Game Review – SEA 31, PHI 14
Posted: December 7th, 2011 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 30 Comments »I re-watched the loss to Seattle after a few days went by. I was curious what had really happened. When I watch a game live, I live and die on each play like every other passionate Eagles fan. I’m so busy yelling at the players that I miss plenty of details. Reviewing the game is a way to get a better feel for what actually happened.
Or I just wanted to see more of Alex Flanagan.
Both teams were 4-7, but they came into the game with different attitudes and mindsets. The Seahawks had a bounce in their step. They knew this would be a long year. 4-7 didn’t affect their psyche all that much. The Eagles still seem dumbfounded that they had a losing record. Rather than playing desperate football, the team played…confused?
It is hard to put a word on it. Some people rip the effort, but re-watch the game. The Eagles played hard until the 2 minute warning, when reality set in. There were some individual moments of slacking, but these are the prima donna types we’ve talked about all year (Asante, DeSean). Vince Young threw a block for Shady on a run play. He showed great heart on that. The defense made a big stop on 3rd/1 in the 2nd half. Those guys gave great effort on that play.
The problem is that effort isn’t enough. Our guys weren’t locked in mentally. The first TD by Marshawn Lynch is probably the best way to explain it. The whole front seven busted their humps on that play. Everyone is doing something, but nobody actually made the tackle. Lynch broke free and ran for the TD. Playing hard is fine in Junior High. In the NFL, effort is a minimum. You need results.
The Seahawks got results. They made big plays throughout the game. Golden Tate had a very impressive TD catch. MLB David Hawthorne picked off a pass and ran it back for a TD. One of the DBs snagged a tipped ball and added a long return. Lynch broke tackles all game long. Part was on us for being sloppy, but part is on him for running with such effort and toughness.
It also hurt that Vince Young played a stinker of a game. At first, I wondered if he knew what color jerseys we had on. He made some questionable decisions. He’s simply not meant to be the QB in a pass-oriented offense.
Didn’t help that Seattle got off to a fast start. They led 14-0, 17-7, and 24-14. We never really put serious pressure on them. They played the kind of football they wanted. That helped them to stay loose and aggressive and remain confident.
A lot of people were mad at Andy for not calling a timeout late in the half. I understood what he was doing. We had 7 points and things just weren’t clicking. He wanted to go in and settle things down. Then Seattle kicked it out of bounds and suddenly we’re near midfield. 10-20 extra seconds would have been huge. Vince would have had time to throw another pick. (cheap shot alert!!!)
OFFENSE
* 2 of 2 in the Red Zone.
* 2 of 8 on 3rd downs
* Seattle WRs had 3 catches of 20 or more yards. We had 2. Ugh.
YOUNG — Bad game. Vince threw to Eagles targets for 208 yards and 1 TD. He threw to Seattle targets for 77 yards and 1 TD. Uh, not good. 17-29-208. Had 4 INTs. The first play of the game was a bad INT. Vince thought the receiver would do one thing, but the guy did another. That was a sign it would be a long night. Vince had a poor game, but his receivers didn’t help him out. Riley Cooper had 2 costly drops. Clay Harbor had one.
My question is why was Vince targeting Riley so much. Jason Avant had 2 passes come his way. That’s your guy on 3rd downs and key plays. Force the ball to him. Jason has the best hands on the team. Use him. Throwing 20 yards downfield to Cooper just isn’t a smart way to move the chains.
I watched Vince do some amazing things in college. I watched him do some crazy things for the Titans. Where is that dude? Vince is the worst “good scrambler” I’ve seen on the Eagles. No confidence. Hesitates. And he slides. Dude, you’re the backup. Run. Don’t slide. Fight for every inch.
MCCOY — Terrific game. 17-84-1 running. 4-49-1 receiving. Just did his thing. Best run came in the 2nd half. Started to the right side. Had nowhere to go. Reversed field and ran back up the middle. VY acted as a lead blocker and knocked some defender out of the way. Shady got 10 yds on the play. He had several good gains.
His TD catch came on the Shovel pass. Great execution on that play.
DJAX — 4-34. Caught a lot of flak for not going full speed. Reid defended him on one specific play in question. SEA did keep a S over the top on him a lot. Still, the offense needed him to make something happen and he never did.
