Eagles Season Likely Over, Fall to Packers on MNF

         

Eagles CB Carroll looking lost getting beat by Packers WR Adams for TD.  Image Courtesy: CSNPhilly.com

          The Philadelphia Eagles lost to the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night 27-13 in depressing fashion.  The Eagles with a record of 5-5 came into the game as 3 point favorites at home against the struggling Packers, who just couldn't seem to get anything going.  And then they rolled in to Lincoln Financial Field and things changed.  All week the running narrative was, besides how lost Eagles WR Nelson Agholor is, the Eagles should win this game against the Packers.  Now if you go to my twitter (@PhillySportsSrc) and listen to the podcast that I make a weekly appearance on (#TheSmallBallLineup), I predicted the Eagles would win this game in a close one, 28-24, but deep down in my heart of hearts I had a bad, bad, bad feeling the Packers and their All-Pro QB Aaron Rodgers having their backs against the wall that they would get their groove back against the Birds.  The Packers weren't only struggling on offense, but their defense had given up at least 31 points in their last 4 games...the Eagles put up 13 POINTS! 13 POINTS! 13 POINTS!  I'm beside myself right now so its just easier to bullet proof sentences with key points below, then I'm going to rip Eagles Head Coach Doug Pederson...nothing new, I know!

• Eagles first drive of the game was the only legitimately good drive of the game.  It was an 11 Play, 81 yard drive with the Eagles only TD of the game coming in on a QB Carson Wentz rushing TD.  
• WR Dorial Green-Beckham had 4 catches for 58 yards. (Finished with 6/82)

• As I mentioned above, Eagles WR Nelson Agholor was listed as a healthy Inactive and Practice Squad WR Paul Turner took his place...Didn't matter as he only had 23 Snaps and 0 targets.

• Rookie RB Wendell Smallwood who took the place of injured RB Ryan Mathews only had 9 carries for 37 yards.  The Eagles win when they run the ball well and they didn't even try.

• Eagles QB Carson Wentz besides his rushing TD (ran 4 times for 33 yards), his QB stat line read 24/36 for 254 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT with a QBR of 75.5

• Packers QB Aaron Rodgers was the first QB to throw for 300+ yards against the Eagles Defense as he finished with a stat line of 30/39 for 313 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT with a QBR of 116.7.  

• Packers WR Davante Adams torched CB's Nolan Carroll and Leodis McKelvin for 2 receiving touchdowns on 5 catches for 113 yards.

• To add insult to injury the Eagles Defense did not sack QB Aaron Rodgers once and he was only hit once, which was the Eagles DT Fletcher Cox's Roughing the Passer Penalty.

• The Eagles Defense allowed the Packers to convert 10 of 14 3rd Down Conversions where on the flip side the Eagles could only convert 5 of 11 3rd Down Conversions. 

• Eagles Defensive Coordinator Jim Schwartz for sure did not have his best game by; failing to establish a blitz with more than his front 4, press the corners against their receivers-gave them too much room to work with, and have terrible cornerback matchups-never made adjustments.

          The Eagles have now fallen to 5-6 and are pretty much out of playoff contention.  They needed this game against the Packers and they came up empty handed.  I originally predicted a 6-10 record in which you would see this team grow over the season, but after key wins against the Steelers, Vikings, and Falcons, add some bad losses in between, I have now seen this team regress in all facets of the game. In my very, very, very, very, very unpopular opinion I do not believe that Head Coach Doug Pederson should be the coach of this team following the Dallas Cowboys game on New Years day.  BUT I do understand it is unreasonable to fire a coach after one season (bad for team) but 3 years of an elementary-leveled play caller could set not only the franchise as a whole back but more importantly IMO the Franchise Quarterback back (Carson Wentz).  As I type this it's 12:22 AM just about an hour after the game and I don't feel like going to bed worked up so I will elaborate on the many issues this team faces and more in my season wrap-up, which may have multiple pieces and may be arriving before the official seasons end. 

Good Night Philadelphia, sorry it wasn't one for the Eagles.

Sleeping in Seattle, Eagles Lose to Seahawks

SEA QB R. Wilson scoring...on a receiving TD. Image: CSNPhilly.com

      The Eagles traveled West to play the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday and came home losers.  That's right, surprise, surprise!  They lost to the Seahawks 26-15 in a game where the score does not tell the story as it could've been worse.  Last week on The SmallBall Lineup (weekly podcast with Keith Smallwood) I predicted a very close 24-21 loss on the , because I thought this team was going to get it together respectably after a solid win against the Falcons.  Anyway they came out flat and the stats are irrelevant for the most part after a game like this.  What I am going to do this week is just keep it simple, make points and observations on this past week and for the team moving forward.

• Surprisingly, this was the first game of the season that the Eagles were completely out played in all facets of the game and for the most part were never really in it.

• Eagles Head Coach Doug Pederson continues to prove how clueless he can be.  His press conferences don't help him in the slightest as his poor explanations of his decisions to me depict how he calls the game on the field.  For example, He acknowledges in today's press conference that he knows that Rookie QB Carson Wentz should not be throwing the ball 45 times in Seattle, yet he had him throw the ball 45 times when the score wasn't out of hand yet.  Also, Doug needs to be careful because he tends to subtly throw Wentz under the bus as a rookie, yet many of the other players who make mistakes never are mentioned to the media.  In my opinion Wentz is the guy that needs to be tended to because he is one of the few on the team right now who will be the face of the franchise.

• The Eagles defensive as a whole did not play their best game for sure, but the defensive line was suckered all day by a sub-par/make-shift offensive line.  Going into the game the narrative was to contain Russell Wilson and the defensive line continued to over-pursue giving space for Wilson to slide up into the pocket.  Unfortunately this was not one of Defensive Coordinator Jim Schwartz's best games coaching as they were not creative in their blitzing schemes.

