The Philadelphia Eagles ended the season with a 41-33 Super Bowl win over the New England Patriots on Sunday. Here’s a recap of the season and what’s next:
Season grade: Near perfection. They were the best team in football just about wire-to-wire, overcame the loss of star quarterback Carson Wentz, future Hall of Fame left tackle Jason Peters, linebacker Jordan Hicks, running back Darren Sproles and special teams ace Chris Maragos, and charged through the postseason. They capped their run with a win over Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots dynasty. Could it get any better?
Season in review: The expectations were pretty low heading into the year, but coach Doug Pederson saw something special brewing. He made a bold statement in the summer by saying this group had as much, if not more, talent than the championship Green Bay Packers team in the mid-90s. The disclaimer was that everything still needed to jell together. Boy, did it ever. Wentz proved a star in the making, and new additions like Alshon Jeffery, LeGarrette Blount, Jay Ajayi and Tim Jernigan blended seamlessly into the team’s culture. It proved to be a loaded, cohesive roster that rolled to 13 wins in the regular season, two wins in the NFC playoffs as the No. 1 seed, and a Super Bowl victory — the first in franchise history.
Biggest play of season: The “Philly Special.” Pederson showed some serious guts — serious guts — by dialing up a reverse quarterback throwback on fourth-and-goal late in the first half. Swiped from the Chicago Bears, who had used it against the Minnesota Vikings, the Eagles broke it out in a huge moment on the game’s biggest stage. Pederson’s aggressive style was key all season, and helped the Eagles walk off as champions.
He said it: “We are world champions, men. Just look around. This is what you guys have done. This is what you have accomplished. We said before, an individual can make a difference but a team makes a miracle. You did it. You did it against a fine football team. When you’re asked, you’re complimentary, but at the same time … we are going to party.” — Pederson
Key offseason question
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What to do with Foles: Do you hold onto Nick Foles, the Super Bowl MVP, or deal him if a quality offer comes down the pike? If nothing else, this season demonstrated the importance of having a good No. 2, so the Eagles aren’t likely going to be in a rush to trade Foles, who comes with a cap hit of close to $8 million next season. Plus, there’s some uncertainty about when Wentz will be fully recovered from his torn ACL. But if they’re blown away by an offer, they’ll have to consider it.
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Biggest draft need: Executive vice president of football operations Howie Roseman and VP of player personnel Joe Douglas have done a very good job of assembling a top-level roster with few holes. This is a team that believes in putting heavy resources into the offensive and defensive line, and could use depth at offensive tackle in particular. I’d expect them to target linebacker as well.
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Free agency targets: They have to make a couple of in-house decisions first, starting with linebacker Nigel Bradham and Sproles. Could they look for a speedy receiver to push Torrey Smith and work opposite Jeffery?
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Future looks bright: The Eagles arrived ahead of schedule and won a Super Bowl with their backup QB. Wentz is just 25 and has the potential to be a top-five player in this league. Pederson was a question mark heading into the season, but now it’s hard to look at him as anything but a major asset. Most of the supporting cast is locked in contractually for the foreseeable future, making a sustained run of success likely.
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — It will be one of the youngest groups in the history of the Pro Football Hall of Fame as Ray Lewis, Randy Moss and Brian Urlacher were all selected Saturday for enshrinement in the class of 2018.
All three players were in their first year of eligibility and join Terrell Owens and Brian Dawkins as the modern-era selections to be enshrined. Those five players join longtime personnel executive Bobby Beathard (contributor) and seniors committee nominees Jerry Kramer and Robert Brazile for enshrinement.
The 2018 Pro Football Hall of Fame includes a pair of wide receivers and a trio of linebackers.
Terrell Owens finally made it. Brian Urlacher, Ray Lewis and Randy Moss made it in their first year of eligibility. For John Lynch and a slew of O-linemen, the wait continues. Here’s how it all went down, according to one of the voters in the room.
