Is Adam Peter's Strategy Off-Course?

[Boone]

After the incredible ride in Year 1, one can hardly blame Adam Peters and Company for going all in and making some strong moves to 'win now'. Instead of maximizing draft picks and going young, Peters opted to add vets, make trades to add protection and weapons for Jayden, and pushed his chips to the table in the hope of continuing the previous year's magic.

What that a mistake?

 

[burgold]

I think so, but maybe not in the way you mean.

I think they saw went wrong in 2024 and overcorrected. On defense they said, "We can't stop the run for shit. We need some big guys." and so they went all in on big guys. Likewise, I think the Deebo move was an attempt to overcorrect on OZ and the rest who they feared didn't scare defenses enough. They thought if they has another guy to pair with Terry then they'd be unstoppable. BRob was jettisoned because he wasn't doing it and just never pulled off too few dynamic runs. With the passing offense and Jayden's running working so well, the run game should have been easy. Then, they looked at how well the one-year contracts worked out and said, "Let's do that again." The problem is it is hard to hit on gray beards that you think have one good year left in the tank and instead of getting production we got injuries.

So, I don't think the problem was going for the Superbowl because I don't know that they really made those splash plays, those all-in signings. I think they just overcorrected on one side and leaned too heavily on journeymen and gray beards who'd take that one-year deal on the other.

 

[Boone]

Only point I will quibble a little bit on is that the 'we signed a bunch of graybeards and that's why we have so many injuries' argument is a little bit of a false narrative. Sure - some older players like Ekeler have gotten hurt, but so have a ton of other players who are not graybeards.

I would say it's signing players with major injury history already is the bigger issue. But again, just a small quibble.

 

[burgold]

It probably depends how we define graybeards, but sure.

I probably would have included Harrism Wise, and Jones as graybeard signings, too. at the very least.

 

[Chris]

The whole ‘Super Bowl window’ is open mindset (that has been adopted more by the fans than the organization imo) was and remains Fool’s Gold. Last season’s unexpected success, based on a bevy of particulars, contributed to the birth of unrealistic expectations and an unrelenting series of smacks in the head by the injury God’s have taken their toll. The current roster is now being held together with duct tape and bailing wire and is currently closer to being one of the worst teams in the league than a competitor for post-season play.

The only criticism that I hold for the GM is the trade for Marshon Lattimore. I still don’t understand that move as I didn’t at the time. I hold no animus over the retention of older players like Wagner (primarily) and Ertz (secondarily) because I believe they earned another go.

My bottom line is that the injuries were unforeseeable and too much to overcome. But shit happens.

 

[Boone]

Jayden is BY FAR our biggest injury. Just sayin...

The other point I'd make (as someone who has managed orthopedic units and rehab facilities for most of my healthcare career) is that traumatic injuries can and do happen to folks regardless of age. Sure, older players may be at a slightly higher risk - but age alone as a factor in injuries at the NFL level, where the level of power and violence is off the charts - it's somewhat overblown.

 

[burgold]

Fair, but outside of the injury issue, I think age also has played a role in our overall team speed and quickness. To be honest, I think that, too, is more of an excuse than reality. I think our defensive woes are manifold. Injuries, deteriorating skills, and coaching have all hit us. On defense, I think the Whitt problem is a big one. He just doesn't know how to make lemonade.

I don't know that we have the horses to be a great defense, but I think we at least had the horses to be average. Right now, statitistically, I think we're bottom five. I don't think we had to be that bad.

 

[Boone]

I hear you. I want to know if folks think the results of this season (so far) are due to a miscalculation by Peters.

 

[DieselPwr44]

I think if the goal is to become a perennial contender, Peters veered off course and should've stayed focused on keeping picks and accumulating picks to stock the roster.
As much as I hate the Eagles,their GM has the right mindset: build through the draft and when an opportunity arrives to trade for a good player, have the draft stock stored back to make such moves. Heard him say in an interview one time : "Have to get linemen. It's an addiction, I can't get enough of them."

Peters would do well to adopt this line of thinking.
#5 very well may be the Franchise QB that's escaped this franchise for over 30 years but this team won't get out of the division if they are mediocre in the trenches.

Right now, this team is on the precipice of wasting a rookie QB contract and the cap benefits it allows.

