Philadelphia Eagles: 3 ways team is following Kansas City Chiefs blueprint

1. Investing more at cornerback

Surprisingly, the Eagles didn’t use any of their11 total selections on a cornerback during April’s draft, but if you ask Howie Roseman, they already addressed the position with the trade for former Detroit Lions star Darius Slay in March.

After trading a third and fifth-round selection in the aforementioned draft to Detroit, the Eagles extended the 29-year-old former Pro Bowler to a three-year, $50 million deal, making him the highest paid cornerback in the NFL on a per-year basis.

But of course, Slay wasn’t the only notable offseason acquisition in the defensive backfield.

Philadelphia also signed Nickell Robey-Coleman and Will Parks to one-year deals, adding much-needed help to a position that has been notably weak during Jim Schwartz’s tenure as Eagles defensive coordinator.

Slay’s portion of the cap is only 1.94 percent in 2020, but the figure jumps to 7.38 percent in 2021, according to Spotrac. This makes Slay the highest-paid Eagles cornerback of the Pederson era, and the highest paid to wear Midnight Green since Byron Maxwell’s bizarre stint in 2015.

For the Chiefs, the disappointing endings to both the 2017 and 2018 seasons also meant making significant changes on the defensive side of the football.

The first move was replacing defensive coordinator Bob Sutton with Steve Spagnuolo after losing the the New England Patriots in the 2018 AFC Championship Game. The former Reid disciple shares a fairly similar blueprint to what the Eagles seem to be crafting, which is heavy investment in pass rushers and defensive backs.

The team also re-made its defense over one offseason with the trade acquisition of edge rusher Frank Clark, signing free agent safety Tyrann Mathieu, and drafting safety Juan Thornhill in the second round of the 2019 NFL Draft.

The three new Chiefs were integral, alongside Spagnuolo, in improving the defense, which was 14th in the league in 2019, according to Football Outsider’s Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) ranking.

The placement may not seem too impressive, but keep in mind the Chiefs’ DVOA in 2018 was 26th overall, and 30th the year before.

From 2016-19, the Eagles seemed conservative when it came to spending big money on cornerbacks.

Proportionally, only 4.72 percent of the team’s entire 2019 cap space was dedicated to the position, as most of the finances invested in the defensive backfield were dedicated to starting safeties Rodney McLeod and former Eagles star Malcolm Jenkins.

Combined, both players counted towards 8.56 percent of the Eagles cap space in 2019, almost double the entire value the team invested at cornerback.

By dedicating huge investments and draft picks into the position, the 2020 Eagles finally acknowledged that its old plan at cornerback wasn’t working, just like the 2019 Chiefs came to recognize when upgrading their safeties.

In a prolific passing league, skating by with marginal talent at a key position may not be a sustainable plan.

Philadelphia struck gold on a one-year deal with Patrick Robinson in 2017, but the luck wasn’t replicated the following two years. In addition, former high draft picks Sidney Jones and Rasul Douglas haven’t exactly panned out either.

Whether Slay, Robey-Coleman, Parks, and K’Von Wallace can effectively remake the defensive backfield in the Schwartz scheme is uncertain, but at least Philadelphia won’t be going into the 2020 season without having made a major effort to improve it.