There was skepticism about his height from the beginning, and it showed during the draft. But Ray Lewis’ fall turned into the Ravens’ biggest gain.
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The Hall of Fame’s board of selectors met Saturday, the day before Super Bowl LII, to select the class. The 15 modern-era finalists were trimmed to 10 and then to five. Those five finalists were then voted on with a yes or no for enshrinement. The contributor and two seniors nominees were voted on separately with a yes or no.
The Hall of Fame’s enshrinement ceremony will be Aug. 4 in Canton, Ohio.
It was a day for the 1990s and 2000s NFL as Owens was the modern-era selection who had waited the longest, and he was in just his third year of eligibility. Dawkins was in his second year of eligibility.
Lewis was the most decorated of the group as a 13-time Pro Bowl selection, a two-time Defensive Player of the Year and a Super Bowl MVP in his career as a Baltimore Ravens linebacker.
“I’ve been going a long time. And now I can finally rest,” Lewis said. “I want to go fishing with a cigar now and just sit back. I don’t want to work out every day now.
“Growing up as a child, I know what [a Hall of Fame middle linebacker] looked like — Mike Singletary, Dick Butkus. Who dreams of being in that category, sitting with those guys?”
Lewis started 227 games in his career and was credited with eight 100-tackle seasons.
“For 17 years, we could point to No. 52 and tell the other players: ‘Follow his lead. Practice like Ray practices. Prepare like Ray prepares. Be a great teammate like him,'” Ravens general manager and executive vice president Ozzie Newsome said in a release from the team. “It was our privilege to have him as a Raven. We are all better for having him here. His play on gamedays speaks for itself.
“Even in that small group who have the honor of being a Hall of Famer, Ray stands out. When you talk about the great players of all time, no matter position, he is among the greatest of the great.”
Moss, who played for five teams in his career, is second all time in touchdown receptions with 156 and had eight 1,200-yard seasons in his career. He played seven full seasons and part of another in Minnesota, site of Sunday’s Super Bowl.
“The door knocked and I started getting excited,” Moss said of Hall of Fame president David Baker alerting him he has been elected. “All the emotions caught the best of me because it’s been a long journey, and it ends in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Tears of joy.”
— Pro Football HOF (@ProFootballHOF) February 4, 2018
In the days leading up to Saturday’s selection meeting, some wondered if Urlacher would be chosen in the same class as Lewis, as two high-profile players at the same position in largely the same era. The athleticism and production of the former Chicago Bears middle linebacker tipped the scales.
Urlacher was an eight-time Pro Bowl selection and the league’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2005.
Owens, a finalist for the past three years, had been a hot-button candidate with his own public criticisms of the board of selectors after he had not been chosen for the Hall in 2016 or ’17.
A third-round draft selection of the San Francisco 49ers in 1996, Owens ranks eighth all time in receptions (1,078), second in receiving yards (15,935) and third in receiving touchdowns (153). He played for the 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys, Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals in a career that spanned 15 years.
“Terrell Owens gave our organization eight great seasons of service and some terrific memories that will live on in 49ers lore,” CEO Jed York said in a statement congratulating the six-time Pro Bowler. “He is one of the most accomplished wide receivers in the history of the NFL, and very deserving of this selection to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.”
Owens, who is the only player to score a touchdown versus each of the current 32 teams, acknowledged his selection Saturday in an Instagram post featuring a Hall of Fame hat.
Dawkins played 13 of his 16 NFL season for the Eagles, who will face the New England Patriots in Sunday’s Super Bowl. A nine-time Pro Bowl selection, he was a rare player to have finished a career with at least 35 interceptions and 20 sacks.
“This is tremendous news, and I could not be more proud of Brian. Being inducted into the Hall of Fame is an honor he truly earned,” Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said. “He epitomized everything we love about the game of football. His intensity, his passion, his love of the game and his leadership were always dialed in at the highest possible level.
“He connected in every possible way with the city of Philadelphia and our legion of Eagles fans across the country.”
