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Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule
In terms of Philly are you saying that the Sproles addition counter balances the loss of Jackson, or that Jackson's loss to them was of minimal impact?
I tend to think they got worse in two ways 1) at backup qb, instead of Vick - who was good as a backup, they have Sanchez and Barkley. That's quite a drop in talent in my opinion. and 2) the loss of Jackson. I don't really see that their draft or FA's pickups improved them significantly. And I love Sproles, but I don't see him and Shady being the type of two headed threat, but instead suitable substitutes for either. So no real gain in my opinion.
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Losing Jackson was huge for them. There was an article posted on here that showed that Jackson had a long catch on the vast majority of the Eagles's scoring drives. The drives where he didn't have a catch very rarely resulted in points.
But he and Vick were the two biggest offseason losses, and they replaced those two with plenty of talent through both draft and FA. First of all for the receiving corps, they resigned Cooper, who's a solid receiver; then they drafted Jordan Matthews, who isn't as good or fast as Jackson but will put up solid numbers early, IMO; signed Sproles as you mentioned; and then they have Maclin returning from the ACL injury. Plus, they have the development of Zach Ertz to look forward to. So they don't have the explosiveness anymore that DJax offered, but make no mistake, they'll still put up points. On Vick: yeah, there's a chance Foles gets injured, but a backup QB isn't that big of a loss.
That's just on offense. On defense, they signed Malcolm Jenkins, who is now their best safety. Plus, they drafted Ed Reynolds and and still have Brandon Boykins in the slot, so their secondary will be improved. And most importantly, they drafted Marcus Smith, who was second in the nation in sacks, behind only our man Murphy.
In short, they lost one of their best players, but added some talent on both sides of the ball that pretty much made up for that huge loss.
Edit: Fixed the first paragraph for clarification purposes.