On Friday, I published an article titled “This Eagles Offseason is Boring and Stinks.”

After the weekend addition of linebacker Kyzir White on a one-year, $5 million deal, we are amending that story and the headline will be “This Eagles Offseason is Still Kind of Boring, but the Haason Reddick and Kyzir White Signings are Really Good.”

White is easily the best one-year free agent linebacker deal Howie Roseman has done in a long time. Light years ahead of Zach Brown and Eric Wilson and other names that hopefully left our memory. Remember Jatavis Brown and all of those guys? Jeez.

Back in October of last year, we did a story ranking every linebacker to play for the Eagles since the Super Bowl win, and this is what we came up with:

  1. Nigel Bradham
  2. Jordan Hicks
  3. Alex Singleton
  4. Nate Gerry
  5. T.J. Edwards
  6. Kamu Grugier-Hill
  7. Eric Wilson
  8. Duke Riley
  9. Zach Brown
  10. Genard Avery
  11. Shaun Bradley
  12. Patrick Johnson
  13. Davion Taylor
  14. Rashad Smith
  15. LaRoy Reynolds

Pretty rough, right?

I had the pleasure of watching Kyzir back in the day because he’s a Mountaineer. He was a tweener back then and played safety for us in the goofy 3-3-5 stack that you see in the Big 12 and at other college programs that opt for speed over size. White played in that hybrid safety/linebacker role, which carries different names in different systems. You may have heard of a “spur” or “bandit” position, where you have these guys who have blended responsibilities in coverage and at the line of scrimmage. In Kyzir’s case, there were a lot of instances where he’d be in this drop zone type of defense where we’d sit back with eight guys while rushing three, but then they’d mix and match and throw looks at opponents where he’d be up on the line or blitzing from the slot:

He was drafted in the 4th round a few years ago, and as a rookie transitioned from that box safety role to a weakside linebacker while putting on about 15 pounds. He went from about 218 to 233 and earned the starting job at the WILL position, then had a knee injury that slowed his progress before taking huge leaps in 2020 and 2021 with 77 and 144 tackles, respectively.

White was always a really good tackler, so it’s no surprise to see him making plays like this at his “new” position:

One of the things that should speak volumes about this move is that Chargers fans seem really annoyed about it. He was a machine for them last year, and to let him walk and sign for another team on a cheap, one-year deal seems like a head scratcher for that front office. It would seem, judging by reaction, that this was a Brandon Staley decision, i.e. a new coach comes in and values a defensive scheme that emphasizes d-line and secondary play while putting less emphasis on the linebacker position. Sound familiar? –

We know Jonathan Gannon sat back in Cover 2 for large chunks of the season, especially in the early going, but when you go back over some of those later season sub-packages that included Genard Avery and Patrick Johnson, it stirs up some Kyzir White intrigue. He’s an off-ball tackling machine who can move really well, and when you go back to some of the 3rd down stuff you saw Gannon do, it makes you wonder how he can add to those wrinkles with a converted safety who has really settled in at the NFL level. Take a stack-ish looking design like this, but add White to the mix:

There’s going to be a lot of mixing and matching ability for Gannon this year. Sub package flexibility and mobility at the linebacker position with White in the fold. They could even still draft a Nakobe Dean or Devin Lloyd, if he falls to 15.

White is a solid player and good job by Howie swooping in there to snag him.