Eagles Value Versatility in Back Seven

Forget convention. the modern spread-and-shred evolution of offensive football has turned so-called sub-packages into the new base.

Leading up to the NFL Draft there was a growing sentiment that the Eagles might select an off-ball linebacker in the first round for the first time in over 40 years.

The name Jerry Robinson, who incidentally was a heck of a player and a two-time All-Pro selection for the Eagles back in the early 1980s, was taught to a whole new generation of Philadelphia faithful.

Turns out Oklahoma’s Kenneth Murray and LSU’s Patrick Queen weren’t in the serious conversations at for the top of the process as it was receiver-or-bust for Howie Roseman and Co. with Philadelphia ultimately landing on TCU playmaker Jalen Reagor.

Linebacker was addressed on Days 2 and 3 in the form of two raw players who can run in third-round pick Davion Taylor of Colorado, a sprinter in a souped-up body, along with Temple product and South Jersey native Shawn Bradley, like Taylor a top-5 stopwatch player at the position during the NFL combine not the 7-foot-6 center known as Shawn Bradley who once disappointed the basketball faithful in town.

The uncertainly at the position, though, remains glaring in the wake of veteran Nigel Bradham presumably moving on (he’s still a free agent] and Kamu Grugier-Hill signing in Miami.

The top incumbent is Nate Gerry, the 2017 fifth-round pick who has slowly developed from one-time Nebraska safety to a favorite of Ken Flajole and the best option Jim Schwartz currently has when projecting three-down linebackers.

From there it’s a hodge-podge of projection.

Perhaps 2019 undrafted free agent T.J. Edwards can develop into a competent two-down Mike linebacker and maybe Duke Riley, once a third-round pick in Atlanta, could be more than just a special-teamer as the Eagles hope.

Taylor has plenty of room to grow after essentially forgoing his high school career for religious purposes and Bradley is what a sixth-round pick usually is, something of a long shot.

Maybe the real answer to why Ray Lewis is never chased in Philadelphia, however, comes in the form of the devaluation of the position as a whole around the league and the reasons why.

Forget convention. If orange was the new black in fashion or Netflix, the modern spread-and-shred evolution of offensive football has turned so-called sub-packages into the new base.

Consider last season when Schwartz still had his veteran presence in Bradham and KGH yet still only played a traditional 4-3 base 19 percent of the time, which was 25th in the NFL, according to Sports Info Solutions. Both players missed significant time with injuries but month-long stretches of similar rep numbers for both added while taking away those of the replacements don’t change that number dramatically

That means the Eagles real base defense is some kind of sub-package, an environment that Schwartz called 81 percent of the time.

Of that 81 percent, the breakdown was 48 percent nickel, which was 23rd in the league, and 26 percent of dime-plus, which was eighth in the NFL.

What that tells you is that Schwartz uses more exotic looks than most defensive coordinators in the league and that’s where all the position-less player talk from Howie Roseman this offseason enters into the equation.

“When I first came into the league, you had your traditional strong safety, you had your traditional free safety,” the Eagles general manager said. “Every team that was running our style of defense, a 4-3 defense, has three linebackers, you’re playing much more base defense than you are now. 

"The nickel corner was probably playing 40 percent as opposed to 65 or 70 (percent), and tight ends you had more traditional wide tight ends where guys were keeping that guy in and making sure they could block at the point of attack.”

Right now the Eagles base is penciled in as Gerry-Edwards-Riley but you can expect to see that or any other setup with different names less than 19 percent of the time moving forward.

The caveat to that is Schwartz will tell you, by its very nature, defensive football is reactive so any plan is dictated by the opposing offense. In a micro sense that could change on any given week if the opposition rolls out 21 personnel but the macro feel in Philadelphia is that the league has shifted so when the sample size increases, three traditional LBs on the field decreases.

The back seven is now all about moving chess pieces and for the Eagles that could be anyone from Jalen Mills to Gerry to Will Parks or Avonte Maddox. Even rookies like Taylor and K’Von Wallace could fight their way into the conversation with versatility.

Position-less is the new black in Philadelphia.

“The game has just changed,” said Roseman. “It has gotten a lot faster and we have to be able to adjust some of our evaluations, and also try to figure out where the next wave is coming where maybe something is undervalued right now and two or three years from now we’ll be ahead of it because this is a trendsetting league and you want to be out in front of the trends.”

John McMullen covers the Eagles for SI.com and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John every day on SIRIUSXM’s Tony Bruno Show with Harry Mayes, Every Tuesday and Thursday with Eytan Shander on SBNation Radio, and every weekday on ESPN 97.3 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen