Of all the Eagles coaches, players, and staffers who do press conferences, defensive coordinator Jim Johnson is consistently the most, ahem, candid. That is, he seems to be the only guy at the NovaCare complex who’ll dare suggest that everything isn’t going swimmingly with the Birds. Maybe it’s because he’s one of the senior guys on staff (”I’m a grizzled veteran coach — don’t tell me what I can and can’t say to the freakin press”), but he definitely gets a little more leeway in his media sessions.

This all makes his comments from yesterday’s press conference all the more troubling.

Instead of parroting the party line (”We’ll be fine once the season starts”), Johnson admitted that the defense was “a work in progress.” Umm, okay. That’s not crazy, sounds reasonable. But then he called out the two obvious weak points in the defense: Chris Gocong and Omar Gaither. Uh oh. Sounds like Johnson’s made his peace with the fact that these guys are going to be a mess for the first couple weeks of the season and he thinks the rest of his team can survive these guys learning on the job.

On the bright side, he thinks that Bunkley is going to be just fine, which certainly seemed to be the case in the preseason games. Of course, he also thinks Considine isn’t terrible, which is crazy, but we’ll cut you some slack because we think you’re just trying to keep the kid’s confidence from being completely crushed.

Mostly, though, Jim Johnson has confirmed that this defense really is a problem. Now let us all take a deep breath and hope that Donovan can score 35 points per game.

Link:
Jim Johnson PC: Sept. 6 [PhiladelphiaEagles.com]
Onus is on the Birds’ offense [Philly.com]