Eagles Beat Falcons, But Will The Real Doug P Please Stand Up?

 

Ryan Mathews celebrates after 1 of his 2 TDs on the day against Atlanta.  Image courtesy: WTOP.com

       Going into Sunday afternoon, the visiting Atlanta Falcons had the #1 scoring offense in the NFL averaging about 34 points a game, then they played the Philadelphia Eagles' stout defense and were held to a season low of 15 Pts as well as season lows in many other offensive categories.  The Eagles won the NFC battle by a score of 24-15 keeping their playoff hopes alive for another week improving their record to 5-4.  The title of this article may sound misleading as I still believe Sunday was a great win but down below in my observations from Sunday's game I will explain why I am not sure which Head Coach for this team Doug Pederson is, as well as the remedy to winning unfavorable match-ups and a rejuvenated home field advantage in South Philly that's been long overdue.

 Key Stats from Sunday's Game

• Eagles RB Ryan Mathews ran for 109 yards on 19 carries scoring twice, while Rookie RB Wendell Smallwood ran for 80 yards on 13 carries as they helped to contribute to the ground games total of 208 yards.
• QB Carson Wentz has cooled down since the beginning of the season as he goes a second game in a row without a TD pass but was 25/36 for 231 yards and 0 INTs.
• RB Darren Sproles, WR Jordan Matthews, and TE Zach Ertz combined for 20 receptions for 185 yards.
• The Eagles won the Time of Possession battle 38:10-21:50, their largest margin of the season.
• Exton Product and Falcons QB Matt Ryan had a very pedestrian day for himself on 18/33 passing for 267 yards 1 TD and 1 INT.
• If this next phrase is possible Falcons WR Julio Jones had a quite day catching 10 balls for 135 yards but did not find the endzone.

Observations Going Forward 

• WILL THE REAL DOUG PEDERSON PLEASE STAND UP? I REPEAT WILL THE REAL DOUG PEDERSON PLEASE STAND UP? WE'RE GONNA HAVE A PROBLEM HERE...I have made it abundantly clear time and time again that I am not the biggest fan of Eagles Head Coach Doug Pederson and do not believe he was or will ever be the best candidate for the job of Eagles Head Coach.  Why do I feel this way you may ask?  First, The Eagles were in a time of transition when they made the hire; Chip Kelly the power-hungry false-messiah was sent packing after ignorantly regressing by the season, so the front office hired the complete opposite, a yes man with no college or NFL head coaching experience who wasn't asked to interview with any other team that had a vacancy.  Second, as offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs last year, Pederson took responsibility for the awful handling of the lack of using timeouts in their playoff loss to the New England Patriots, which in the past couple of weeks we are starting to see poor clock timeout management.  Finally, this is more of an assumption, based on his press conferences and interviews he comes off very vanilla and clueless at times and those shouldn't be the first two adjectives that come to mind when I think of a head coach.  Anyway, Pederson turned my head when the Eagles started off 3-0, I was catching myself paying compliments towards the head coach.  He was coaching conventionally; working with the talent he had, rotated his running backs well, had the team motivated to play, didn't make time management mistakes.  Then, after an early Week 4 Bye the team came out flat from the week off with two straight ugly losses as the team in 6 of the 8 combined quarters looked lost and clueless committing over 25 penalties for over 200 yards which is accredited to bad coaching.  Next, they turned it around against an undefeated Vikings team at the time in a defensive juggernaut followed by two more losses, but this time stemming directly from the coach, filled with indecision and time management issues, such as; drawing up terrible plays on 4th down, not rotating running backs well, not knowing when to call timeouts, taking points off the board by not taking Field Goals when you need points, making bad challenges, out-coaching himself, completely going against what was successful earlier in season, not establishing a conventional game plan, and finally not establishing an identity as a football team (mostly on offense, the defense has theirs).  Finally, we arrive at Sunday and Doug goes back to how he coached in the beginning of the season.  The Eagles won the time of possession battle and established a running game against the Falcons keeping their offense off the field not allowing them to get a rhythm, **but Pederson did almost go for a terrible 4th down but then came to his senses, called a timeout and kicked the FG when it was needed.**  This is all well and good as I hope he continues to coach similarly to Sunday, but until he establishes this teams identity and enforces it, I cannot say that I have faith in him as our HC and even though he is a rookie coach he in my opinion has made TOO MANY POP-WARNER LEVEL MISTAKES.  Who shows up in Seattle on Sunday Jekyll or Hyde?

• How this team can win unfavorable matchups.  Win the time of possession battle by running the ball effectively with your more powerful running backs.  It sounds so simple and it actually is but you must have the pieces to do it.  Surprisingly, the Eagles have the offensive line and running backs to do it against most teams, but eventually if they face better defenses they will need receivers to open up the field, which they do not have at this moment.  Even though the Eagles throughout the entire season have had one of the best defenses in the league, they cannot be effective if they are out on the field for too long, especially if they are playing an above average offense.  Let's take the teams two best wins, against the Steelers and the Falcons for example.  Both teams had excellent offenses filled with above average  QBs, RBs, and WRs (esp. WR because the Eagles Corner backs are one of the worst groups in the league).  If you go back and look over the game you could see that the Eagles offense's game-plan was to keep the opposing teams offense off the field by running the ball effectively and eating up the clock.

•  Home-Field Advantage is back in Philadelphia. I actually had the privilege of being in attendance on Sunday (thanks to mama dukes for winning me the tickets) as I was a part of the 69,000+ that cheered the Eagles to victory.  As I was observing the game and taking my mental notes I was zoning in on how loud the crowd really got, now I wasn't able to re-watch the game on television but I would have to believe the stadium was close to the loudest it has been in the past 3 years or so.  It felt like the place was shaking, especially towards the end of the game when big defensive stands were needed to disrupt the talented offense of Atlanta and when Ryan Mathews dove into the endzone for his second TD of the game taking the lead back again for good!  HIGHLY INTELLIGENT STATISTICAL ANALYSIS INCOMING: I'll leave you with this...The Eagles are 1-4 on the road this season, BUT they are 4-0 at home, which means they play better at home and that can almost directly correlate to an advantage over the visiting team, especially when the fans are causing havoc and pandemonium.