 

[HTTR]

“Welp. We all know hindsight is 50/50”

I’m fine with the “going for it” mentality. We all talked (and mostly agreed) about the cheat code of a QB on a rookie contract and how it was crucial to maximize those years. Yes that is counterintuitive to a slow build up of 5-10 years as the star QB matures, but the salary cap structure is what it is—so hell yeah we should maximize these years if possible imo. Pretty difficult when you are starting with a barren wasteland of a roster but still you must try!

my biggest beef is that we didn’t really take advantage of that salary cap advantage in free agency this year. We could have afforded to sign a couple star free agents in their mid 20s that were available. Expensive, yes of course, but the ‘cheat code’ should’ve made it plenty doable. Instead we signed older cheaper stopgap types as others have mentioned. It was what I would’ve expected from a team struggling to stay under the cap because they have a QB making 50 million but needing to fill a few holes on the cheap. At least we still have the cap flexibility now for next year, but it will be much more difficult if we change course on that now to woo top FA after a losing season (hopefully that won’t be a problem).

Another thing that should be pointed out is that just building with rookies and draft picks really would put Jayden in danger playing with inexperienced players, especially wrt the O line.

To sum it up, I think it was the correct move to go all in during Jaydens rookie contract, especially after last seasons NFCG appearance. But I think for some reason they failed to do so during this years free agency. Knowing we were short on draft picks made it even more important to land difference makers not space fillers in FA. Especially on defense. All in was the correct strategy but that’s not really what they did. It’s like he got cold feet and tried to straddle the line. Any good poker player will tell you that if you are not confident to be all in then you should fold and save your money for the next hand.

 

[Voice_of_Reason]

I think the strategy is fine. Don’t forget Ron left this roster with basically no talent. McLaurin and Cosmi were about the only locked in starters. There were a few other guys who were maybe ok but not many.

So Peter’s had no choice but to sign a whole bunch of guys who were later in their careers for short contracts to fill out the roster.

There aren’t enough talented guys in FA to build a full team by offering bug money contracts to good players.

The general strategy seems to be to keep as much flexibility with the cap as long as possible. Then draft guys and eventually it switches.

But when you essentially are given an expansion team, there’s only so much you can do.

The one probably then ran into was the were so far ahead of schedule the took a shot to fix the secondary. It didn’t work. I didn’t mind the attempt. It just didn’t work out.

I will never have a problem Trading for a top-5 LT.

So I think the strategy is fine.

 

[HTTR]

I hear you. I want to know if folks think the results of this season (so far) are due to a miscalculation by Peters.

I’ll give the lame answer of sort of. But mostly not. For me it’s 85% the injuries and schedule. 15% mistakes by Peters.

Edit to point out… if we don’t inexplicably give away the Chicago game with a fumble at the end we would be 4-4 now despite all the injuries and playing a super tough schedule so far. I have to wonder to what extent we would even be discussing this if that was the case. And you certainly can’t blame peters for that.

 

[Primus Porcus]

I think the strategy makes sense, and we've had a rash of injuries that has limited it. It's a 3 dimensional issue too. Not only did we have injuries, but the back ups have not held up their end of the bargain. Drops, mental errors, and limitations have added to it. The opportunities in a lot of the games we've lost have been there, the execution has been lacking. Peters and co decision making can't make tackles or have dropped passes by our 5th WR on the depth chart.

I will say that I do side with DP's mentality a bit about being a little more steadfast in the building of the roster over addressing needs for NOW, but I also will not totally quibble with the thinking. We havent traded away PREMIUM assets to address position, and each move shouldn't be analyzed in a vacuum because they all are dependent on each other.

 

[The Chump Bailey]

You build a winning foundation with the draft and augment with free agency. This should be automatic and basic for every GM. While I generally liked Adam's draft and believe he has a good track record, I just fear we're slipping back into bad habits relying on FA too much. But, I'm still way more optimistic obviously with the stench of Snyder being gone forever.

 

[burgold]

You build a winning foundation with the draft and augment with free agency. This should be automatic and basic for every GM. While I generally liked Adam's draft and believe he has a good track record, I just fear we're slipping back into bad habits relying on FA too much. But, I'm still way more optimistic obviously with the stench of Snyder being gone forever.

I don't know if that's fair.

Rookies and first year players who are starting include: Jayden Daniels, Jacory Croskey-Merritt, Connerly, Amos, Sainristil, and maybe Newton. I don't think I missed anyone unless Tunsil is out with the hammy and Coleman gets a start. We also have Lane as our starter at PR and Luke as our starter at KR. Not sure if special teams starters count as starters. In any case, let's call that 6.5 starters out of two drafts.

That's really pretty good.

