Eagles observations: I'm convinced it's Bijan Robinson in the 1st round
Roob's Obs: Why I'm convinced it's Bijan in the 1st round originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
Howie and Bijan, a look back at Randall Cunningham’s 1990 season and thoughts about Matt Patricia.
We’re all over the place in this week’s edition of Roob’s 10 Random Offseason Eagles Observations.
1. Bijan. I’ve convinced myself it’s going to happen. Whether it’s at 10 or after a trade down, I don’t know. But I’ve convinced myself - probably deluded myself – that Howie Roseman is going to do the unthinkable and take a running back in the first round. All the usual reasons he wouldn’t don’t apply. Teams picking this high don’t need a running back? Teams picking this high aren’t coming off Super Bowls with loaded rosters. Running backs are too one-dimensional to draft this high? Bijan Robinson averaged an otherworldly 16.5 yards per catch last year. Running backs aren’t worth drafting in the first round because they’ve only got four or five big years in them? Why wouldn’t you want a talent like Robinson alongside Jalen Hurts for the next four or five years? Running backs aren’t worth the money if you take them early in the first round. It ain’t your money! The Eagles just paid their quarterback $255 million, and if giving him the best possible opportunity to excel and live up to that contract is your priority, a kid like Robinson really does make perfect sense. Here’s what Howie said Thursday: “The most important thing for us here is that we utilize this opportunity to get a unique player for our team. If you start saying, ‘Hey, we can get a unique player, but it's got to be this position,’ you really narrow your options right there.” I know I’m wrong, but I really believe I’m right.
MORE: Sirianni and Roseman back Quez Watkins after adding another WR
2. That said: The Eagles have drafted 19 running backs in the first round in franchise history (17 of them by 1967). The only one of the 19 who ever had 600 rushing yards in a season was Steve Van Buren.
3. How rare is it for the Eagles to have two 1st-round picks? If they stay where they are, it’ll be the first time they’ve selected two players in the first round in 30 years and only the third time in the last 70 years. In 1973, they took multiple Pro Bowlers Jerry Sisemore and Charle Young with the third and sixth picks, and in 1993 they picked never-were-close-to-being Pro Bowlers Lester Holmes and Leonard Renfro 19th and 24th.
4. Sacks and pass pressure lead to interceptions. We all know that. What I don’t get is why the second half of last year, it didn’t. From the Titans game through the NFC Championship Game, the Eagles had 42 sacks – 4th-most in history over an eight-game span within the same season. Yet they had just three interceptions. That should be impossible. They got after quarterbacks at a historic pace yet only six teams had fewer interceptions during that eight-game span. According to Stathead, there have been 180 eight-game spans since 1982 (when sacks became an official stat) where a team had at least 34 sacks, and the Eagles last year are the only one of those teams that had just three INTs during that stretch. Why? I have no idea. It could support the theory that Darius Slay declined the second half of the season. Maybe part of it is Chauncey Gardner-Johnson’s injury. Maybe it’s something else. But if all those sacks aren’t leading to turnovers, something is wrong somewhere.
5. This is only the second time in the last half century the Eagles have had a top-10 pick after a winning season. They’ve had 19 top-10 picks since 1963, but there was only one that followed a winning season. In 1991, the Eagles had the 19th pick but traded it along with a 1st-round pick in the 1992 draft to the Packers for No. 8, where they took Antone Davis. The Packers drafted cornerback Vinny Clark with the 19th pick in 1991 but traded the 1992 pick (No. 17 overall) to the Falcons for Brett Favre. The Falcons took the pick and traded it to the Cowboys, who drafted cornerback Kevin Smith. Davis played five utterly mediocre seasons for the Eagles before finishing his career with two years in Atlanta.
6. Only three active players drafted in the sixth or seventh round have had over 1,000 receiving yards in their first three seasons: Donovan Peoples-Jones, Russell Gage and Quez Watkins.
7. The Eagles have a perfect record drafting 1st-round tight ends. They’ve taken two, Charle Young with the sixth pick in 1973 and Keith Jackson with the 13th pick in 1988, and they’re the only tight ends in the last 50 years who made the Pro Bowl in each of their first three seasons. They were also the first two tight ends to make 1st-team all-pro as rookies (Jeremy Shockey did in 2002 as well). Young and Jackson rank second and third in Eagles history among tight ends in yards per catch with 46.1 and 45.9. Zach Ertz averaged 51.0. Dallas Goedert is at 43.4. Nobody else is over 30.
8. How ridiculous was Randall Cunningham’s 1990 season? He became only the second quarterback in history to pass for at least 3,400 yards with at least 30 touchdowns and 13 or fewer interceptions. And he ran for 942 yards and five TDs. It would be another 25 years before another QB threw 30 TDs and ran for more than 600 yards – that was Cam Newton in 2015. To this day, the only other QB with 30 touchdown passes and 900 rushing yards in a season is Lamar Jackson in 2019. Twelve was decades ahead of his time.
9. I can’t really find a reason to be outraged that Nick Sirianni hired Matt Patricia, a fellow upstate New York native. Remember, Patricia is a senior defensive assistant, which means he’s not a high-profile coach, he’s not going to be calling plays or coming up with gameplans, he’s not going to be all over the media. He’s just another voice for Sirianni, one who’s been a part of three Super Bowl championship teams. The Eagles have had plenty of fine assistant coaches who were terrible NFL head coaches – Marion Campbell, Marty Mornhinweg, Pat Shurmur. Heck, the Eagles had the No. 3 offense in the NFL in 1990, Rich Kotite's one year as Buddy Ryan’s offensive coordinator. The Slay-Patricia dispute? You know what, they’ll both deal with it like men. If Brandon Graham can reconcile with Jim Washburn, Slay can be in the same building as Matt Patricia.
10. That Howie Roseman-Jason Kelce interview on a recent New Heights podcast was packed with fascinating and revealing insights and tidbits. Here’s a leftover quote I really liked, Howie telling Kelce what he likes about the current makeup of the offensive line: “It’s got to be like a starting five on your basketball team. Everyone has to compliment each other. That’s why getting Landon was so big for us. … Because he’s rare. Because of social media, players aren’t the same as they were 10 years ago. Landon has unique football character. Landon loves football. He loves practicing football, he loves being in the building all the time and I think the more guys you have like that, that are learning from guys like you and Lane, they understand it gives them the opportunity to be great as opposed to being pretty good players. Because of how much they care. We go through all these questionnaires (pre-draft), ‘What do you love to do?’ And they all answer, ‘Video games, video games, video games, video games.’ It’s unbelievable. And I get it, I like video games, Tecmo Bowl was great. But I think that’s another part of it. He fits. We have a team culture and then we have an o-line culture and the o-line culture drives the team.”