But no former player waited longer for enshrinement than Kramer, who played his last season with the Green Bay Packers in 1968. He was the only guard selected to the NFL’s 50th anniversary team and was a lead blocker for one of the league’s iconic plays in the Packers’ sweep. Kramer also cleared the way for Hall of Famer Bart Starr to score the winning touchdown in the Ice Bowl, the Packers’ 21-17 win over the Cowboys in the 1967 NFL Championship Game.
“In the old days when the quarterbacks called their own plays, since most of them were right-handed, they called most of the plays to the right. So the defense would put their best men on that half of the field. Therefore, Jerry Kramer, as a right guard, played against the best defensive tackle every week. He still made All-Pro five times,” said former Packers linebacker and 2013 Hall of Fame inductee Dave Robinson.
Brazile was a seven-time Pro Bowl selection as well as a four-time first-team All-Pro. The player known as “Dr. Doom” was named to the NFL’s all-decade team of the 1970s.
Beathard was a personnel executive for five teams in his career, including Super Bowl winners in the Miami Dolphins and Washington Redskins. He was part of 10 division winners and four Super Bowl winners overall, including the 1972 Dolphins team that finished undefeated.
Because it takes an 80 percent yes vote for a finalist to earn enshrinement, the votes sometimes cancel each other out if players are clustered at one position group. With two wide receivers in Owens and Moss as well as two linebackers in Lewis and Urlacher selected for enshrinement, it was a difficult day for five former offensive linemen who were finalists.
Joe Jacoby didn’t make the cut from 15 finalists to 10, while Tony Boselli, Alan Faneca, Steve Hutchinson and Kevin Mawae did not make the cut from 10 remaining modern-era finalists to five.
Jacoby and former cornerback Everson Walls were both in their final year of eligibility as modern-era candidates. They now move to the seniors category and can only be considered for enshrinement if the seniors committee selects them as a nominee, a difficult proposition with the current backlog. Walls had not made the cut from 10 to five.
Former Patriots cornerback Ty Law was also eliminated in the cut down from 10 to five. Wide receiver Isaac Bruce, running back Edgerrin James and safety John Lynch were eliminated in the cut down from 15 to 10.
“I’m glad I didn’t have to vote for this class,” Urlacher said. “It’s a great class.”
As for next year, tight end Tony Gonzalez, cornerback Champ Bailey and safety Ed Reed will be in their first year of eligibility.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
If, at the last minute, the NFL added a most valuable running back award to its NFL Honors program on Saturday, Todd Gurley would be the runaway favorite. He is the only running back in the MVP conversation, after all.
He would also be the wrong choice. Because there was another running back who produced much more than Gurley in far fewer opportunities: Alvin Kamara.
Gurley’s candidacy for MVRB (this make-believe award already has an acronym and everything) stems from him leading the league in yards from scrimmage (2,093) and in rushing and receiving combined touchdowns (19). Especially when considering that the next highest rushing/receiving touchdown total was 13 (by DeAndre Hopkins and Kamara), why isn’t the Rams running back the obvious choice here?
Because we have better tools to measure value than just yards and touchdowns these days. For starters, we’ll lean on a team’s expected points added (EPA) when the running back in question touches the ball or is targeted. (A primer on EPA can be found here.)
The Saints offense was incredibly efficient when getting or attempting to get Kamara the ball. Among players with at least 100 combined rushes and targets, Kamara not only had the best rate of team EPA/attempted touch (0.32), but he almost doubled up the next most efficient team EPA per attempted touch running back, Washington’s Chris Thompson (0.18).
Which is nice and impressive. But we’re looking for the most valuable running back, and so this isn’t strictly a question of efficiency. Kamara took time to work his way into a major role in the offense and only had 218 attempted touches, compared to 348 from Kareem Hunt and 363 from Todd Gurley. So there couldn’t possibly have been a higher team EPA total on his attempted touches, right? Well…
Best Team EPA among NFL running backs, 2017
It’s not even close.
