2) You can overpay if it causes your team to lose money even in an uncapped year, why didn’t the Phillies sign Lee and Halladay, and heck sign Bay while we were at it?  It was an uncapped year for them, too.

Richie, I agree the Birds laid an egg the final 2 games of the year, but don’t forget they were close to unbeatable earlier in the year.  IMHO, it was a case of peaking too early.  Remember there was a team which lost rather badly in a must win game the final game of the ’08 season to their hated rival.  They managed to bounce back and beat said hated rival 3 times the next year, so maybe, just maybe, their fans overreacted to their final loss too, doing thing like calling for their HC head on a silver platter and claiming they would never win with their QB.

Ah well.  I just look at the season as a whole, and can’t see anything but a very high quality team which matched up very poorly against a team which was very good.  I think we’re looking at more of a recalibration than a retooling. 

http://profootballfocus.com/articles.php?tab=articles&arc=&id=132

Interesting link.

I’m not sure how you can be 19th in points allowed, and 12th in yards allowed and be considered the 6th best defense in the league.

Agree completely on Bradley – I wrote when he got hurt that on the “players we can’t afford to lose” list, he was #1.

To be clear on my point on Peppers et al. You can’t overpay in an uncapped year. There is no budget. There is no future cap implications. The question is whether or not you have the money. I assume they do/did – I could be wrong.

I agree that the Eagles had a good season last year, but I don’t think they were as good as their record, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that.

Um, no.  As Pete pointed out, the Eagles failed to defeat a single playoff team from either conference.  How do you classify/justify this as a good to great season last year (all in CAPS)?  Cool, we beat the Giants twice.  Once where we gave up almost 50 points to them.  The Giants missed the playoffs.  We also lost to the Raiders, an abysmal team, and got crushed two weeks in a row at the end of the season by the Cowboys.  Sure, FA is overrated, but you can’t actually believe that this team was good last year.

Phi: #3 in DVOA for the year
#10 in Offensive, #6 in Defensive
11 wins, 10.9 est wins
McNabb with 3,372 yards, 22Tds against only 9 INTs.

With all due respect, everyone everywhere is overreacting to the last 2 games of the season.  Truly, those were terrible games, but I’m inclined to look at the entire season as a great success.

Next year, we will have Bradley back, along with year 3 for DJax, year 2 for Maclin, and a healthy McNabb.  We will have a more experienced safety crew, more experienced DC, and the same core reinforced with whatever we get in the draft and FA.  We are likely to trade Vick or Kolb for productive players or draft picks.

All in all, there is so little cause for the alarm and criticism I am hearing.  We didn’t overpay for Peppers in an uncapped year.  We didn’t trade any of our QBs for pennies on the dollar.  We didn’t overpay an OK LB.

Note I am not picking on you, as your post is reasonable and moderate.  But it must be repeated THE EAGLES HAD A GOOD TO GREAT SEASON LAST YEAR!!!!!!!!  Remember that as the bases on which all criticism should start.

Thanks.