Teams The Eagles Don't Play: Tampa Bay Bucs

The Tampa Bay Bucs are as hot as their rookie RB right now. Not suprisingly they are becoming a darling of the national columnist and talking head alike. The question is: are they a legit threat to take down the Eagles and make the second Super Bowl appearence of the Jon Gruden era, or have they started at a sprint just to finish at a walk.
Bill Simmons recognized recently that the folks over at Footballoutsiders were the only preseason publication to give the Bucs a nog as a contender, and even they hedged by basically saying, "Uh, we're not sure how the numbers came out this way, maybe our Excel is broke". Credit where it's due, they were all over this telling stat: Brian Griese led the NFL last season with a resounding 69.3% completion percentage (look it up). In Gruden's West Coast offense built around quick drops and intelligent reads, Griese has excelled. The other stat that Griese would like to see repeated more often: he was ninth in the league in YPA. Skeptics would say that's all completion percentage. Sure, only Jake Plummer completed less than 60% of his passes and broke the top 10-YPA, but for a guy with a rep for a weak arm ninth's commands alittle respect. It doesn't hurt to chuck it to two veteran wideouts and a second year playmaker who plays like it's his tenth either. Not to mention handing the ball to the leading rusher in football almost two out of three plays.
The other thing people forgot about Tampa is that this season is close to the last ride of three great players who made the pewter-D feared for years: Simeon Rice (31), Derrick Brooks (32), and Ronde Barber (30). These guys can still flat out play, and the front office quietly filled in some holes left by John Lynch and Warren Sapp nicely. The D is tied for the NFC lead with 9 takeaways so far.
Anyone who reads all that can see the potential, and anyone who reads the box scores might say the potential is being realized. Looking at the Bucs last game might give alittle insight into how big the seperation between this team and the NFC's 1-2 teams really is. The Bucs went into Lambeau and came out winners, some would say that's all you should ask for. But the game showed some stregths and weaknesses that will be interesting to watch as the season develops. The Bucs dominated the ground game, and so the time of possession, outgaining the Pack on the ground 161 - 75 and holding the ball for 34:22 (that's right, they did that to the Packers at Lambeau. Haven't seen numbers like that often.) They scored two TD's on smart plays by Griese, one where he picked on a rookie CB and one where Joey Galloway easily found a seam in the Packers zone coverage.
Despite the disparity on the ground and a couple nice plays in the red zone, the Bucs won in the end because of a missed extra point. You might be asking how the game could be so close when it appears the Bucs dominated in most phases of the game. The answer is simply the long ball: Favre throws it and Griese doesn't. Robert Ferguson blew by a corner who didn't get safety help for the Pack's first TD, a 37 yarder, and the Pack's top three wideouts averaged 24.5, 18.5, and 17 yds per catch respectively, while Clayton and Hilliard were held under ten.

Week 3

The Eagles match up with the NFL's Island of Misfit Toys today, aka the Oakland Raiders. Fantasy fans spent the offseason cleaning their sheets after wet dreams about Kerry Collins gunning bombs downfield to Randy Moss. Meanwhile Raiders coach Norv Tuner spent the offseason stocking up on Paxil. The Raiders' offense has proven so far to be alternatly electric and ineffective; full of spotty execution and mental mistakes.

This offense will get much of the attention this week as they match up against Jim Johnson's D, but the formula JJ will show Kerry Collins isn't too hard to figure out or interesting. Blitz Collins from random angles, take advantage of the inexperience of Robert Gallery, and let the secondary do their job on Moss just like when he wore Purple. LaMont Jorden might find some daylight without Darwin Walker in the lineup, but even if he gets by rookie Mike Patterson he'll find the Axman right behind.

The more interesting match up is the Eagles' offense with the Raiders D. Interesting if you are an Eagles fan, that is. The Birds could tear this D apart faster than Oakland's Bay Area counterparts got torn up last weekend at the Linc. Assuming TO sees lots of Charles Woodson and double teams, Oakland will be forced to match up their hybrid DE/OLBer's with LJ Smith and Brian Westbrook. LJ is comming off his best game as an Eagle, and he might be able to follow that up with an even bigger game. Facing a combination of Tyler Brayton, Danny Clark, and ex-Eagle Derrick Burgess all day should mean big numbers for 82 and 36. For anyone who doesn't know, the genius behind this hodge-podge D? None other than Rob Ryan, son of the man who walked tall in the Vet almost two decades ago.

Mission Statement

For anyone who actually reads this:

This blog will be dedicated to viewing the 2005 Eagles and NFL season from a slightly different angle. Sports, especially baseball, have broken into two camps over the past decade: the stathead versus the meathead. Here we'll seek the middle path to enlightenment. First impressions will be balanced by the truth of the numbers; sample size will mix in with who just flat out brought it that week.
The stathead approach may have been birthed to look at baseball, but there is a small and growing influence of stats on football. The most obvious example is fantasy football, where stats sub-in for a player's true quality and fans' loyalties are blurred by their season-long mercenaries. A deeper look at what player's are contributing on the field is offered by the good folks over at www.footballoutsiders.com and in their book Football Prospectus 2005. This is Bill James style football; stats for the sophisticate. Here we'll borrow liberally from their analysis (always giving credit where credit is due, of course) as a building block for a deeper look into pro football.
The meathead view is everywhere: you had to listen to them in high school, you hear them call sports-radio, ESPN hires them almost exclusively. They compete to wear out the same tired cliches: "Team X is all fired up about what Player Y said this week!", "When you have a leader like insert name here, you can't help but bring it each and every week!", and of course, "Michael Vick is changing the QB position in the NFL!" Lots of exclamation points, lots of yelling, lots of Sean Salsbury spittle on the camera. If you've read this far you must be as tired of this type of "analysis" as I am, still cliches get that way for a reason. Football is an incredibly emotional game, and sometimes it really is as simple as who wants it more.
In Philadelphia, we've developed a hard-earned rep for being borderline psycotic about the Birds. Underlooked is that Philadelphia is the home of some of the best minds in Pro Football; writers and commentators who can cut through a coaches tape quicker than some NFL coaches. Not coincidentaly, the Philly 'burbs are the home of NFL films, a petri dish of football insight. Here the stathead and meathead can find common ground in the great masters like Ray Didinger, Steve Sabol, and whoever came up with that soundtrack. EaglesAskew will be my attempt to put a modern twist on their classic outlook.