Westbrook - Reid said he was going to hand the ball off a lot this year

[MURP]

thats why they have Reno and CBUCK.   

[Drunkmasterflex]

thats why they have Reno and CBUCK.   

You should die just for joking about that.

[hyjacker]

We didn't pick up all these O linemen to just pass protect. We'll see a lot more from the running game this year.

[Feva]

Yeah, go ahead and ask the road grater Shawn Andrews about that.

[ice grillin you]

did someone say road grater?

[Feva]

I think you're imagining things.

[Feva]

Rich Hoffman weighs in

Posted on Fri, May. 12, 2006 



Rich Hofmann | Hit the ground running, Andy

AS MINICAMP OPENS, KEYS TO SUCCESS ARE CLEAR



ROOKIES BEGIN arriving for Eagles minicamp today, with questions to follow. It is hard to put a 6-10 season behind you, but this is where it really begins. Last year - you remember, Terrell Owens and such - will be referenced often because that is the way of the world, looking back at the mileposts in an

attempt to see where you are standing today. But we really are going to turn now to what is ahead.

And to two people: Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb.

That 2006 will be about them more than anyone is understood all around. Everybody is a big kid here and everybody gets it: Coming off 6-10, all eyes are on the coach and the quarterback. We can all do our little riffs about the personnel changes on the team, and we can all have our attention diverted (and sometimes monopolized) by the hopes and dreams that people like Chris Gocong and Jeremy Bloom and the rest can create.

But this is about the quarterback and the coach. This is about McNabb, returning from a sports hernia injury, emerging from T.O. hell. This is about

Reid, his locker room rocked

and divided by Owens, his entire offensive philosophy really being tested in a way it hasn't been

before.

Barring a ridiculous run of injuries, there will be two stories this season. You can mark this down in ink.

Story 1: Does McNabb return as his old self, both as a performer and with the same swagger?

Story 2: Does Reid finally run the ball?

Everything else will spin off those two questions. Every other action will be a reaction to one of those two issues. Because if there are two things that nobody - repeat, nobody - wants to see this season, it is McNabb struggling early in the season or Reid calling a record number of passing plays again.

Because those are two things that this team will not likely

survive.

The McNabb stuff is self-evident. We will watch him this

season, beginning this weekend, and chart every cough and

hiccup. It is what everybody here does, but especially on the morning after the awful night

before. The quarterback has to be good this year and he has to be efficient and there really

isn't any need to talk about it anymore - it is that obvious an imperative, both footballwise and leadershipwise.

Far more interesting is the coach, and the offense he is building in the absence of T.O. We are back to the old-time religion. The superstar receiver is gone and his place has been taken by a bunch of fellas. Todd Pinkston is back from injury. Jabar Gaffney has been acquired to work the middle of the field.

Reggie Brown is a year more

experienced. And off we go.

Reid has done it this way

before, as we all know. With

the town howling for an elite

receiver, this coach (and this quarterback) has won an awful lot of games without one. They can make this work again, too. They really can.

People never want to acknowledge this stat when it is written, but here we go again: In the last 10 games of the 2003 season

(pre-T.O.), the Eagles' offense scored a slightly greater number of points per game than it did in the first 10 games of 2004 (with T.O.). People insist it is impossible, or due to a scheduling quirk, or something, but it is true. Yes, the offense looked different with T.O. Yes, it was much more

dynamic and much more of a quick-strike attack. But in the end, it was not more productive.

So it can work with these

receivers. But it only works if they run the ball, which gets us back to the coach.

In the first eight games last season, Reid was calling more passing plays per game than any coach in the history of the NFL. This was not a little quirk, or a little overindulgence of the coach's love for all things aerial. This was history. For a half-season, the Eagles ran the ball less than anybody in the NFL. Ever.

The coach has never explained it to anyone's satisfaction. They started running it in Game 9, when McNabb threw away the Dallas game and got hurt, and they were much more balanced after that, when Mike McMahon was quarterback and the ship was sinking, and when then-offensive coordinator Brad Childress was calling the plays - surprise. "I called about the last five or six games of the season," Childress said, on the day the

Vikings hired him as head coach.

All of this was a tacit acknowledgment that they didn't want to expose the jittery McMahon. What they need this season is a tacit acknowledgment that

McNabb, too, could stand to have some of the burden lifted off his back.

But will Reid run it?

He didn't acquire a big back in the offseason. He has shown a

reluctance to overburden Brian Westbrook in the past. He has the small-but-fascinating Ryan Moats, but you wonder about overburdening him, too.

So you don't know who or how, but you know it must happen - as it did in 2003, when this kind of offense last worked around here with Duce Staley, Correll Buckhalter and Westbrook

sharing the load.

Who? How? The answers

will not start arriving until

September, but the questions are obvious, even now.

[SidFarkus]

We didn't pick up all these O linemen to just pass protect. We'll see a lot more from the running game this year.

If Mornigwheg has any say in the offense, they'll run more.

[Don Ho]

We didn't pick up all these O linemen to just pass protect. We'll see a lot more from the running game this year.

If Mornigwheg has any say in the offense, they'll run more.

And we pray, and pray, and pray, and pray and pray some more.

[reese125]

Giants | Accorsi has no problem with Barber helping out Westbrook
Tue, 6 Jun 2006 09:42:41 -0700

Paul Schwartz, of the New York Post, reports New York Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi said he has "no problem" with RB Tiki Barber giving workout tips to Philadelphia Eagles RB Brian Westbrook. Westbrook recently reached out to Barber to find out about his training regime in an effort to gain the durability Barber has found. Barber did not make direct contact but his business agent, Mark Lepselter, called the office of Eagles head coach Andy Reid and gave him the number for Joe Carini. Carini is Barber's workout guru and the former winner of the New Jersey Strongest Man competition.

[Displaced]

According to NFL Network's Adam Schefter the Eagles plan to get their miney's worth outta Westy this year only they will be throwing him the ball even more.  He said that with Moats on board and the relative lack of experience on the part of the recievers, Westy will be split out much more and getting reps at WR.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Exactly what Spadaro's been saying too.  Westbrook will probably have more catches than rushes this year.

[The BIGSTUD]

Nice. Westbrook at full-time receiver would be the best in the game. He's like a combination of TO, Jerry Rice, Steve Smith, and a little Reno Mahe in there too.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

I guess I'm laughing with you and not at you.  Good form.

[Rome]

Nice. Westbrook at full-time receiver would be the best in the game. He's like a combination of TO, Jerry Rice, Steve Smith, and a little Reno Mahe in there too.

Holy Moses.   

The king of hyperbole strikes again.