In the offseason, we will take a look at some new players who are not the Philadelphia Eagles, or players who have already joined the team, but we may not know them well yet. Today we will take a look at Marcus Epps.

Previous “Eagles Player Reviews” breakdowns

Jalen Hurts • Joe Flacco • Arryn Siposs • Jack Driscoll • Jordan Mailata

I am interested in taking a closer look at Epps’ season because he has a good result from Pro Football Focus, and before Rodney McLeod continues to recover from it, the Eagles have vacant torn ACLs on a safe starting point.

PFF gave him a score of 75.1, which is the highest safety on the team, ranked 13th in the NFL, and was caught between a pair of all-around players of Harrison Smith and Budda Baker. In addition, on the surface, Epps’s statistics for this season look pretty good. He participated in 14 games and started 5 games, but he only played 363 fast breaks, accounting for 33% of the team’s defensive fast breaks. In limited action, Epps had 47 tackles, 2 INTs and 4 passes to break up. Initially, I looked at his passing and breakups and some of them were great. E.g:

So I thought: “Oh, hey, if everything goes smoothly, we can actively review players that most fans don’t really care about, but maybe they should.” Unfortunately, I didn’t see what the PFF raters saw, because in my opinion, Epps did not perform well in 2020. Frankly, they rated him as the 13th most effective security guarantee in the league, which is ridiculous.

First, learn about Epps’s rapid development this season:

In this practice, I watched the Epps game, in which he played at least 20 fast breaks, against the 49ers, Steelers, Saints, Cardinals, Cowboys and Football Team. Briefly review the performance of each of these games:

• 49 people: Decent game. 44 fast breaks, eight tackles. He was humming and performing all the time. Brandon Aiyuk threw at him on the way to TD, but it was a solid and encouraging game.

• Steelers: Bad outing. 55 snapshots, one tackle. Epps was bullied by TE in the running game. He missed Chase Claypool’s tackle and became a TD. He misread a run and got a lot of money. And he was lucky. He didn’t get on another TD from Darius. Making posters killed him. The following week, he entered the inactive list with good reason.

• saint: Quiet game. 35 buckles, two tackles. There is no actual positive or negative impact.

• Cardinal: This is the game I am most looking forward to reviewing to discover some highlights, because Epps has seven tackles, one INT and a pair of PBUs. However, the disadvantages outweigh the disadvantages. He brandished some tackles, he was probably the main person responsible for the fake pan conversion in that game, and his INT was essentially a gift from Kyler Murray, who threw the ball directly to him. Although there is a positive side. He interrupted his pass in the middle and went straight to TE. His reading/intuition was very solid. When he put himself in place to play a role, he just didn’t finish it.

• cowboy: Another open, misplaced tackle-this time Michael Gallup-led to TD. He also gave up shooting opportunities against Amari Cooper, which was not an indispensable factor in the game.

• World Trade Organization: He ended the season with a positive attitude and made a wonderful reel game. In the game, he hit JD McKissick at the same time and kept the ball for INT at the same time. Otherwise, the game is solid enough.

A positive number

• Ball skills. This is his four pass breakups in 2020, and one of his INTs:

I’m curious if he can play well in college, and sure enough, he did. He has 9 INTs and 22 passes to break up, which is a good number just to be on the safe side. So far, his skills are his biggest feature, and he is good enough to at least keep him on someone’s list as a safety guarantee without back-up.

negative

• deal with. Epps is listed at 6’0, 191, so at the beginning, his safety is low, and his body contact with the ball carrier and blocker usually has the worst effect. He is more of a “dragging” or “ankle biting” tackler, not so explosive, and he usually gives up some extra yards after contacting most tackles. That’s not ideal, but if he can at least drag the defender to the ground all the time, that would be great. However, for players who don’t even try to provide knockout opportunities, his sense of smell is abnormal. sampling:

latitude. Of course, some of these games did not miss the opportunity, but I still call them negative games.

1. In one game, he found he had to make a field tackle against DeAndre Hopkins. He has a side job, but he still missed about 30 yards after chasing to allow the cavalry to chase. Hate that drama.
2. Then in another game of the Cardinals game, the Cardinals advanced 1:42, and the Cardinals faced 3rd and 5th places. First, the first game ended the game. Epps did a good job and could set an advantage to force Murray to tackle Jalen Mills, but Murray almost rushed over and won first place. Once Epps gains the advantage, he is content to keep the blocker’s attention instead of trying to gain freedom and help solve the problem. Hate that drama.

• In the running game, he was bullied by the relatively tight ends.

• Too much attention to blitzkrieg.

Overview

Epps is purely a deep sense of security, because unless he compares with a wide coverage of one-on-one matches, he won’t add much value near the line of scrimmage. Even a deep-sea safety officer, although sometimes he will show excellent ball-handling skills, sometimes he still “bites the cheese”. In this case, he either promises to go down the road or open the deep road. Either the wrong measure was taken. The result of guessing the receiver’s route, keep the receiver open.

For some defensive coordinators, due to his processing flaws, from the perspective of roster configuration, he is an automatic “no”. Jim Schwartz prioritizes the safety of insurance over ump hitters. He is willing to forgive some of the missed tackles here and there, but only to a point, even after the poor performance against the Steelers, even Epps also seemed to be replaced by him.

Epps is about to enter the third year of the NFL. His ball-handling skills will give him a chance to enter the roster, especially since he was selected by the Mike Zimmer team, and Jonathan Gannon’s plan is likely to have an impact on Zimmer.

But if he is to survive in the NFL for a long time, he will have to find a way to become a stronger and more reliable tackler, and when McLeod (McLeod) recovers from injury, he may not be a realistic start. .

By the way, although PFF will provide a lot of interesting content when insisting on fact-based indicators, it reminds us that any subjective analysis requires a lot of effort. Watching four hours of Marcus Epps video tape made me feel ashamed because they rated him similar to Harrison Smith and Budda Baker, haha.