Sunday, July 18, 2004
A dissent from conventional wisdom...
I was watching Sportscenter the other night and I saw Freddie Mitchell do Fact / Fiction with Sean Salisbury. (Side note: what’s with all of this gimmicky stuff that they are doing now? The Budweiser Hot Seat, Fact or Fiction, etc. Can’t they go back to just informing us with having to resort to Fox Sports type gimmicks? I watch Sportscenter because they are more entertaining and more informative.)
Anyway, the two agreed on a lot (that T.O. is actually a team player, Jevon Kearse will have a big year, etc.) but they disagreed on whether the Eagles would miss Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor. Mitchell defended Lito Sheppard and Sheldon Brown, while Salisbury stated that Vincent and Taylor were vastly superior cover men. (Certainly the footage ESPN showed of Shepard and Brown flailing around the field against the Pats didn’t help Mitchell's case.) I wondered, in retrospect, if Mitchell might be more right than Salisbury:
I don't mean to suggest that Sheppard and Brown are terrific cover guys. They aren't. But what if Taylor and Vincent have awful seasons in Seattle and Buffalo, respectively? What if their skills deteriorate to the point where Sheppard and Brown outplay them?
How many times have Eagles fans sweated and stressed over the defection of a seemingly key free agent? Jeremiah Trotter in ’02? Brian Mitchell / Hugh Douglas in ’03? Vincent and Taylor in ’04? With Trotter, Mitchell and Douglas the Eagles management came up looking like geniuses each time as each player fell flat on their face with their new team, vindicating the Eagles management’s stance that they would have invest substantial sums of money into veteran players who might be losing, or have already lost, those skills that make them such great players.
In the case of Vincent and Taylor you have two players who have played for an extended period of time: twelve seasons in the case of Vincent and nine in Taylor’s. Vincent is 33, and Taylor is going to be 31 in December. In the world of NFL cover men, this is pretty grim news: once you've lost a step, you are pretty much finished. With all of the wear and tear these two have gone through dealing with Michael Irvin, the Rams wideout corps, Shlockey and the rest over the years, you have to wonder if their time isn't fast approaching.
Which is why teams love younger corners and the virtue of the Eagles new cover team is that they are young:
Sheppard? 23.
Brown? 25.
And, it is important to remember, both Sheppard and Brown got lots of playing time when Vincent and Taylor went down last season and they were fine. Maybe getting rid of Vincent and Taylor won't come back to bite us after all...
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Anyway, the two agreed on a lot (that T.O. is actually a team player, Jevon Kearse will have a big year, etc.) but they disagreed on whether the Eagles would miss Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor. Mitchell defended Lito Sheppard and Sheldon Brown, while Salisbury stated that Vincent and Taylor were vastly superior cover men. (Certainly the footage ESPN showed of Shepard and Brown flailing around the field against the Pats didn’t help Mitchell's case.) I wondered, in retrospect, if Mitchell might be more right than Salisbury:
I don't mean to suggest that Sheppard and Brown are terrific cover guys. They aren't. But what if Taylor and Vincent have awful seasons in Seattle and Buffalo, respectively? What if their skills deteriorate to the point where Sheppard and Brown outplay them?
How many times have Eagles fans sweated and stressed over the defection of a seemingly key free agent? Jeremiah Trotter in ’02? Brian Mitchell / Hugh Douglas in ’03? Vincent and Taylor in ’04? With Trotter, Mitchell and Douglas the Eagles management came up looking like geniuses each time as each player fell flat on their face with their new team, vindicating the Eagles management’s stance that they would have invest substantial sums of money into veteran players who might be losing, or have already lost, those skills that make them such great players.
In the case of Vincent and Taylor you have two players who have played for an extended period of time: twelve seasons in the case of Vincent and nine in Taylor’s. Vincent is 33, and Taylor is going to be 31 in December. In the world of NFL cover men, this is pretty grim news: once you've lost a step, you are pretty much finished. With all of the wear and tear these two have gone through dealing with Michael Irvin, the Rams wideout corps, Shlockey and the rest over the years, you have to wonder if their time isn't fast approaching.
Which is why teams love younger corners and the virtue of the Eagles new cover team is that they are young:
Sheppard? 23.
Brown? 25.
And, it is important to remember, both Sheppard and Brown got lots of playing time when Vincent and Taylor went down last season and they were fine. Maybe getting rid of Vincent and Taylor won't come back to bite us after all...
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