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Great Article on The FO's Planning from The NY Times

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  • Great Article on The FO's Planning from The NY Times

    This article appeared in the Sunday Times. Really shows what a great job the Eagles' FO did in thinking about how things would pan out!

    Eagles’ Spree Was Years in the Making
    By JUDY BATTISTA
    Published: August 13, 2011

    When DeSean Jackson rolled into the Philadelphia Eagles’ training camp on Monday with his agent and his holdout in tow, it provided a brief reminder that even a team that has seized the N.F.L. marketplace by the throat this summer must occasionally deal with the mundane realities of insufficient contracts and unhappy players.

    But Jackson is also a stark example of why the Eagles’ free-agent shopping spree, which netted top-line players like cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha and defensive lineman Jason Babin, and stunned the Giants by signing receiver Steve Smith last Wednesday, is unlike ones most others (read: the Washington Redskins) have periodically engaged in with disastrous results.

    Jackson and quarterback Michael Vick are the only 2 of the Eagles’ 22 projected starters who are not under contract for next season, said the team president, Joe Banner, and Vick has said talks are under way to extend his contract. Banner estimated that 26 of the 28 players who are likely to get the most playing time in 2011, including kickers and punters, are under contract at least through 2012, and some of them beyond that.

    Last year, the Eagles captivated fans with young, explosive offensive talent. Now they have injected some of the best veteran defensive help available. Banner cringed at the suggestion that the Eagles’ mind-set might best be described as “all in.”

    “ ‘All in’ to me implies a short window, and that’s the only thing I object to,” Banner said in a recent interview. “Because we are going to do everything we can to win the Super Bowl, that’s accurate. But all in implies right now, bust if it doesn’t happen. We have structured this so it will be sustainable, and that’s a big difference between what we’ve done and what we’ve seen others do.”

    The structuring, it turns out, began not long after N.F.L. owners decided in the spring of 2008 to opt out of the collective bargaining agreement. The Eagles examined the rules that would be put in place and realized the 2011 free-agency period, if it happened at all, would present an extraordinary buyer’s market.

    Because players who would usually have been unrestricted free agents in 2010 were tied up instead, two free-agent classes would be rolled into one, at the same time as teams would again have to work within a salary cap after having none in 2010 — meaning some teams would not be buyers because they were close to the cap number.

    So began the meticulous preparation for what finally came to fruition in the last two weeks. In contracts they made late in 2008 and 2009 — including those for Asante Samuel and Jason Peters — the Eagles purposely made the 2011 cap numbers the lowest of the contracts, which is unusual because most contracts have their lowest cap numbers early in the deal.

    “You’ll have twice as many players available as usual, and we’re either locked out or there is a reduced cap,” Banner said. “You don’t have to be a brilliant person to figure out there’s going to be huge opportunity. You can’t have increased supply and reduced dollars and not have it. We didn’t know the names, but we did it to take advantage of what was clearly going to be a very team-friendly marketplace. There was a strategic element to this. There was luck as well. Frankly, it turned out better than we hoped.”

    The Eagles had planning meetings throughout the lockout, the final one in June, when it became clear there would probably not be a spending minimum this season, most likely further eliminating a few more teams from competition. They set up “strike zones” for each player they sought — a range of money they would be willing to pay. When the player fell into their zone, the Eagles wanted to be able to move quickly to secure him.

    Jeffrey Lurie, the team’s owner, abhors having dead money — dollars that count against the salary cap even after a player is gone from the team — because it has an effect on the opportunity to compete in later years. So the Eagles had to avoid the usual vexing element of other free-agency sprees: exceeding the salary cap, forcing teams to figure out how to make it work later. That created an uncertainty on the biggest prize of all.

    “I really anticipated not being able to get Nnamdi,” Lurie said. “I knew we were poised if the economics worked out, but I thought there would probably be a team or two that would make him their sole acquisition and be in the stratosphere that wasn’t best for our football team.”

    Some players the Eagles wanted they did not get, but even they seem stunned by their success. Banner said he would have been happy with adding cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie (and a second-round draft pick) in the Kevin Kolb trade, then getting Babin.

    “When the Nnamdi thing happened, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, wow, this is unbelievable,’ ” Banner said.

    The signings came so rapidly that when quarterback Vince Young was brought in as Vick’s backup and running back Ronnie Brown signed, they were relegated to afterthoughts in the Eagles’ incredible makeover. Banner received text messages from people around the league wondering how he had any money left.

    The danger is that so many headline-makers will not mesh with so little time to prepare. Banner has unreserved confidence that Coach Andy Reid can make it work, because he thinks Reid’s strongest suit is managing players, expectations and egos.

    Banner pointed to 2002, when quarterback Donovan McNabb broke his foot late in the season and Reid never blinked when he received the news in the training room, even though A. J. Feeley and Koy Detmer were then his quarterbacks. Banner said Reid never allowed the thought that the injury might derail the Eagles. The Eagles went 5-1 to end the regular season before McNabb returned for the playoffs.

    Although the Eagles are rarely portrayed this way, Lurie and Banner think of themselves as risk-takers, pointing to, among other things, their acquisition of Vick last season. (Smith, who is coming off microfracture knee surgery and might not be ready to practice for weeks, also fits the profile.) They know they have taken another big risk this year — risk with balance, Lurie calls it.

    He has a taste for the theatric. In February, a film he produced, “Inside Job,” won the Academy Award for best documentary. That film was in part about the way risky behavior in the financial services industry led to the economic meltdown.

    Lurie compares what the Eagles have accomplished so far to producing the movie. It was fun and exciting, but the Eagles have not yet won anything. After nearly three years of planning, though, almost everything has fallen into place for them.

    Perhaps their meltdown is still to come. But even as the first rush of signings has ended and the team-building has begun, the good fortune continued. After all, by Monday afternoon, DeSean Jackson was back to practice, too.
    "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." - Joe Theismann




  • #2
    Thanks for posting this. Good read.

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