A Re-Look at What Landon Dickerson Brings Us (and an Update After Week 2)

Adding an update to a post from the end of preseason on what Landon Dickerson brings to the Eagles. Since he is now starting with Brandon Brooks’ injury, I wanted to update with some week 2 data.

Sept 24th Update

Yesterday, Landon had media time and said everything you wanted to hear – he was hard on himself and made it clear that he has very high expectations on himself with his great line of “excuses breeds mediocrity”. A small example, but both Landon and DeVonta are showing why they are the culture-setters that Sirianni was asked about after the draft and everybody thought they would be.

While Landon did not have the day he wanted, the Eagles decision to start him this week is an underappreciated decision. Last year they dealt with so many injuries on the OL but they also played the wrong people, with Pryor and JP both playing when it was clear they weren’t one of the five best linemen. It would have been easy for the Eagles to put Herbig in this week against Dallas and let Landon sit, but it is much more important to the Eagles long-term for Landon to develop. And I stay consistent in my view that Landon is going to be very good for the Eagles, probably sooner than later.

First, his week 2 data:

  • 4.2 pass blocking grade, allowing a hit and 4 hurries on only 19 dropbacks for a 13.2% pressure rate. Not good and not too different than what we saw with Jalen Mayfield in the Falcons opener with his 1.4 pass blocking grade.
  • 59.9 run blocking grade on 13 rushing snaps.

Thomas Peterson (@thomasrp93), who I think most people follow, has a great breakdown of all of Landon’s week 2 snaps here so I won’t try to reproduce that. It’s a good 12 minute watch though and shows Landon’s good and bad.

Landon Pass Protection

Against SF, Hurts was under pressure on almost half of his dropbacks (46.7%) but SF blitzed much more than what they historically have and more than I expected, blitzing on exactly 50% of dropbacks. They had a different game plan than Atlanta, instead of dropping back and taking away big plays, SF wanted to give Hurts less time to throw. Hurts once again did well against the blitz, with a 92.7 passer rating with a lot of that value coming from the 91-yard Quez pass.

While Hurts did well against the pressure, it did give the entire OL and Landon more to handle. Re-watching his snaps, 3 of his 5 pressures allowed came against added pass rushers.

The post below from a few weeks ago speaks to Landon being an elite pass blocker in college, allowing only 11 total pressures in 825 dropbacks in his entire college career, including only 1 sack. In week 2 against the 49ers, Landon struggled much more in pass protection than run blocking with several plays where he was just driven back into Hurts or run around.

Two things on re-watching Landon – first, he was off balance a lot on pass protection and second, he seemed to hesitate and not move quickly when he needed to switch to another pass rusher. Both of these are things you don’t see in his college tape.

Landon made no excuses for himself, and he shouldn’t, but the reality is he didn’t start limited practice until 3 weeks ago and wasn’t a full practice participant until September 15th, four days before the SF game. I am assuming he is fully healthy as he wouldn’t be playing if he wasn’t. But his mistakes – working in concert with Kelce and Lane and being off-balance – are correctable and not what he showed at Alabama.

Landon Run Blocking

Not as much to look at with run blocking as Landon did better here. Below are each of the rush attempts with Brooks and Landon in the game, by rush direction, and the EPA for each rush:

Caveat of this is all super small sample size with only 5 rush attempts to Brooks’ side and 10 to Landon’s (counting rushes to the middle or right side). Purely to the right side, there was a drop off with Dickerson but including both the right and middle, the Eagles actually had a bit more success with Landon in (-0.156 EPA with Landon vs. -0.340 with Brooks). Even throwing out the 2-point conversion run which inflates EPA some, the Eagles had a slightly higher EPA with Landon in the game. Again, too small of a sample but re-watching Landon’s run blocking snaps, he was not perfect but had no hesitation, good push, and was effective getting to the second level on several blocks.

It will be interesting to see Landon this week vs. Dallas after a full week of practice at the RG spot. And remember, in college he was a better pass blocker than run blocker.

Following is the original post on Landon from August 30th

While we wait for the roster to be trimmed to 53, the Eagles made two moves in clearing Rodney McLeod and Landon Dickerson, giving both spots on the 53. We knew McLeod would be rostered but many thought Landon would remain on the NFI list and miss the first 6 games. Rostering Landon means one other player will be cut that could have been kept. Which I don’t care about. If Landon is ready, get him practicing and don’t worry about whichever replacement level player is now cut (Opeta or Rodgers or even Fulgham and JJAW, all of which would probably clear waivers).

We’ve seen more of Landon modeling the Fall 2021 Farmer Collection than practice until today, so I was thinking back to what he brings the Eagles.

He’s an elite pass blocker

In his college career, Landon allowed 1 sack in 825 dropbacks (0.12% of passing snaps), 4 QB hits, and 6 hurries. Lot of great clips of Landon out there, but this is one of my favorites as he and Brandon Thorn talk about how body-blow physical blocks help and the type of nastiness that Landon Brings is something that doesn’t show up in stats and analytics.

And one more that hopefully you haven’t seen which gives DeVonta and Landon love from Brian Baldinger.

He’s also an elite run blocker

The top draft negative on Landon was of course his injury history, but if you dig deeper, some analysts would somewhat reluctantly point to run blocking as a weaker area. PFF had Landon as the top run-blocking center with a 92.8 grade and tied for the most “big-time blocks” in a single season since the stat started being collected in 2014.

He provides the Eagles great flexibility in positions of need

Landon famously played all 5 offensive line positions in college, but nobody assumes he will be an NFL tackle. But the Eagles need a long-term center post-Kelce and have underrated needs at guard. Brooks is amazing but how much longer will he have? And Seumalo is a player I feel too negative on, but I think he is fine… Which is the problem. Isaac was rated the 41st guard (min 400 snaps) last year in overall blocking, he’s better in pass protection than run blocking and depth on a very good team.

It will be interesting to see if Landon is the long-term center or if the Eagles really see him at guard. But he will upgrade the Eagles line at either position once Kelce retires.

What about his injury history?

The Eagles (and all teams) have been burned on injuries bwrote and nobody knows what will happen – the decision to take Landon at 37 is an educated decision by the Eagles, weighing what the player brings, do his injuries reduce that performance level, and do those injuries increase risk of more injuries in the future?

One of my early draft guys was Caleb Farley who teams had to evaluate the same way. For me, Farley’s microdiscectomy was much more concerning than Landon’s ACLs. While there isn’t a ton of retrospective data on elite athletes recovering from microdiscectomies, there’s enough evidence that it both increases future injury incidence and shortens careers. With that, I was out. For ACLs, recovery is good especially for positions like line. Many will worry about reinjuries, but studies show the risk of re-tearing an ACL is only slightly higher (12%) than the risk of any player having their first ACL tear (9%).

Could this turn out badly? Sure. Were there other compelling picks at 37? Yep – JOK, Asante, Creed Humphrey. But if you get an elite lineman in the 2nd, the risk is warranted.

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