How did Kamara get there? By being part of plays like his 74-yard touchdown run against the Rams in Week 12, in which he went untouched for 64 yards before casually breaking a tackle to skip into the end zone. And his 33-yard conversion on fourth-and-5 later in that same game, recorded while trying to keep the Saints alive. Or the 33-yard touchdown on a screen pass against the Bucs in Week 9, in which the former University of Tennessee running back appeared destined to hit the ground at the 12-yard line before slipping out of Justin Evans’ grasp and scoring.
By the way, the table above doesn’t even include Kamara’s highest EPA play of the season: a 106-yard kick return in Week 17 against the Bucs.
It’s not that Gurley didn’t have plays like this, it’s just that, in total, those Kamara plays added so much more. One area that Gurley was weak in, though: third-and-1 runs. He converted only six of 14 attempts on such runs (43 percent) when the league average conversion rate on those rushes was almost 73 percent. Those kinds of misses are costly. (Kamara only attempted two such runs and converted one, for what it’s worth).
One note to keep in mind: Three passes intended for Gurley were intercepted (compared to zero for Kamara), which is likely just a stroke of bad luck for the Rams running back in this sort of study. Nonetheless, even if we only looked at completions — rather than targets — for those two running backs Kamara still leads, and it still isn’t remotely close.
You may have noticed a pattern among the five running backs listed above (Thompson probably gave it away): they are all pass-catching backs. And that’s not a coincidence, but rather a function of the fact that, in general, passing plays are more productive than running plays. On average, running plays have a negative EPA, so that the Rams added 0.00 expected points on Gurley runs this year isn’t really a knock: it’s above average.
On one hand, this shows the value of multi-dimensional running backs. On the other, we are talking about the most valuable running back. And it’s not their fault that running, on average a sub-optimal part of an offense, is part of the position’s job description. So if there was another running back who added more value on the ground than Kamara, that could muddy the waters here. The good news: there isn’t. Kamara led all backs in team EPA on running plays only as well. So he swept the running and passing game categories in 2017, which should just about do it.
Almost.
The last type of measurement we’ll consider here is win probability added. If we’re measuring the value of a running back’s plays by the degree to which they swung a game, then WPA is where we ought to look. Personally, I don’t think either EPA or WPA ought to be a catch-all for MVP. EPA doesn’t include enough context (like garbage time) but WPA relies on situations far too heavily. The truth is in between.
Regardless, WPA is Gurley’s best case for this pretend award. Gurley (cumulative win probability added of 1.93) trails Kamara (1.95) here too, but only just. But maybe, if there’s wiggle room somewhere, Gurley could pull ahead.
And of course there’s wiggle room. Because the dark cloud over this entire analysis is that we’re not measuring each player’s contribution. We’re measuring the team’s productivity on plays when the running back had an attempted touch. Even when Kamara does run or catch the ball, there are 10 other players on his team working for that same EPA result.
For quarterbacks, we’re further along. We’ve divided credit — a key component of Total QBR. (Quick aside: Tom Brady, Carson Wentz and eight other quarterbacks produced more EPA this season themselves, including a down-weighting for garbage time, than the Saints did on Kamara’s touches. So no running back this year should be in the MVP conversation.) But we’re not there yet for running backs. We don’t have a way to separate the runners’ contribution from his blockers.
Which is certainly a bummer until we remember that all the traditional statistics that we use also fail to divide credit as well. No one’s apportioning a percentage of Gurley’s yards to Andrew Whitworth or any of Kamara’s touchdowns to the threat of Michael Thomas.
If the EPA race were closer, we’d have to consider all of that gray area, and this would be a much more difficult (imaginary) honor to vote for. But it’s not all that close. Even with the razor thin margin in the WPA race, the rookie so handily blew away his competition in terms of sheer production that it’s safe to assume that after dividing credit the result would be the same: Kamara was 2017’s most valuable running back.
Brian Burke and Hank Gargiulo contributed to this story.
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