 

[Voice_of_Reason]

I’ll give the lame answer of sort of. But mostly not. For me it’s 85% the injuries and schedule. 15% mistakes by Peters.

Edit to point out… if we don’t inexplicably give away the Chicago game with a fumble at the end we would be 4-4 now despite all the injuries and playing a super tough schedule so far. I have to wonder to what extent we would even be discussing this if that was the case. And you certainly can’t blame peters for that.

A little off topic, but has the schedule really been supper hard?

Giants - bad
Packers - good
Raiders - bad
Falcons - ok 3-4
Chargers - ok 5-3
Bears - ok 4-3
Dallas -ok 3-4-1
KC - good

We’ve played 2 good teams. The next best team we played is probably the Chargers who were super injured themselves and we beat them.

On paper at the beginning of the season this looked harder. We got thumped by a sub-.500 Dallas team, lost to a sub .500 falcons team. And fumbled the game away to essentially a .500 Falcons teem. They would also be below .500 if we hadn’t fumbled the last time.

This really hasn’t been that bad yet.

The 3 game stretch we’re in now with KC, Seattle and Detroit is tough.

But I’d argue the schedule hasn’t gotten tough yet.

 

[HOF44]

I think the most telling thing was when they asked Peter’s about the roster at his first press conference and there was a loooong pause. He knew the cupboard was bare. I think other than the Lattimore trade he’s done a good job in the position he was left in. The mirage of last year made everyone feel we had a better roster than we have. Time to get back to the draft and a big FA signing if there is a fit and more one year contracts until we can backfill enough through drafting.

 

[Simeon]

I don’t see any mention of coaching. How much input did AP have in the choice of coaches other than Quinn? I don’t have any beef at all with his general personnel strategy so far, although of course he’s made some individual moves that didn’t pan out, just like every GM everywhere and every time, good or bad. Peters is a keeper.

Absolutely agree injuries have had an impact on the team and we don’t have a realistic chance of a postseason run if we don’t get a lot more healthy. The problem in evaluating Peters is we can’t do so without including how the players are taught and used in the scheme. They should never be on the field without knowing their assignments in a given look by the opponent and they should be good at basic fundamentals like tackling or ball tracking. And the scheme should adjust to opponents strategies during the games.

If that’s not true then nothing less than elite players at every position will keep us competitive against the best teams. Not going to happen, not for us or anyone else. The older guys might in fact have lost a step, but the whole team looks slower if they don’t have good preparation. The result is we are competitive against some teams that are average or less but we fail apart facing true contenders with elite coaches.

The sucking chest wound on this team is Whitt, not the injuries at end or CB. Or safety. I get letting him have a chance since he was supposedly a great position coach but it’s clear now he wasn’t ready. Time for Quinn to take over, regardless of who gets the DC title. I’m not sure what input AP has in this, but I hope a lot. I think Quinn is going to be reluctant to move on from a close friend and will need some push. We need a new DC next year, maybe somebody versed in Quinn’s system or maybe somebody with a different overall structure and a history of results. Regardless, AP needs to make sure it happens.

 

[Chris]

To me it’s not necessarily the records of the opponents so far, it’s how good we made them look against us. The Packers and the Cowboys looked like world beaters, Atlanta looked like the better team, and the Bears offensively (particularly Swift) were a challenge.

And you’re correct, VoR, the toughest part of the season starts Sunday night.

 

[Voice_of_Reason]

I think the most telling thing was when they asked Peter’s about the roster at his first press conference and there was a loooong pause. He knew the cupboard was bare. I think other than the Lattimore trade he’s done a good job in the position he was left in. The mirage of last year made everyone feel we had a better roster than we have. Time to get back to the draft and a big FA signing if there is a fit and more one year contracts until we can backfill enough through drafting.

Galdi has a clip of this and says, "never forget 'the pause'"

There were so few players on the team worth keeping, and Peters knew it from before he was hired.

I'm sure when he was interviewed, he told Josh Harris a lot of work would have to be done to fix the roster.

He's trying to thread a needle, and not every decision will work out. I'm fine with what he has done so far. This year, the McLaurin situation kindof derailed so many things.

The one thing I wish he had done was had more of a backup plan for McLaurin. He got Deebo, and I know OZ really wanted to go elsewhere where the path to playing time was more obvious than here, but the group of low-risk vets he brought in never materialized to anything. Having one or two better back end of the roster guys like DBrown or OZ would have been good. Flip side is I don't think he would have predicted that McLaurin, Deebo and Brown would all be hurt within 3 weeks of the beginning of the season. Tough to plan for that.