ATL: Week 1

[humanrefutation]

How unstoppable would we be with a Shady McCoy on our team?

[Newz]

Eagles offense is crazy.

[ReasonablySober]

I had feeling this is what we'd see tonight.

[humanrefutation]

Their whole "plays run" number is skewed by the number of turnovers that Washington has run so far.

[ReasonablySober]

[ReasonablySober]

You're gonna wanna open that in a new window.

[humanrefutation]

That clock management was absolutely terrible. The worst I've seen since Flynn in New England in 2010.

[humanrefutation]

You're gonna wanna open that in a new window.

Good lord.

[Fort Minor]

You're gonna wanna open that in a new window.

[Fort Minor]

I'm feeling pretty good about grabbing the Vick/Jackson tag-team for both of my FF teams.

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*Knock on wood*

[ReasonablySober]

Oh my god, McCoy.

[FAH1223]

Eagles look like their 2010 selves

[humanrefutation]

Berman is awful. Just terrible to listen to.

[El Duderino]

Their whole "plays run" number is skewed by the number of turnovers that Washington has run so far.

Yea, that was a pretty big factor.

That said, i can really see their offense causing a lot of problems going forward, especially when the weather is warm and defensive players get gassed.

The caveat to that is playing at that pace and number of plays, it could really increase the odds of either or both of Vick/McCoy getting hurt at some point. Even though Vick won't carry the ball a lot on the read option plays, he's still going to take a sizable number of hits, partially because Vick still refuses to slide as much as he should or go down earlier, and he has a history of injuries. Look at the game tonight. On that long run by Vick, he picked up the first down with ease and had a chance to slide about 15 yards downfield. Instead though, he made a juke to gain another 10 yards or so, but took a hit and was seen grabbing his groin after the play.

For as great as McCoy was tonight, he carried the ball 31 times and on many of those carries they took place on high speed drives where he had little time to rest between plays. I really question if he can hold up with to many games of him having such a heavy workload.

Kelly clearly has a great offensive mind, but at Oregon he consistently had the much better and much more talented team with lots of blowouts. Because of that, he could rotate in multiple backs without really losing much talent or production wise. His quarterbacks also ran the ball a lot in his run based spread offense. With the Eagles though, there is a big drop off in talent from McCoy to his backups and thus Kelly IMO is going to have to be careful to not overuse McCoy given Philly won't be blowing out teams as was often the case at Oregon. That will make it harder to take out/rest McCoy as the carries total mounts.

[Mags FTW]

Berman is awful. Just terrible to listen to.

[Mags FTW]

That game was a microcosm of every Chargers season.

[humanrefutation]

Their whole "plays run" number is skewed by the number of turnovers that Washington has run so far.

Yea, that was a pretty big factor.

That said, i can really see their offense causing a lot of problems going forward, especially when the weather is warm and defensive players get gassed.

The caveat to that is playing at that pace and number of plays, it could really increase the odds of either or both of Vick/McCoy getting hurt at some point. Even though Vick won't carry the ball a lot on the read option plays, he's still going to take a sizable number of hits, partially because Vick still refuses to slide as much as he should or go down earlier, and he has a history of injuries. Look at the game tonight. On that long run by Vick, he picked up the first down with ease and had a chance to slide about 15 yards downfield. Instead though, he made a juke to gain another 10 yards or so, but took a hit and was seen grabbing his groin after the play.

For as great as McCoy was tonight, he carried the ball 31 times and on many of those carries they took place on high speed drives where he had little time to rest between plays. I really question if he can hold up with to many games of him having such a heavy workload.

Kelly clearly has a great offensive mind, but at Oregon he consistently had the much better and much more talented team with lots of blowouts. Because of that, he could rotate in multiple backs without really losing much talent or production wise. His quarterbacks also ran the ball a lot in his run based spread offense. With the Eagles though, there is a big drop off in talent from McCoy to his backups and thus Kelly IMO is going to have to be careful to not overuse McCoy given Philly won't be blowing out teams as was often the case at Oregon. That will make it harder to take out/rest McCoy as the carries total mounts.

I generally agree with you, though I'd note a couple things:

1. I don't know if you need a back as dynamic as McCoy to still run an offense as explosive as Kelly's. All of the misdirection, coupled with a great offensive line, makes me think that even a mediocre back could do damage in that offense. Not to the same degree as McCoy, but enough to make an impact. I think Alex Green would do well in that offense, tbh.

2. I'd also note that Oregon's read-option was particularly dynamic because of the threat of the QB being able to run the ball as well. Vick isn't likely to hold up if he's going to have to run those plays. He barely made it out of yesterday's game - the hits clearly impacted him. Once you take him out of it, then it becomes like any play-action play.

[El Duderino]

1. I don't know if you need a back as dynamic as McCoy to still run an offense as explosive as Kelly's. All of the misdirection, coupled with a great offensive line, makes me think that even a mediocre back could do damage in that offense. Not to the same degree as McCoy, but enough to make an impact. I think Alex Green would do well in that offense

I'm skeptical that is the case. For as creative as Kelly is, his offense is as run based as any offensive scheme in the NFL, he just runs the ball a lot in a different fashion than typical teams do. Slow down that running game and all of those run fake big play passes aren't as effective.

At Oregon, Kelly always had a stable of skilled running backs and skilled running quarterbacks that much lesser talented defenses rarely could handle in his running game. Given just how dynamic that Oregon running game was, college defenses often were helpless to then stop play fake passes.

With Philly though, Kelly will have to be so careful about using Vick as a runner and in his offense, the running threat of the QB was a big key in why college defenses couldn't stop his running game.

So NFL defenses will be able to focus much more on just defending the handoff to the RB and not buy that Vick will fake and take off running himself. This will make the skill of the RB significantly more important. Just look at the Washington game. Yea the scheme at times caught the Skins defense off guard, but there were also plenty of times that McCoy created big runs simply via his special gifts as a runner. Gifts few other backs in the NFL possess.

[Newz]

He wasn't very careful with Vick yesterday.