•  Eagles QB Carson Wentz has been regressing over the past couple of weeks and he does deserve a slight bit of blame but he is getting an unfortunate amount of flack with close to 0 help around him.  The guy has nothing to work with but at the same time he is making mistakes.  Some of this to me is the Head Coach not play calling as he was in the beginning of season and the other part is Wentz wanting to win by pressing.  The bright side of this all is that he can experience the lows now and if/when they can get him help he'll be able to capitalize on his mistakes in the future.

• Seahawks Quarterback Russell Wilson would've essentially been the best wide receiver on the Eagles on Sunday(when it mattered), scoring a 15 yard trick play Touchdown pass from Seahawks WR Doug Baldwin.  Seattle lived on the big plays Sunday as TE Jimmy Graham also caught a TD on a 35 yard broken play (awful missed attempt at a tackle by Safety Jaylen Watkins) while Rookie RB C.J. Prosise busted out a 72 yard TD scamper as the defense wiffed on getting the back down (big missed assignment by Eagles CB Jalen Mills).  Bottom line Seattle took advantage of missed opportunities by Philadelphia and Philadelphia hurt themselves on offense by taking away big plays via penalties and dropped passes.

• Speaking of Receiving...Eagles 2015 first round pick WR Nelson Agholor has been nothing short of a disappointment and Sunday may have been a breaking point.  Not only did Agholor drop another wide open strike from Carson Wentz, but his Illegal Formation penalty that negated a 57 yard screen pass TD to Zach Ertz in the 2nd quarter may have changed the tide for the Eagles.  He has admitted to his head not being in it and that he is pressing but I can not feel bad for him because he has been given every opportunity since he has arrived and has not been able to catch more than 3 passes in a game.  To cut him would cost around 7 million dollars and that seems absolutely crazy but it is something that has to AT LEAST be considered because he has been the epitome of how bad the wide outs have been here the past two seasons.

• Garbage time for the Eagles as I mentioned made this game look salvageable for this team.  WR Dorial Green-Beckham came up BIG in Garbage time.  Please people watch the game before referring to the box score so you know what you are talking about because just the box score is so misleading.  I still believe there is something there in talent and size with Green-Beckham but he has to do it when it counts, not just when they are down 19 in the 4th quarter.

• A couple bits of good news for this team moving forward.
• The Eagles are 1-5 on the road and 4-0 at home, so there are only 2 more road games and 4 more home games which favors the Eagles going forward, MAYBE keeping them in the playoff hunt if they can take advantage of the home field advantage.
• The Seahawks, in my opinion, are the best all-around team they have played this season and will play this season.

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. 

Pederson's Blunders Lead to Eagles Loss vs Giants

Eagles final offensive play sealing win for Giants. Image Courtesy: Beaumont Enterprise

•  I'm not going to get into the player dynamics too much about Sunday's 28-23 Loss to the New York Giants becuase the game in general was ugly but I'll highlight some interesting stats...I guess.
• QB Carson Wentz started off the game by throwing 2 bad early interceptions but after that he settled in a little bit and had a decent yardage day...27/47 (way too many passes), 364 yards, 0 TDs and 2 INTs.
• TE Zach Ertz had his best game of the season hauling in 8 catches for 97 yards, while WR Jordan Matthews caught 6 balls for 88 yards.
• Giants WR Odell Beckham Jr. had only 4 catches for 46 yards...AND 2 TDs, making Eagles CB Leodis McKelvin look absolutely foolish on his first one as Beckham won on an untouched 26 yard slant route early in the game and Giants QB Eli Manning roasted the Eagles for 4 TDs on 336 yards passing.

• The narrative is getting so old and tired....AND IT'S ONLY WEEK 9, but Eagles Rookie Head Coach Doug Pederson (Andy 2.0) has done it again!  Pederson lost a winnable game on Sunday against the New York Giants at the score of 28-23 by making "Pop-Warner" level mistakes when it came to coaching this game.  In a nutshell he lost this game by; taking close to sure-fire points off of the table throughout the game by going for 4th downs when Field Goals would've sufficed (with one of the hottest Kickers in the NFL this year), going for those 4th down attempts contrary to FG's with horrific play calls, and making terrible judgements when going for challenges and using timeouts.  Unfortunately, the recurring trend is that this team is able to hang around towards the end of these games but can't close when it matters because the coach can not put the team in the best position to win.  I can now say that in the 4 losses the Eagles have suffered so far this season he has been the reason they have lost each game and with each game it is progressively more and more clear that he is to blame.  Don't get me wrong the players need to go out on the field and perform and they aren't holding up their half of the bargain either but the coach has a great deal to do with that.  I'm not saying that the Jeffery Lurie, Howie Roseman, and the Eagles organization needs to fire Doug...yet, but since the 3-0 start this team had, which seems to be forever ago, Pederson has instilled the fears I first had when it became official that he would be the leading man for this football team.  

• As I think this coming Sunday's game against the Atlanta Falcons at home (where the Eagles are 3-0 this season) is another winnable game, Pederson has to coach this game a total 180 of the last 4 or 5 weeks because if not it could get extremely ugly.  Atlanta has the number one scoring offense in the NFL at about 34 Points per game and their defense is much improved as the Head Coaching of former Seattle Seahawks Defensive Coordinator is starting to translate on the field.  I would give Pederson slack if the talent on the field was under performing way more than are at this moment in time but he is the one who is holding this team back from glowing and the Falcons could be poised to exploit the Eagles way more than they have already been with how good they have been playing this year.