal one.
At virtually every other position on the depth chart, the Eagles have assembled a collection of talent that at least makes it possible to suspend disbelief.
You can talk yourself into believing that a full season of Lane Johnson was the only thing missing on the offensive line. After all, the Eagles won five of the six games he started last season, with victories over three playoff teams (the Steelers, Giants and Cowboys) and a 24-23 shoulda-coulda-woulda loss to a fourth (the Lions). At wide receiver, you can focus on the 5.6 catches and 82.0 yards per game that Alshon Jeffery averaged from 2013-15 (over 16 games that's 89 catches and 1,312 yards), instead of the 4.3 catches and 68.4 yards per game he averaged last season (over 16 games, that's 69 catches and 1,094 yards). You can focus on the 17.3 yards per catch that Torrey Smith averaged from 2011-15 instead of the 13.4 yards per catch he averaged last season. And wherever you focus, you'll find it hard to see a fleet of pass catchers that isn't improved over last season.
On the defensive line, first-round draft pick Derek Barnett and trade acquisition Timmy Jernigan could be upgrades over Connor Barwin and Bennie Logan. The linebackers are back in full. So are the safeties. And we haven't even mentioned the potential for improvement out of the second-year quarterback.
At cornerback, though, it is difficult to look at the depth chart and react much differently than Schwartz did when somebody asked him whether the Eagles had done enough to address the position this offseason.
"Well," the veteran defensive coordinator said, "we'll find out during the season, for sure."
Given the attention the fans and media paid to wide receiver and right tackle, it is easy to forget that cornerback might have been the biggest liability on the field. Schwartz at times sounded exasperated with his options at the position, particularly during a late-season stretch that included losses to the Seahawks and the Bengals.
In some regards, Mills was a bright spot, a seventh-round draft pick who ended up playing 65 percent of the team's defensive snaps, second only to offseason departure Nolan Carroll, now with the Cowboys. His swaggering, in-your-face style of play was reminiscent of former Eagle and longtime Packers corner Al Harris, himself a sixth-round pick. At 6-foot and a muscular 194 pounds, Mills looks the part as much as he acts it. Schwartz likes to talk about the attitude a cornerback needs to have, and Mills has it.
But a cornerback also needs speed, and that is something Mills does not have, a fact of life that showed itself on a number of occasions last season. It's the same quality that knocked Douglas down into the third round in April, when he was the 17th cornerback taken. Like Mills, Douglas has a strong, angular frame, standing 6-2 and 209 pounds. Like Mills, he has played like he belongs ever since arriving in town, with an aggressive, confident style that draws eyes whenever he is on the field. But, like Mills, his lack of recovery speed is a mitigating factor, as was eminently noticeable when matched up against Johnson on the aforementioned route.
Make no mistake: Mills and Douglas look like NFL players, and Douglas has some serious upside. But the lack of a veteran No. 1 corner ahead of them could leave both punching above their weight this season.
The narrative surrounding Patrick Robinson is that he is coming off a down year after a solid 2015 with the Chargers, but even in 2015 he started 10 games for a defense that allowed 7.9 yards per attempt (28th), 12.2 yards per catch (26th), and a 64.3 percent completion rate (21st). All three of those marks are worse than the ones the Eagles' defense posted last season. Before that, in Robinson's last three seasons as a starter with the Saints, New Orleans finished 30th, 31st and 25th in passing yards allowed. It wouldn't take much for Robinson to give the Eagles more than what they've gotten out of rent-a-veterans like Leodis McKelvin and Bradley Fletcher, but the free-agent market's lackluster response to his availability suggests the odds are against it.
Veteran Ron Brooks had a solid six-game run as a nickel back last season, but he has been sidelined since rupturing a quad in October.
That leaves Mills in a rather odd role as the in-house leader among the corners despite having just one year of experience to his credit. He might be the only player at the position who fully understands the improvement Schwartz and the Eagles need to see in order to improve upon last year's 7-9 record.
"It's not just the outside voices," Mills said after Tuesday's practice. "People could be saying we're the best secondary in the world and we still want to get better."
It's been a while since any Eagles secondary has seen a marked year-to-year improvement at the cornerback position. Desire, at least, should not be an issue.
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