Cory Undlin is the Eagles new DBs coach. Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal, but the secondary was so bad last year that his hiring has generated lots of discussion. Most people think hiring Undlin was a great move that will help the Eagles secondary to play better in 2015.

Dave Mangels wrote a very interesting piece for BGN recently about Undlin. He compared this hire with bringing in Todd Bowles to fix the secondary in 2012. (here are some snippets, but do yourself a favor and go read the whole piece)

Undlin is seen as the breath of fresh air who will correct the flaws of a broken secondary. And he very well may be. But we’ve seen this story before, and it had a bitter ending.

Todd Bowles came to the Eagles with an even better reputation than Undlin. Bowles had been the assistant head coach/secondary coach for the Dolphins and was elevated to interim head coach after Tony Sparano was fired in December of 2011. He interviewed for head coaching jobs and was considered a prime candidate to be a defensive coordinator. He wound up taking the Eagles DB coach job and was tasked with improving a poorly performing secondary. Expectations and plaudits were high.

And

Todd Bowles was and remains a good coach. He came into a helpless situation and couldn’t improve it. When he was given complete control of the Eagles defense, it actually got worse. “Players would play hard for Bowles” was the key talking point when he replaced Juan Castillo as defensive coordinator, but they didn’t and the Eagles continued to spiral into the abyss. Since then he put together a terrific defense with theCardinals and then was deservedly hired as head coach of the Jets. Todd Bowles wasn’t the problem, but he wasn’t the solution either, the systemic problems of the end of the Andy Reid era were too great for a position coach to correct.

Mangels makes a great point that we cannot count on a position coach to magically fix a unit, no matter how good his resume is. However, he is a bit off with the Bowles discussion.

Bowles actually did help the secondary. He was strictly the DBs coach for the first 6 weeks. Then came the bye, when Juan Castillo was fired. Bowles took over as DC after that.

In his 6 weeks as just the DBs coach, the defense was ranked 12th in yards and 13th in points. The Eagles gave up 6 TD passes and had 7 INTs. QBs completed just 52.7 percent of their passes. And the Eagles were facing 38 passes a game. Teams were trying to throw on them. Rookie Brandon Weeden was especially awful, but the Eagles also faced Eli, Big Ben, Joe Flacco and Matt Stafford.

Castillo’s firing changed everything. Some players were very bothered by it, most notably DRC. He wasn’t the same guy after Juan left. Making matters worse, his position coach now ran the defense and had less time to spend with him. The Eagles then gave up 7 TD passes in the next 3 games. They didn’t have any picks. There was the infamous run of QBs compiling passer ratings of 125 or higher. The season became a real nightmare.

Bowles was trying to run a scheme he didn’t believe in and doing so in a toxic environment. DL coach Jim Washburn loved his players, but didn’t help to unify the defense. There was his DL and then the rest of the defense and then the rest of the team.

The results were predictably bad.

Had Castillo not been fired and Bowles stayed strictly as DBs coach, that defense doesn’t fall apart like that and give up those gaudy numbers. There would have been some bad games to be sure, but nothing like that epic collapse.

I feel pretty confident in saying that Bill Davis won’t be fired at the bye week this year and that Cory Undlin won’t be running the Eagles defense. Reid was a desperate coach. He thought firing Castillo might spark the defense. He was…wrong. Chip Kelly is desperate to win, but not because his job is on the line. He wants to win, but doesn’t have the normal 5-year plan that so many NFL coaches talk about.

There are no guarantees that Undlin is going to turn out to be a good hire. He does have a good track record. He does seem to fit the scheme. Most importantly, he does have some new talent to work with. If Kelly had handed last year’s secondary to Undlin and said “Fix it!” then I think this situation would be a lot more iffy.

The 2015 secondary doesn’t have to be dominant. They just need to cut down on the long pass plays. Eliminate some key mistakes and the team should be that much better. A couple of plays may have cost the Eagles a couple of wins last year.

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An interesting comparison for Undlin might be Howard Mudd. He took over the OL in 2011. The Eagles had Jason Peters at LT and Todd Herremans somewhere. They drafted Danny Watkins to be the RG and Jason Kelce to be the C. The team signed mostly unknown Evan Mathis to compete for a job and he ended up winning the LG spot. When no one else worked out at RT, Herremans was moved there and the OL had a good year.

The right position coach can lead to a big turnaround. And sometimes giving that coach new pieces to work with can make a big difference. Mudd shuffled his guys around until he found 5 he liked and he figured out how best to configure them.

Undlin will have a versatile secondary to work with this year. He can move players around until he finds the right 4 to 5 guys and the best way to use them.

If Walter Thurmond turns out to be the Safety version of Evan Mathis, we’ll all be ecstatic. If he turns out to be Ryan Harris, that’s not so good.

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Bobby April ran the Eagles STs from 2010-2012. He was thought of as one of the 2 or 3 best STs gurus in the NFL at that time. I thought hiring him was a brilliant move.

Oops.

The Eagles were ranked 17th in STs in 2009. April was hired to get them up among the best in the league. There was improvement in 2010 as the Eagles finished 14th. Things went horribly wrong after that. The Eagles fell to 20th in 2011 and then plummeted to 28th in 2012.

April had no excuses. He had some good pieces to work with and just didn’t get results. Reid might not have focused on STs the way Kelly does now, but April should have produced better results.

To me, April is the best recent example of a coach that was hired to fix a unit, but didn’t. Good intentions. Bad results.

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