Top Five Unrealistic Eagle Moves For 2010

5) Releasing the Brothers Andrews. The game plan for the offensive line in 2009 was a revamped and wildly more athletic unit, with brother Stacy joining the unreliable Shawn from Cincy to give he team a road-grader attack, along with newcomer Jason Peters. By combining with standout center Jamal Jackson and the quietly effective Todd Herremans, the line was going to be a quiet upgrade over last year's aging but competent Jon Runyon and Tra Thomas outfit, thanks to youth and athleticism.

Like many things about the season, this fell apart in training camp due to injury, and while contingency plans were able to limit the damage to some extent, the spackling showed against good teams. Tackle Winston Justice stepped up enough to earn his next contract and a grudging acceptance from fans who still remember his unsupported turnstile de-pantsing in a SNF loss to the Giants a few years ago, and eight-of-all-trades Nick Cole also got some time, especially after Jackson went down. It all came crashing down in the twin Dallas losses, where the line was overwhelmed. But that was then.

In 2010, I'm hoping that Peters is better with more familiarity from his teammates, and Justice is still young enough to show improvement. Jackson's injury is a bad one, leaving a big bad hole in the middle, and Cole is not expected to return. The elder Andrews was on sports talk radio the other day in town, talking about how motivated he is now, how he knows that he owns the team something, and how excited he is to pay Coach Andy Reid back for his patience and understanding. Which is all well and good, but could also be the Saying What They Want To Hear portion of trying to remain on a roster. Until the hitting starts, there's no way to know.

Unfortunately for the team, there really isn't freely available talent that's on par with the pair. When he's on his game, Shawn is one of the best interior linemen in the NFL, and a key reason why Brian Westbrook was a borderline MVP pick, especially on the screens that Reid loves more than any other play. Stacy showed some promise in Cincy before moving on, and was coveted by other teams at the time of the signing. The 2009 plan deserves one more shot... but with a better contingency plan in the back-ups.

4) Signing a name LB. In the Reid Era, this has always been the consistent flaw in the defense, made worse by the organization's love affair with undersized speed defensive linemen. Past retreads like Dhani Jones, Takeo Spikes and Levon Kirkland have been brought in with hope and cycled out again with speed; you can also add Jeremiah Trotter to that list, given the bad penny way the team keeps winding up with him. The result has been a defense that has been murdered by pass-catching tight ends ever since Brian Dawkins started losing one on one battles to a young Jeremy Shockey, and a run defense that makes coming back from any deficit unlikely.

However, say this for Reid: he does adapt, however unwillingly, to the changing times. After half a decade of saddling his QBs with generic dog food wideouts like James Thrash, Todd Pinkston and Freddie Mitchell, he stepped up with Terrell Owens, Dante Stallworth, and then hit the jackpot with DeSean Jackson (and to a lesser extent, Jeremey Maclin and the developing Jason Avant). He also finally kicked LJ Smith to the curb for Brent Celek. He does learn. It just takes a maddeningly long time.

Realistically in 2010, the plan will be to let MLB Stewart Bradley reclaim the position that he lost to injury in the accursed 2009 training camps, then play catch-as-catch-can from the grab bag of Akeem Jordan, Tracy White, Will Witherspoon, Omar Geither, Joe Mays, Moise Fokou, Chris Clemons and Chris Gocong. Of that bunch, I think Witherspoon is OK, Jordan has promise, Mays and Fokou could stay in the league, and White and Clemons are situational guys who are best used as special teams aces. Gaither is likely gone for erratic play, and Gocong is kind of a rich man's Gaither.

3) Ending the Sav Rocca experiment. As amusing as it is to have a 6'-5", 265-pound punter who likes to hit people, Rocca's career numbers (42.6 gross, 37.1 net) are just ordinary, and the bigger issue is the inconsistency which plagues his work. Rocca is also 36 already, since he had a previous life as a pretty great Aussie rules player. There's also just the sense now that his technique is always going to be erratic, and that he's not going to ever be a better asset than what he is already... and since he's just completed his third year in the league, he's also going to start getting more expensive.

Finally, there's this: kicker David Akers had a very strong year on kickoffs, but has had health issues in the past that cost him distance. Dallas, among other teams, had a competitive advantage on kickoffs, and punters are becoming more commonly used for the deep kick, and it's not striking me as out of the realm of possibility that the team could get an upgrade.

Realistically, of course, Reid and the Eagles do what they do, and Rocca is also the holder on field goals for Akers, who is about as secure as any kicker in the NFL. So he'll be here as long as Reid wants him here. Meh.

2) Making Leonard Weaver a co-owner of the running game. For the first time in the Reid Era, the club had a true power threat when Weaver took over for the concussed Westbrook in the second half of the year. Weaver wound up making the Pro Bowl from his efforts, probably as much for his big game against the Giants and the relative weakness of the current fullback position. Between his efforts and the periodic effectiveness of Short Field Punt Return (aka, the Michael Vick Experience), the club was much better in short yardage situations than in 2008, though it still wasn't a strength. With a full off-season, Westbrook presumably out of the picture, and the sense that the club is going to manage carries for RB LeSean McCoy the same way that they did with Westbrook, Weaver could work in to a bigger role.

Realistically, it was telling how rookie RB Eldra Buckley got goal line touches instead of Weaver, partly because Reid has never liked giving those carries to important personnel. (Again, the Westbrook experience is revealing.) Perhaps the coach sees that last yard as a good place to get hurt, or he felt that he needed Weaver to block. So while the man will probably still get touches and carries, anyone expecting him to really take more of the spotlight is likely to be disappointed. (The same, by the way, goes for fantasy football players who go hard for McCoy, though he's likely to get some kind of a bump in his second year in the league.)

1) Starting the Kevin Kolb Era. And here's the one that dwarfs all of the others on the list. I've written about this before on the blog, but QB Donovan McNabb should fetch something in trade, and time is running out to see if they really have something in Kolb, or if the QB of the 2010s for the laundry is on the roster. Kolb certainly looked ready in his two games in 2010, albeit against fairly bad defenses (New Orleans and Kansas City).

If it's my team, McNabb goes to a team that gives the highest price, assuming he's not in the division, and the haunting be damned. The man is 33 and injury prone, after all; while he could be in the league for another half a dozen years, it's just as likely that he could be done in 1 to 2 years.

Realistically... well, there is a real chance that McNabb will be somewhere else in 2010, since there are a half dozen teams in the league that have no viable starting QB on their roster, while the Eagles have at least two. (I'm not ready to give Vick the full designation yet; I know he's got a big name, but it wouldn't shock me if he loses a camp battle even in one of the more open jobs.) But you can easily see Reid sticking to his guns and the devil he knows, and also wanting to be absolutely sure that he's got a solid option in the event of an injury.

Finally, you can also see Reid not wanting to face McNabb again in a possible playoff, and many of the rumored destination for him (Minnesota, San Francisco) are places where he could come back to haunt them. That's a wuss way out, and they did let Owens go to Dallas with no real regrets, but so be it.

Feel free to add your own in the comments...