The schedule is arguably a game or two harder this season, but the defense is going to be better.
The Eagles lost five regular-season games last season. All five of them had this in common: The opposition threw for more than 200 yards and completed at least 60 percent of its pass attempts. This was the first Eagles playoff team ever to suffer five such losses.
In many ways, they were a mess last season. But they have taken a significant stab at fixing the three biggest problems.
They are better at safety right now. They had problems at safety all year, enormous problems, big enough problems that the two main perpetrators - Macho Harris and Quintin Demps - were cashiered over this past weekend. And if there was some ease in the making of those decisions - general manager Howie Roseman got a new broom with his new office this year, after all; all new GMs do - they still were a pretty plain pair of indications about how big a hole the Eagles had at that position in 2009.
So even if rookie second-round draft pick Nate Allen, a very polished personage so far, is not a great player, and even if he makes some first-year errors, everybody involved believes that this position has been improved.
They are better at middle linebacker right now. Then there is Stewart Bradley, the middle linebacker, who missed 2009 after tearing up a knee. In his absence, the Eagles went through a half-dozen middle linebackers and a whole series of machinations on the outside. It was as big a mess as the safety position, and the result was this gaping hole in the middle of the defense.
This season, they appear to be settled on Akeem Jordan on the strong side and Ernie Sims on the weak side. However that goes, the key here is Bradley, who looks strong and appears to be running very well.
Even if Bradley is only 85 or 90 percent of the rising young player that he was in 2008, he will be a marked improvement over last year.
