It was clear after watching the Eagles front seven get muscled around by the Redskins last week, that something had to be done. For Sean McDermott, one of those things involved a change at starter in the linebacking corps. Akeem Jordan was benched in favor of second year man Moise Fokou at SAM.
McDermott explained his reasoning for the change.
"Well, they're both good football players, but right now, I feel like we need a physical presence inside and Moise brings that to the table."
"He's a young player. He got some time for us last year. And then he's kept his nose to the grindstone. He's worked extremely hard on the field and off the field, and kept the right attitude. He's played well on special teams and that physical play that he brings to the table, he's done the same thing on special teams to this point."
He reiterated a number of times how he felt Fokou was going provide a more physical presence, but was a lack of physicality the main issue?
"When you're talking about the run game, and this has happened to our defense in the past, if you look at '04 it happened at Pittsburgh, if you look at, I believe it was '08 it happened the first game against the New York Giants there. It's not a problem that we haven't gone through before and we're going to get it fixed, number one. And number two is, in the run game specifically, it comes down to technique and toughness, so we can work on both of those, and we're working on them this week. Technique needs to be right in order to play the run game the right way, and then we've got to have a physical presence up front with our front seven."
Finally, he was asked the question that I've seen a lot of people on this site asking... Is it frustrating to constantly be shuffling your linebacking corps?
"I think if you look around the NFL, you're going to find the same thing. Players play at different levels at different times. I'm not afraid to make a move, I'll sit here and say it. I'm not afraid to make a move. If I feel like somebody's better than the guy that's playing, then the guy that's behind him is going to play."