Eagles Trade for Stallworth, Tell RBs to Suck It

Bringing back the Marino Dolphins running game

Unable to find a suitable running back, the Eagles have upgraded at receiver, trading veteran LB Mark Simoneau to the Saints for Donte Stallworth. This is signiificant for two reasons:

1. Stallworth is on my fantasy football team, meaning I now have one Eagles player on my roster. I am loathe to root for the Eagles in any football fashion.

2. The Eagles have no new commitment to the running game. They'll likely be carrying 5 RBs on the roster, with Westbrook and Buckhalter getting most of the screen passes.

The Eagles have ithsues with the running game. I did some homework, and the Philadephia Inquirer wisely removed this article from their web page, but I found a Google cache of it here. After 5 games last year, going into the bye, the Eagles were still 3-2 and hopeful, but had just suffered a 33-10 thrashing at the hands of the Cowboys. In that game, the Eagles rushed 9 times for 19 yards, and through that game, the play-calling had been 204 pass - 88 run.

Buckhalter is back and looks ok, and all that, but he's not proven to be durable, and he's certainly no bruiser. That the Eagles were considering Stephen Davis but settled on a receiver is evidence that they don't think they have the skill positions they need to execute the offense. This feeds nicely into Master4Caster's Die Eagles Die theory that the Redskins scooped up Duckett to cockblock the Eagles from obtaining him.

The Eagles now go back and assume their 'no stars but Dono' posture from the 2003-and-before seasons, although I could make a good argument that Reggie Brown, Jabar Gaffney and Donte Stallworth make a better trio of number x+1 receivers than Todd Pinkston, James Thrash and Freddie Mitchell. Look for Westbrook again to be the second or third leading receiver.

Personally, Stallworth has some baggage. Philly Inquirer Early Word blog has a good roundup of Stallworth's issues and risks assumed by the Eagles. His March arrest in Miami sounds an awful lot like Chris Webber's here in DC back in 1998, when he was stopped by police for speeding on the way to Wizards practice. He had no ID or vehicle registration on him, would not shut off his Navigator, or roll down the window, or get off his cell phone (he was frantically talking to his agent, saying, 'you gotta get me outta this!'). When they finally got him out, they had to pepper-spray him, and found a smoking joint in his ashtray.

He's been called inconsistent and had minor discipline problems in NO, to the point where the Saints apparently tried to deal him during the draft this year. But having said that, dealing with TO for two seasons likely will make Stallworth look like a model player.

Welcome to the NFC Beast, Donte. Have you met Sean Taylor?