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Sheldon Brown will take his physical style of play to Cleveland after the Eagles traded him to the Browns. (Getty Images)
Posted: 12 p.m.
By Ray Didinger
CSNPhilly.com
If you saved your program from Super Bowl 39 – and I know you did – turn to page 58. That’s where you will find the head shots of the 2004 Philadelphia Eagles. Now run your finger across the page and count how many of those players are still around.
Let’s see, there is David Akers. And in the middle of the third row, there is Donovan McNabb. That’s it. Thirty faces on the page, only two remain.
On Friday, the third face on the top row – cornerback Sheldon Brown – was taken down when he was dealt to Cleveland along with linebacker Chris Gocong for linebacker Alex Hall and two picks – a fourth-rounder and a fifth-rounder – in the upcoming draft.
If you had any doubts about the direction the team is taking, they should be answered now. The team that came out of the tunnel in Jacksonville on Feb. 6, 2005, is long gone, it is just a memory, and if that team is gone, why is its quarterback still here?
If the franchise has moved on – and, clearly, it has – then it really should move on from McNabb. The Eagles are going young, but why do that at every position except the most important position, especially when you have Kevin Kolb, a quarterback you’ve been grooming for three years, now waiting to play?
The Eagles may say McNabb provides leadership for a young team, that he’s the old vet who’s been through the wars, someone the kids will follow. I’m not so sure about that.
If the Eagles are unable to trade McNabb sometime in the next month, imagine how he is going to feel walking into the locker room for the first minicamp. Is he going to feel like the leader or is he going to look around at all those young faces and feel like a homeroom teacher? And how will they see him? As a group, they have more in common with Kolb.
So while Friday’s trade doesn’t directly affect McNabb, like most things in Eagle land, it cannot be separated from him either. With each day and each subtraction – Brown being the latest – the thought of No. 5 returning to this team seems more impractical.
It is obvious the Eagles are loading up for this draft. The trade with Cleveland gives them 10 picks. If they can move McNabb and Michael Vick, they will add a few more. That would allow them to wheel and deal and perhaps trade up from No. 24 in the first round to pluck a blue-chip player like Tennessee safety Eric Berry.
Most Eagle fans will be angered by the trade of Brown. He never missed a game in his eight seasons and played with a hard-nosed toughness that endeared him to Philadelphia.
Because he was a fearless hitter – what’s the over/under on how many times the local TV stations rerun his lights-out shot on Reggie Bush? – and because he played through injury he was more popular than either Lito Sheppard or Asante Samuel.
Brown played a Philly brand of ball. Sheppard missed too many games to suit the fans and Samuel misses too many tackles. But the truth is Brown did not have a great season in 2009. He had a career-high five interceptions, but he also was beaten a lot. No doubt some of it could be traced to his hamstring injury, but it also appeared at age 30 he did not have the lateral quickness to stay with the better receivers.
Opposing quarterbacks completed 61 percent of their passes against the Eagles last year, 27 for touchdowns. It was easy to blame the free safeties, a faceless bunch who seemed to change on a weekly basis, and it became fashionable to point out the softness in Samuel’s game but most fans gave Brown a pass because he was such a gallant warrior for so long.
The coaches who study the tape and can’t afford to be sentimental knew they had to get better coverage across the board. With Brown on the wrong side of 30, they concluded he wasn’t likely to get any better, plus he still was dissatisfied with his contract and they had no intention of addressing that matter, so they moved him.
But here is my question: What now?
If you are going to move Brown, OK, but who takes his place? Ellis Hobbs will get the first crack, but he is coming off a neck injury and he didn’t show very much on defense before he was hurt.
Joselio Hanson? He didn’t look like the same player after his suspension and with his slight frame (5-9, 180 pounds) he is better suited to playing the nickel role than being a starter. The Eagles may draft a corner – and there are some good ones in this class – but to count on a rookie to start at that position is a huge gamble.
Brown may have lost something off his fast ball, but they don’t have anyone better at the moment. This is the same trap the Eagles fell into last year when they thought they could replace the aging Brian Dawkins at safety, but they found it wasn’t that easy.
Once upon a time, the Eagles turned over the cornerback position seamlessly. They let Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor go, they plugged in Sheppard and Brown, who were young, hungry and talented and the defense kept rolling. But Hobbs, Hanson and third-stringer Dimitri Patterson don’t appear to have the game of either Sheppard or Brown in their prime.
And don’t be surprised if Gocong flourishes in Cleveland. I always felt he was playing out of position as an outside linebacker in a 4-3 system. He was a pure pass rusher who had 23 sacks as a senior at Cal Poly, a Division I-AA school, and he was best suited to playing in a 3-4 defense where he could just rush the quarterback all day.
He never looked comfortable in the Eagles’ defense where he had to backpedal and run laterally and cover tight ends down the field. He gave good effort, but he was out of his element. The Browns play a 3-4 so Gocong will be able to play to his strengths and for a defense that ranked 31st in the NFL last season any help would be welcome.
Alex Hall? Well, he is young (he will be 25 in August) but he is still a project. He had three sacks as a rookie, but didn’t do much last season. He has trouble holding the point against the run, which makes me wonder why the Eagles are projecting him as a strong side linebacker.
So if the Eagles’ plan was to get younger, they accomplished that. But if the goal was to get better, well, they still have a lot of work to do.
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