Segrest out----and so is "Iggles Blog"...
Turns out this was a "rebuilding year" for the Eagles after all...at least regarding the coaching staff under Andy Reid. First Sean McDermott was fired as defensive coordinator (fortunately for McDermott, he almost immediately landed the DC job in Carolina)...and then Rory Segrest, the defensive line coach, was given his walking papers...
Segrest, 37, came to the Eagles in 2005 from Samford College in Birmingham, Alabama, where he had coached four years. Segrest spent one year as a special teams quality control and assistant defensive line coach for the Eagles. When John Harbaugh moved over to coach the secondary after the 2006 season, Segrest replaced him as special teams coach and held that position for two years before replacing Pete Jenkins as defensive line coach following the 2008 season. (Segrest and Jenkins had coached together at Auburn in the late 1990s.)
Segrest became the fall guy for a perceived drop-off in the pressure brought by the Birds' pass rushers.The last two years were generally disappointing ones for the Eagles' defensive line. This past season, while the secondary and linebacking corps were very young, the defensive line struggled with an older, more veteran group.
Notably, 2009 Pro Bowl pick RDE Trent Cole had just three sacks in his last eight games, and LDE Juqua Parker had only two sacks after the third game of the season.
In all, Eagles defensive linemen recorded just seven sacks in the Eagles' last six games. In the postseason the last two years with Segrest as the D-line coach, the Eagles starting linemen did not record a sack in two games, and the Eagles allowed an opposing running back to rush for 120 or more yards in each playoff game.
It's such an arbitrary judgement to lay these stats on an assistant coach. First off, "sacks" as a stat can be a very misleading indicator of how effective a defensive line really is. I'm much more concerned with the less-publicized metric of "forcing the QB and his protection out of their rhythm", more usually referred to as "hurries" and "throw-aways"... I saw some marked improvement in this realm in 2010 compared to 2009...
But apparently Reid believes the Eagles defensive line as a whole underachieved the last two years under Segrest. Who am I to argue? All I know is what I saw--- Trent Cole, Juqua Parker, Darryl Tapp and (before his injury) Brandon Graham seemed to be making some major improvement in penetration and play-changing moves on opposing offenses for most of the season...and the defensive tackles (Brodrick Bunkley, Mike Patterson, Antonio Dixon and Trevor Laws) had their share of big plays, too. What more could Segrest have gotten out of a unit that was on the field for at least three more minutes per game than the average D-line in the league?
Maybe Reid is just doing whoever his new defensive coordinator turns out to be a major favor by cleaning house before the new guy gets here...No doubt, the new DC will want to hire his own assistant staff.
Segrest will land on his feet. A great reference from Reid will see to that...
Meanwhile, this must be the killing season in all aspects of Eagles "coverage", because I just discovered one of my favorite Eagles blogs has decided to close shop. "Iggles Blog", a staple of my daily reading habits since 2006, has shut down for good.
This is a personal bummer, due to the classy and unique approach Iggles Blog took to opinion and discussion of all things Eagle in "a civilized fashion", per their stated charter.
Iggles Blog was unique, a kind of Rolling Stone compared to the usual bozo homer drivel and "copy-and-paste" tabloid junk you usually expect from independent NFL home-team blogs... Certainly their ratings were not the reason or the problem causing the shutdown. Iggles Blog had grown to about 15,000 individual people per month following them and an average of 70,000 global visitors per month. (Compare that to Eagles Eye, with our current 1400 individual people and nearly 2,000 visits per month...) Iggles Blog was happening...
Then, out of nowhere, and perfectly coinciding with the elimination of the Birds from the playoffs this year, the site announced it was shutting down.
Was it decreasing ad revenues or a personnel crisis...or a combination of both? Hard to say for sure. One thing is certain, these guys will resurface in another form, in a rebirth of spirit yet to be revealed...
How can they not? Tommy Lawlor, one of their key contributors, is still very much alive and kicking. Some of you may know Lawlor from his credentials with PhiladelphiaEagles.com.
Tommy Lawlor
Lawlor has already hinted he's got a new independent Eagles blog in the works, and it's worth noting we should follow "lawlorNFL" on Twitter to keep pace with his future launching of a new Eagles blog project.
But there were also the astute and genuine writings of three other guys--- "Derek", "Gabe"(Bounty Bowl) and "Sam"--- each of whom plucked the heart-strings of the more gifted and talented of the Eagles fan universe. I never ceased being impressed with the quality of insight, information and analysis that appeared on their blog almost daily. Except when Brizer, Pizzini, JB99, Triple D, Kenny, Boner, Chris, Swoop and the rest of the PE.com regulars get on a roll over at Dave Spadaro's On The Inside forum, there really hasn't been any other place that I'm aware of like Iggles Blog.
There was often hilarity...devoid of petty argument, lunacy, and Lurie/Banner/Reid conspiracy theories, too...for which I am particularly grateful.