COOPER — Up and down game. 5-94. That looks good, but had 2 key drops. One was a 3rd down pass that Riley had in his hands and just couldn’t secure. The other was a downfield pass that went off his hands and was picked off. Terrible play. Riley has to make that grab. Very frustrating to see him get his chance and be so sloppy. Did catch 47 yd pass. Got behind defense on blown coverage. Wide open. Had to wait on ball and that kept him from getting into the endzone.
I get a bit frustrated with how we use him. Riley is a big guy. Throw him short and intermediate stuff to take advantage of his size. Instead, he’s deep a lot.
AVANT — Targeted twice, with 1 catch. What did he do to make Vince angry?
CELEK — Quiet. 3-21. Good effort when he did catch the ball.
HARBOR — 2 targets, no catches. One was screen pass that VY threw too hard. The other was a short pass on 2nd/10. Harbor was wide open over the middle. Would have gotten the 1st or set up 3rd/short. Just a bad drop. Pass wasn’t perfect, but that’s a ball you must catch.
PETERS — Good game. Handled Chris Clemons pretty well. Lined up at RT on Shady’s TD run. JamJax took over at LT. We ran right and Jason was able to control DT Red Bryant, their best run stuffer. Shady went off Jason’s hip for the score.
MATHIS — Had some very good moments. Terrific block on Shady’s 20-yd run to his side. Evan was able to get wide and seal the DE, giving Shady a clean path. Did good job of sustaining block on long pass play to Cooper. Did something subtle on 3rd Qtr screen that I love. Play went away from him. Evan followed to the right side and picked off DT who was in pursuit. We see those guys make the tackle at least 1/3 of the time. Wish more OL in football would pick off pursuers. Simple, but can be important. Very good job on Shovel pass. Pulled right and got LB.
KELCE — Solid. Really fired off the ball and got to LB on Shady’s TD run. Good block on Shady run to right side for medium gain. Good block on 3rd Qtr screen pass. It is wild to watch him run in space. So fast for a semi-big guy. We ran a draw to the left and both Jasons hit the MLB on the play. The guy ended up 20 yards downfield after Kelce, Peters took turns shoving the guy.
WATKINS — Up and down. Sloppy in pass pro. Struggled at times with the mixture of big guys and athletic guys. Had good 3rd Qtr block of DT where play flowed left and Shady cut back through Watkins gap for nice gain. Good seal block of DL on Ronnie B run to right side.
HERREMANS — Up and down. Struggled in pass pro. Wonder if crowd noise was hurting him. Todd was beaten by Clemons, but also by a bigger guy. Todd has the quickness to handle big rushers, but wasn’t getting the job done very well. Got beat by DT on run play, but Shady made him miss and got the 1st anyway. Good seal of LB on Ronnie B run to his side. Got just enough movement on 4th/1 run to his side. Shady got 2 on the play. Did an excellent job on Shovel pass. Sealed DE.
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DEFENSE
* How many people predicted Tarvaris Jackson would finish 13 of 16 with a rating of 137? Ugh.
* Seattle 5-12 on 3rd downs. Not good.
* Only 2 of 3 in the RZ. Sadly, that helps our stats.
* Seattle ran a backside play at us over and over. NFLN kept talking about Babin. He didn’t help matters, but Akeem Jordan and Asante Samuel seemed to be most at fault. Akeem got sealed on that several times. Notice that the Seahawks ran it to Asante’s side over and over. It’s like 11 on 10 with him at CB on some run plays.
DEs — Trent Cole had a sack. Jason Babin had 2. Coverage helped on 2 of the 3. They didn’t play real good run defense. Cole had a shot to get Lynch on his “effort TD” early in the game. Trent just didn’t see him.
DTs — Up and down. Cullen Jenkins was kept under control. Mike Patterson was in on 3 tackles and did okay vs the run, but not well enough. He did blow up the 3rd/short play in the 2nd half by driving his blocker backward. Trevor Laws got penetration that helped Cole get his sack. The best DT might have been Derek Landri, all joking aside. He had a TFL and created at least one more due to penetration. He was the most disruptive.
CHANEY — Suckfest. Jamar missed tackles. He didn’t cover. He had a key penalty that negated a 3rd down stop. Other than that, great game. The sad thing is that Jamar had a handful of real nice plays. He attacked the FB and blew up some runs. He had a TFL. He got good penetration on the 3rd/short stop. All that was overshadowed by the mistakes. He missed several tackles. He forgot to cover the deep middle on an early 3rd down where SEA got a big pass play. Chaney got called for holding the TE on a play where we had forced a punt. I think Jamar is at fault for leaving the FB wide open on an early pass play. He just struggled.
