July 31, 2017
Doug Pederson is a big LeGarrette Blount fan, it would seem. On Sunday, prior to the team's first open practice as Lincoln Financial Field, Pederson said that he often goes back and watches all of Blount's touchdown runs last season, presumably just for fun.
"I watched it a couple times this spring," said Pederson. "Actually went back and watched it the other day."
Prior to signing Blount, the Eagles had a trio of backs in Darren Sproles, Donnel Pumphrey, and Wendell Smallwood, who have an average height and weight of 5'8, 189. At a listed height and weight of 6'0 and 250 pounds, Blount will give the Eagles a big, powerful running back complement to their other shifty runners.
"I think just knowing and kind of watching him last year, what he did with New England on their Super Bowl run, just the impact that he had in the red zone," said Pederson, when asked what Blount will mean to the football team.
"He's a big, physical, downhill runner. I saw that yesterday in some of that inside-run period, the explosiveness. He's got great vision, great vision to make the jump cuts and read defensive linemen. But just that big body in the backfield I think can, for a defender, present a big problem, from a one-on-one tackling standpoint."
Blount was indeed good last season in third- and fourth-and short situations.
| LeGarrette Blount | Rush | Yards | YPC | TD |
| 3rd and 1-2 | 14 | 53 | 3.8 | 3 |
| 4th and 1-2 | 5 | 54 | 10.8 | 2 |
| 3rd or 4th and 1-2 (TOTAL of the above) | 19 | 107 | 5.6 | 5 |
In my Periscope video at Sunday's practice, Blount was standing near two other Eagles running backs, Donnel Pumphrey and Darren Sproles, who are obviously two smaller backs. My apologies for the lass than crisp screenshot of that video below, as Blount, Pumphrey and Sproles are not blurry Sasquatches, but you can see the difference in size in real life here:
As Pederson noted, Blount has a good jump cut. In watching him so far this spring and the first few days of camp, Blount has more nimble feet than you would expect of a 250-pound man. His highlight reel tells the same story:
I know that Pederson likely has some kind of All-22 video of Blount that the team put together, but I like to envision him getting all hyped up watching his highlights with Eminem playing in the background like in the video above.
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