In addition to the top-rate analysis, it was the sense of decorum and dialogue that made this site so great. I fear now that I will be sucked into the flame wars on philly.com message boards---you know, like "Low Throw McBlow" and whether Reid "will die of a coronary from cheesesteaks"... Ugh.
Segrest, 37, came to the Eagles in 2005 from Samford College in Birmingham, Alabama, where he had coached four years. Segrest spent one year as a special teams quality control and assistant defensive line coach for the Eagles. When John Harbaugh moved over to coach the secondary after the 2006 season, Segrest replaced him as special teams coach and held that position for two years before replacing Pete Jenkins as defensive line coach following the 2008 season. (Segrest and Jenkins had coached together at Auburn in the late 1990s.)
Segrest became the fall guy for a perceived drop-off in the pressure brought by the Birds' pass rushers.The last two years were generally disappointing ones for the Eagles' defensive line. This past season, while the secondary and linebacking corps were very young, the defensive line struggled with an older, more veteran group.
Notably, 2009 Pro Bowl pick RDE Trent Cole had just three sacks in his last eight games, and LDE Juqua Parker had only two sacks after the third game of the season.
In all, Eagles defensive linemen recorded just seven sacks in the Eagles' last six games. In the postseason the last two years with Segrest as the D-line coach, the Eagles starting linemen did not record a sack in two games, and the Eagles allowed an opposing running back to rush for 120 or more yards in each playoff game.
It's such an arbitrary judgement to lay these stats on an assistant coach. First off, "sacks" as a stat can be a very misleading indicator of how effective a defensive line really is. I'm much more concerned with the less-publicized metric of "forcing the QB and his protection out of their rhythm", more usually referred to as "hurries" and "throw-aways"... I saw some marked improvement in this realm in 2010 compared to 2009...
But apparently Reid believes the Eagles defensive line as a whole underachieved the last two years under Segrest. Who am I to argue? All I know is what I saw--- Trent Cole, Juqua Parker, Darryl Tapp and (before his injury) Brandon Graham seemed to be making some major improvement in penetration and play-changing moves on opposing offenses for most of the season...and the defensive tackles (Brodrick Bunkley, Mike Patterson, Antonio Dixon and Trevor Laws) had their share of big plays, too. What more could Segrest have gotten out of a unit that was on the field for at least three more minutes per game than the average D-line in the league?
Maybe Reid is just doing whoever his new defensive coordinator turns out to be a major favor by cleaning house before the new guy gets here...No doubt, the new DC will want to hire his own assistant staff.
Segrest will land on his feet. A great reference from Reid will see to that...
Meanwhile, this must be the killing season in all aspects of Eagles "coverage", because I just discovered one of my favorite Eagles blogs has decided to close shop. "Iggles Blog", a staple of my daily reading habits since 2006, has shut down for good.
This is a personal bummer, due to the classy and unique approach Iggles Blog took to opinion and discussion of all things Eagle in "a civilized fashion", per their stated charter.
Iggles Blog was unique, a kind of Rolling Stone compared to the usual bozo homer drivel and "copy-and-paste" tabloid junk you usually expect from independent NFL home-team blogs... Certainly their ratings were not the reason or the problem causing the shutdown. Iggles Blog had grown to about 15,000 individual people per month following them and an average of 70,000 global visitors per month. (Compare that to Eagles Eye, with our current 1400 individual people and nearly 2,000 visits per month...) Iggles Blog was happening...
Then, out of nowhere, and perfectly coinciding with the elimination of the Birds from the playoffs this year, the site announced it was shutting down.
Was it decreasing ad revenues or a personnel crisis...or a combination of both? Hard to say for sure. One thing is certain, these guys will resurface in another form, in a rebirth of spirit yet to be revealed...
How can they not? Tommy Lawlor, one of their key contributors, is still very much alive and kicking. Some of you may know Lawlor from his credentials with PhiladelphiaEagles.com.
Tommy Lawlor
Lawlor has already hinted he's got a new independent Eagles blog in the works, and it's worth noting we should follow "lawlorNFL" on Twitter to keep pace with his future launching of a new Eagles blog project.
But there were also the astute and genuine writings of three other guys--- "Derek", "Gabe"(Bounty Bowl) and "Sam"--- each of whom plucked the heart-strings of the more gifted and talented of the Eagles fan universe. I never ceased being impressed with the quality of insight, information and analysis that appeared on their blog almost daily. Except when Brizer, Pizzini, JB99, Triple D, Kenny, Boner, Chris, Swoop and the rest of the PE.com regulars get on a roll over at Dave Spadaro's On The Inside forum, there really hasn't been any other place that I'm aware of like Iggles Blog.
There was often hilarity...devoid of petty argument, lunacy, and Lurie/Banner/Reid conspiracy theories, too...for which I am particularly grateful.
In addition to the top-rate analysis, it was the sense of decorum and dialogue that made this site so great. I fear now that I will be sucked into the flame wars on philly.com message boards---you know, like "Low Throw McBlow" and whether Reid "will die of a coronary from cheesesteaks"... Ugh.
You will be missed, gentlemen.