LBs — Rolle had 3 tackles and a TFL. He had some nice plays. Jordan didn’t play well. He was out of position on several plays. Clayton played some. He was in on 3 tackles.
Safeties — Nate Allen made one huge mistake. Failed to stick tightly to receiver on a blitz play. The guy was able to make the grab and get upfield for the 1st. Dumb mental lapse. Generally tackled well. Left the game for a while after making impressive stop on PR. Jarrett took his place for a bit. Didn’t stand out. Kurt Coleman blitzed twice and got good pressure on both. He had 5 solo stops. Gave up completion to TE on crossing route. Kurt was just a step late in coverage.
CBs — Nnamdi got hurt while trying to break up a pass. OPI should have been called, but no such luck. He failed to get off a block and tackle Lynch on the early TD run. Asante was terrible vs the run. 1 tackle in a game where Seattle ran at him over and over. Pitiful. Hanson played some in place of Nnamdi. Okay. Got beat for TD, but Tate made a great catch. Give him credit. Brandon Hughes played, but didn’t stand out.
SPECIAL TEAMS
CHAS HENRY — Averaged 46.3 per punt. Seems to be getting better.
KOR — Dion Lewis did have one KOR that went for 30 yards.
MISC —
* Curtis Marsh was the first guy down on opening KO and just missed making the tackle inside the 20.
I’ll have a Miami post up on Thursday. Wanted to get this posted today so it is filed away for posterity’s sake.
Feel free to comment if you like. Or ignore if you don’t want the nightmares to return.
I don’t know why you bothered to write such a long post for a game that never happened.
In fact, you seem to be forgetting the whole 2011-12 season never happened due to the lockout. Kind of a shame really, because the team looked very promising this year.
LOL. for real.
This explains so much.
On my second trip through the comments, this is really great stuff. This has Onion headline all over it:
Philadelphia fans seek return of lockout, retroactive cancellation of 2011 season.
Is it me, or have we created a VERY few amount of fumbles this year?? I guess that goes hand in hand with hitting people hard, in which we do not.
I’d settle for hitting people softly if that meant they weren’t missing a million tackles a game.
lol.
Don’t create alot of fumbles when the other team is running free into the endzone
As go the DTs in the Wide-9, so goes the defense. When the DTs play well, it seems Chaney and even the safties play better.
Success on defense in football, I guess like every other sport, requires strength up the middle. (1991 Eagles: JB/Pitts/Golic/B-n-E/Waters/Hopkins/Hoage. 2004 Eagles: Simon/Walker/Grasmanis/Trotter/Dawkins/Lewis. The 2004 group’s not in the 1991’s class, but far better than this bunch.)
The DTs as a group seem okay but definitely not dominant . . . or even consistently solid. MLB is a problem for Chaney. Maybe he’s really a 3-4 guy or — as Chris Collinsworth suggested a couple weeks ago, a good SLB who’s sacrificing for the team. Safety also is clearly a weak spot.
The key is the DTs, it seems to me.
“Dude, you’re the backup. Run. Don’t slide. Fight for every inch.”
He didn’t want to sign a two year deal here. He came here to ensure he left in one piece and stock up. The former might be true, but aside the second half of the Giants game, he has not looked like an NFL QB. Vince might throw a block but getting tackled is a different beast. Prime example of looking out for numero uno in a small way. Many players have pulled that this year. It’s a damn shame…
In defense of Vince’s 4 INTS, Seattle’s uniforms look a lot like ours.
Exactly. You have to remember Vince is just here on a 1-year deal after a short offseason. He can’t know everything.
He saw open players wearing green uniforms with birds on the helmets and threw to them. What more could you possibly expect from him?
“A lot of people were mad at Andy for not calling a timeout late in the half. I understood what he was doing. We had 7 points and things just weren’t clicking. He wanted to go in and settle things down. Then Seattle kicked it out of bounds and suddenly we’re near midfield. 10-20 extra seconds would have been huge.”
It’s one thing to understand what he was thinking, it is another for AR to be correct in his thinking. At worst, he should have called the time out and if we had a bad return on the kickoff plus a unsuccessful first play, that’s when you run the ball and run out the clock. Winning that game would probably not have made a difference in the season, but considering the state of the team, you have to position the team in the best way possible to take advantage of any luck they might get. There was no significant risk of calling a time out at the time. On top of that, defenses often give up a lot of receptions at the end of halves while playing more of a prevent-type defense, so even if we don’t end up scoring, there is a chance we jump start the offense a little bit. I think it was a dumb decision, and his reasoning for it didn’t change my feelings about the decision.
