Eagles

Demeco Ryans’ Injury Hurts Much More than Nick Foles’

By Kyle Scott

Published: Nov 3rd, 2014 · 12:30 PM EST

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Greg Bedard, who agrees with that headline, writing for MMQB:

Kelly’s system is math and simple indicators. If the defense has so many guys in coverage on one side of the field, that will lead Sanchez to narrow his options to one side of the field or another. If a defensive player is aligned in a certain spot, that can be an indicator to Sanchez as well. During the telecast, FOX analyst Daryl Johnston talked about whether or not Kelly could use the entire playbook with Sanchez. There isn’t much to the Eagles’ playbook because there aren’t that many different plays. Kelly just dresses them up with different formations and personnel. As soon as a quarterback understands the indictors he’s looking for, it’s fairly simple. It doesn’t take that long. Sanchez should already be close to fully integrated.

The other factor that could benefit the Eagles going forward is that Sanchez is a much better athlete and a faster runner than Foles. I always thought Philadelphia was held back because Foles isn’t really a threat to run on the read-option, but a quarterback’s decision-making in the passing game trumps all. Kelly’s scheme runs optimally with a true dual threat at quarterback. By having the threat of a running quarterback, the defense has to worry about one more gap that they wouldn’t have to mind with Foles under center. That allows them to crash against the run. While Sanchez isn’t exactly Marcus Mariota, his presence will create a little more space in the run game. That might have been a small factor in Philadelphia rushing for 190 yards in Houston, their second-highest total of the season.

I agree. Now, maybe that’s because I was up all night trying to talk myself into pinning my Christmas spirit this year on the play of Mark Sanchez, but I agree nonetheless. Foles’ early-season struggles evolved into mid-season limitations. As the guys on BGN Radio said last week, Chip was probably forced to tear plays – or at least options – out of his playbook because Foles has shown that he can’t be trusted with certain throws and is not nearly quick enough to keep defenses honest on option plays. It became obvious that while Foles was certainly impacted negatively by an injured offensive line, his ceiling would throttle the Eagles’ offense at a certain point.

I don’t know enough about Sanchez. What I saw of him with the Jets led me to feel that he was the worst starting quarterback in football. That’s not a compliment. But if we’ve learned anything the past couple of years, it’s that the Jets are a hilarious mess, with no plan, no scheme and no consistency. It’s no wonder Sanchez struggled there. He appears to have all the same tools as Foles, and he’s quicker, has dealt with the spotlight in ways we’ll never know, and was specifically chosen by Kelly to be on this team. At the very least, he can be as good as Foles has been this season. At best, he’ll be able to add a new wrinkle to the offense and allow Chip to grab some of those pages out of the trash.

Now, on the Ryans thing.

The defense was finally jelling, and though we’ll never be able to fully understand Ryans’ impact on their recent play, it’s hard to find anyone near the team who doesn’t agree that this is a big blow. Casey Matthews has gotten better, for sure, but, abilities aside, there’s no way he can fill the leadership void left behind by Ryans. If we’re talking strictly about net losses, Ryans’ injury hurts more than Foles’, and that, I bet, makes Buzz Bissinger feel just great.