An Improvement for the Eagles?

"I can't see the quarterback behind all of these big linemen."

With all the baseball hype going on now (and it is WELL deserved) let’s take a look at the other major sport taking place right now. The Eagles made a move today that many expected and hoped would happen, but did it really fix ANYTHING? The move announced by the Eagles today, took the often-criticized rookie Casey Matthews out of the lineup. This shake up came as no surprise to any fan in the tri-state area, and it was what the fans have been clamoring for. With Casey out of the lineup, the Eagles replaced him with (the vastly better?) Brian Rolle. As you can tell by our use of the question mark there, we question what effect, if any, this will have on the Eagles’ defense. Looking at it a little bit closer, all we did was replace a 4^th round rookie linebacker with a 6^th round rookie linebacker. Matthews is listed at 6’1” weighing in at 231 lbs and Rolle is listed at 5’7” and only 227 lbs. The one thing that it does add is a little bit more speed to a defense, but our problem isn’t defensive team speed. Our problem is our toughness and strength up the middle of the field right now. Taking Casey out of the starting lineup has done essentially three things: make us even less experienced at the position, make us smaller up the middle against the run, and give the defense one more crutch to lean on if things don’t go well. In our opinion, it is worth giving the kid a shot, but at this point, we should not have any more trust in him than we did Casey Matthews to start off the year. He is just as unproven and with all else equal, still leaves our linebacking core questionable at best. We hope he dominates. We hope he comes in and is the clutch performer that Matthews was supposed to be at the beginning of the year, but what if he doesn’t? Is there anything we can do that can improve the linebackers? We think there is one potential move that could help…

"Surprise! Here I am Philly. Christmas come early this year"

You know how we have three all-star cornerbacks that we don’t necessarily need? Remember how there was that one linebacker at the beginning of the year, that wanted to leave the city of Chicago for greener pastures? We smell a match made in heaven. Could it be possible that the Eagles could trade disgruntled cornerback Asante Samuel to the Chicago Bears for Lance Briggs? Problem solved. The contracts are a little comparable, but we would dump some salary since Briggs is making 6 years $36 Million and Samuel making 6 years and $56 Million (Both of which started in 2008). We all know how this would improve the Eagles’ linebackers, but what you don’t know is just how much this would improve the Bears as well. He could easily start over “superstar” Tim Jennings, and the good news is that they both have dreads so the fans wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference. The Bears already have a great corps at linebacker so losing Briggs would only affect them a little bit. As for the Eagles, Briggs would add a bigger, tougher, more experienced run-stopping linebacker. He could settle down the group we already have and hopefully help them all grow, which could help our young “flops” grow into solid starters in the near future. In the trade, lets just say the illustrious Howie Roseman pulls in a 4^th or 5^th round pick as well because he is an evil genius. Then to top that off, he would package that with some other late round pick come draft time to get us a nicer third or fourth round draft pick (WHAT A DRAFT BEAST!). In summation, to end our thesis, this move would substantially improve the Eagles and would be a great answer to help the 2011 Eagles become Super Bowl Contenders instead of Super Bowl Pretenders.