Can we all say it one more time: How did Derek Landri not make this team initially? He made plays all through preseason and now all through games. He has been our most consistent DT since we resigned him.
Also, talks of Brent Celek’s demise have been a bit premature. That guy is not the greatest athlete, but he somehow always makes the first guy miss or not get him down cleanly. He is showing that he can still be a solid starter for us, in my opinion.
My problem with Celek over the past year or so hasn’t been effort or athletic ability, it’s been the drops. He was dropping passes that hit him in the hands on a regular basis.
If he was incredibly athletic or a truly great blocking TE, that’s forgivable. I don’t think either really applies, though.
Fortunately it isn’t happening as much lately, or at least his drops are getting lost in the sheer avalanche of drops by all the other receivers.
my guess is that derek landri is the new sam rayburn. big time overachiever. not that its a bad thing.
they released anthony hargrove too, for cedric thornton.
Can we just skip the rest of the season and simply watch Kelce (4.89) and Peters (4.93) race each other in forties for three hours every Sunday?
I wanna see Kelce race Avant.
You know I’ve always been partial to Michelle Biesner myself.
She’s pretty, but Alex is a whole other level. Her voice makes her even more attractive to me. And she seems like a smart woman. Some sideline reporters seem ditzy.
So to sum up the season we need to draft in this order of importance.
LB
CB
DT
Glad to see thats the most constructive thing I can take from this season..
Unrelated question. Either Dallas or the Giants are playoff bound, who’d you rather see go? We’ve beaten both once, I dislike both teams pretty intensely, they will both likely lose in the wild card round..
I want the Cowboys in there. I think the Giants have potential to go deep. They’d probably be playing the Falcons or the Lions if they make it in, and I think they could outclass those guys. I still feel the ‘Boys are a one-and-done team with Tony Romo. It’d be nice to see that continue.
Tommy,
Quick draft question: I’ve read multiple mockdrafts, that have us picking an OT. The reasoning is that Todd is NOT having a good year, ranking near the bottom in every category (7 QB hits, 32 QB hurries). Is Todd having a bad year, as they suggest??
You’re not a big fan of taking an OT early (I’m not either) but if he truly is a liability, then we should pick one relatively early (round 3-4)
Who do you like in that range? I like Z. Sanders from Florida St. although I don’t think he’ll last that long…
I’m still working on mid-round OTs that fit us.
Hey Tommy, I need your help. Living in GA, I’ve caught a lot of flak this season about how poorly the Eagles are playing this season. I usually respond with, “Yeah, they’re terrible”, but have been switching between blaming the players and blaming the coaches. Now I know this team is full of talented players who have had success in the past, and the same can be said of the coaches (minus Juan), so how would interpret this team’s failure this year, and should more of the blame fall on the inadequacies of the players or the coaches? Thanks.
Via Bob Ford
“…Their 29 turnovers are the most in the league, and eight of the turnovers have ended red-zone drives. (Because this is a bizarre team having a bizarre season, it is only fitting that the Eagles have a better record [3-5] in games in which they suffer a red-zone turnover than in games in which they do not [1-3]. Go ahead. You explain that.) ”
Bizarre indeed Tommy
Boggles the mind.
Why is Asante playing? Really, can Marsh play worse? Give him the same safety help we give Asante, and at least he’ll try to tackle someone, may miss a few, but he’s a converted RB, needs all the reps he can get.
Interesting note on Rodgers in GB, they couldn’t keep him from competing hard on the scout team. I thought that was great, instead of the scout team going through the motions, giving the starters false confidence, encourage them to play hard and make it clear if the scout team beats up the starters, some players may be switching roles. Starters who can’t execute against a fired up scout team shouldn’t be starters, should they?
The saddest thing about this season is the lack of development by any LB who isn’t Tommy’s illegitimate son. I expected more from Mike Caldwell, same with Zordich and the young safeties – you’d figure two NFL veterans who got by on guile, not talent, could impart some of their knowledge. At this point, pull Chaney and give Matthews another shot.
I don’t think LB is that hard to fix, draft a MLB, sign a veteran SLB, and draft/sign some more bodies for competition. And this is the offseason to aggressively pursue UDFAs and street FAs with upside (no more WRs or OL who have no shot at making the team) – I mean you can say with a straight face that every defensive position is up for grabs.