Philadelphia Eagles: Casey Hayward doesn’t fit Jonathan Gannon’s system

Are you familiar with the “Project management triangle“?

It’s a concept that goes as follows: the quality of a project or endeavor is determined by its budget, scope, and available time, and focusing on all three is impossible. Basically, the project can be done fast, cheap, and well, but you can only pick two.

Why is this relevant to the Philadelphia Eagles? Well, I’m glad you asked.

In free agency, teams use a very similar cost-value analytics tool to determine which players to sign, only instead of time, they look at a player’s age. So, for example, if a team wants to sign a young player who is really good, it’s probably going to cost a lot, or, if a team wants a young player who is inexpensive, they’re probably not going to be very good. But, for a cash-strapped team like the Eagles with holes across their roster, there’s a third category that’s incredibly intriguing: Older players looking for one last chance to be contributors on bargain bin contracts.

Sure, we’d all love to see the Eagles go out and sign [insert young free agent player here], but why would [insert young player’s name here] want to sign with the Eagles for pennies on the dollar when they can earn a much better payday on a team with a more promising 2021 outlook?  Even with ten picks in the forthcoming draft, the Eagles will still probably sign at least a few cheaper veterans to come in and initially fill spots on the depth chart, even if they’re ultimately replaced by mid-season.

Now former-Chargers cornerback Casey Hayward fits that bill, and would in theory be on Howie Roseman’s radar heading into free agency, only here’s the thing, I doubt any sort of deal between the two parties comes to fruition. Why? because Hayward just isn’t a fit in new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon’s scheme.

Ex-Philadelphia Eagles’ DC Jim Schwartz would have loved Hayward.

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If Casey Hayward was released this time last year, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that the Philadelphia Eagles would have been all-in on procuring his services.

Measuring in at 5-foot-11, 192 pounds, “Showcase” Casey Hayward is the textbook definition of a playmaking cornerback. He’s recorded 20-plus passes defended during three separate seasons, has 23 career-interceptions over 129 games, and even led the league in picks during the 2016 season with an incredible seven.

Not so fun fact: Hayward had two more interceptions in 2016 than the Eagles’ entire defensive secondary had in 2020. Yeah, that’s not great.

Though Hayward isn’t the biggest, strongest, or even fastest cornerback around now that he’s over 30 – he did run a 4.47 coming out of Vanderbilt in 2012 – his willingness to fight the ball in the air and compete for it like a wide receiver would have made the then-30-year-old defensive back a natural in Jim Schwartz‘s system, especially if Darius Slay was also in place.

With that duo locked in place, the Eagles wouldn’t have been forced to rely on a slew of underwhelming options like Michael Jacquet, Kevon Seymour, Craig James, and usually-a-safety Rudy Ford to take meaningful snaps coming off the bench or have to shift slot-only cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman to the outside, a position he doesn’t usually play for a reason.

Hayward’s presence likely would have also prevented Avonte Maddox from starting eight games at outside cornerback, as he surely would have been pulled and transitioned to either slot cornerback or free safety after a disastrous first few showings on the perimeter.

Would that have been enough to steal a few more wins and keep the Doug Pederson-era alive and well? Injuries aside, probably so, as the Eagles’ season really went off the rails when they were forced to watch helplessly as the Dallas Cowboys torched their make-shift secondary in Week 16.

But we can’t focus too much on that now. No, fortunately or not, that era of Eagles history is over, and we now need to turn our collective attention to which players fit the scheme of new, first-time defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon.

In that regard, Hayward just doesn’t fit Philly’s new scheme or timeline.

Assuming Gannon transplants over the man-press Cover 2 scheme that he cut his teeth under from 2018 on with the Chargers – though technically, the Colts started to veer more towards a Seattle-esque Cover 3 scheme down the stretch in 2020 – the chances of the Eagles signing any outside cornerback measuring in at under 6-foot-tall seems pretty unlikely.

From Pierre Desir to Xavier Rhodes, Quincy Wilson, T.J. Carrie, and even the prides of Temple University, Rock Ya-Sin and Nate Hairston, the Colts have exclusively utilized 6-foot or taller perimeter cornerbacks during Gannon’s time with the team, with only nickel starter Kenny Moore “slot”-ing in under that height.

Would the Eagles consider signing/drafting/acquiring a cornerback an inch or two shorter than that height? I imagine so, but that isn’t the only trait those players all share.

Though the numbers vary from player to player, most of the cornerbacks the Colts targeted during Gannon’s tenure clocked in on the slower side of the spectrum and have had long arms perfectly suited for pressing opposing receivers on the line to disrupt their initial release. While Hayward does have a reputation for being one of the better man-press corners in the game during his tenures in both Green Bay and San Diego/LA, his 2020 season wasn’t particularly impressive, as evidenced by his PFF defensive rating of 57.4.

Could Hayward bounce back as the number two option across from Slay? Maybe so, but why would he want to?

With only so many years left to play in the NFL and a lack of Super Bowl rings on his mantle, why wouldn’t Hayward instead opt to sign with a loaded team looking for a playmaking cornerback to play a less physically-imposing brand of coverage, a team like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for example. A scheme like that of Todd Bowles would allow Hayward to play more frequently off the ball and use his eyes to make plays based on the quarterback’s eyes, whereas Gannon would much more frequently deploy his starting outside cornerback face-to-face against everyone from DK Metcalf to Henry Ruggs III, both of whom he struggled to cover in 2020.

Outside of kicking inside to play the slot, a position Hayward hasn’t been tasked with playing consistently in years, there isn’t a natural fit for the 32-year old in Gannon’s starting defensive backfield.

Would Hayward be interested in moving back inside a la his early days in Green Bay in an attempt to prolong his career? If so, the chances he’d opt to do that in Philly would signify a very weak market for his services with no real chance to start anywhere else.

Is that really what Hayward’s market is going to look like in 2021? Considering he won’t count against the compensatory pick formula since he was released by the Chargers, I imagine that won’t be the case.

No, if the Philadelphia Eagles are going to sign a veteran stop-gap cornerback to compete for a spot across from Darius Slay versus hopefully a highly-drafted cornerback, it’ll probably be a player like Xavier Rhodes who excelled under Jonathan Gannon in 2020 with the Indianapolis Colts. Even if the Eagles could afford to sign Casey Hayward – which I’m not convinced they are – it’s hard to imagine why he’d even want to play for Philly with his career winding down and his fit in the team’s scheme questionable, to say the least. File this one under doubtful.