Calmer Thoughts
Posted: November 22nd, 2015 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 439 Comments »Today was miserable. There was so much on the line and the team came up so small.
As expected, reaction to the loss is loud and angry. Among the ideas out there:
* Fire Chip Kelly
* Let Kelly stay as coach, but strip his GM power
* Cut Mark Sanchez
* Fire Bill Davis
* Bench multiple players
Someone called for Jeff Lurie to address the media and offer his thoughts.
Have we lost perspective? The Eagles got their butts kicked today. They got blown out last year. It also happened in 2013. And 2012. And 2011. And so on.
This one is especially painful because the Eagles lost to a rookie and it happened in a game that the team absolutely needed to win. Trust me, I was screaming at the TV today with a level of anger I’ve not had in a while. Still, bad games happen. This is part of life in the NFL.
The Pats lost 41-14 last year, but went on to win the Super Bowl. Bill Belichick didn’t panic. He fixed mistakes and got his team to play good football. They won 7 games in a row right after that debacle.
Obviously there are huge differences in that team and this Eagles team. I’m not saying Chip Kelly is going to fix the Eagles and have this team suddenly start winning games left and right. But Kelly was absolutely right when he talked about the need for a short memory in the postgame PC.
You never want to make too much of a game, good or bad. A big win today wouldn’t have helped with Thursday’s game. A bad loss can be put aside if the team is able to compartmentalize. Will this team do that? I have no idea.
I realize that part of the anger with this team goes beyond today. Last week was a bad loss as well. The whole season has been sloppy and very frustrating. Still, we’re in the middle of the season. There aren’t any big moves that are going to magically fix major problems.
The Eagles have to focus on fixing the problems that they can. Venting is fine for fans and the media, but Kelly, his coaching staff and the players need to get ready for Thursday. Learn what you can from the Bucs game and move on to the Lions.
I know plenty of people are now saying the season is over. It isn’t. There are 6 games left to go. I’m not here to preach to you about what can happen. My point is that the team has to keep grinding. There are only 16 games in a season. The team isn’t out of it until they are mathematically eliminated. And even then the team has to keep doing everything they can to win.
I don’t know how the season will play out. I never expected this team to be 4-6 so honestly, nothing is out of the question at this point. About the only thing I feel pretty sure about is that the team won’t go 10-6.
The defense played very well against the Dolphins. They limited Miami to one long TD drive. The other TD came after the blocked punt. The 3rd down defense was good (5-15). I thought for sure the defense would have a strong showing against the Bucs. I for sure thought the Eagles would control the run game. Mike Evans was the one guy who really scared me. I also thought Jameis Winston might make a play or two with his legs.
Instead, the defense was dreadful.
Every time I think I have a bit of a feel for this team, I find out I’m dead wrong.
I was pretty frustrated with the Eagles having to play on Thanksgiving. Now it may turn out to be a blessing. The best thing for this team, and everyone who follows them, is to move on to the next game.
I mean, there’s no way the Eagles lose to a crappy team like the Lions.
Right?
_
fluff
well, not all of it, I think its perfectly ok to call for ol chippers job at this point, in fact a whole lot of jobs should be on the line at this point, absolutely no positives for this year, this team is a dumpster fire, someone should be held accountable, do something lurie, what can it hurt at this point
I am curious. How does one “call for ol’ chipper’s job,” what is the value in doing so, and what effect are you expecting it to have?
Don’t tell that to TATE. They think they run the universe or something.
I’m not telling anything. I am asking. I truly don’t understand the mindset.
It comes from an exaggerated sense of power we think we have, or at least should have. Ultimately the only way the fan’s voice is heard is with their bank account. I suppose if one wants to call for Chip’s job they would do so by closing their wallet.
The one thing most concerns me, I didn’t even see: the reported shouting match twixt Sproles and Sanchez. Can anyone tell what that was about?
The pick-six came on a blown screen attempt to Sproles. Sanchez thought Sproles was running to a spot, but he had stopped because of traffic. They expressed their differences of opinion on the field. According to the Bob Brookover article below, they quickly resolved the issue…
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/eagles/20151123_Sanchez__Sproles_squabble_as_Eagles_offense_goes_awry.html
In the post game, Sanchez talked about it, too. He said they were both frustrated, yelled at each other, then talked and go it worked out.
That’s how a marriage SHOULD work.
I know. I always thought those two were going to end up together, but maybe not now.
I just thought of something that I saw from last year to this year. Both years we have seen sloppy football. Many of those wins last year may have been luck, but this team since last year has not been coached well.
That is true. Also, special teams scored a lot of touchdowns last year also. Think about the SF game. Defense and ST scored 14 points. If they don’t do that it’s a blowout.
Tommy, the big question is what is going on in the locker room. Has the coaching staff lost the backing of the players? Are the players just playing out the season?
We’ve heard plenty of complaints from ex-Eagles. You could put some of it down to sour grapes, but if there is something to it…well, change is coming sooner than you think.
That looked like a team that had quit on its coaching staff. If they were still trying really hard, that’s worrying in a different way.
I’m not a believer that a coach “loses” players until he’s been there for a long time or something very extreme happens.
The Eagles won 2 weeks ago. They should have won last week. Today was an anomaly (getting blown out). There was no lack of effort. The problem was results.
This team isn’t making plays right now and that is killing it.
Would it not be fair to say they were extraordinarily flat & looked completely unprepared, at least on defense?
I hate when people say unprepared. The coaches spent the whole week showing film and installing a gameplan.
The players did a terrible job of executing the plan.
I wish Davis had blitzed more and been more aggressive so I wasn’t in love with the plan, but it wasn’t due to lack of preparation.
It’s certainly in the realm of possibility that the players did the best they could with garbage gameplans. After all, Reid used to always say HE didn’t put the players in position to make plays. Not “THEY didn’t execute”
OK. Serious question though- how much of a coach’s job is to get a player mentally ready to play versus just schematically ready (designing the plan)? Is the proper mindset being instilled, & if it isn’t wouldn’t that indicate a potential loss of at least some of the locker room?
That’s a good question. Maybe it’s better if a team… practices?
So you’re say they have the requisite talent and were coached / motivated properly, they just didn’t execute?
Only things that were missing from this game were a hold, false start, and bad snap from Kelce (any or all of which may have happened when I wasn’t paying close attention). Other than those, same bad stuff we’ve seen all season in all phases – just more of it.
What I saw today was what I saw in the last half of 2012 – a team completely over-matched, poor coached, and undisciplined. That said, I don’t think Chip should be fired. He earned a bad season after 2013 and 2014.
The biggest thing that scares me is Chip’s ability to evaluate NFL talent. Bradford has not worked out. WRs aren’t on the same page as either QB – haven’t been all season (nor RBs for that matter). Miles Austin is a disaster, as is Riley Cooper. The OL is not good. The defense can’t get pressure on any QB without blitzing, which I suspect is due to scheme and coaching more than talent.
My worst nightmare is Chip signing Bradford to an expensive multi-year contract that keeps him an Eagle through 2017 or 2018.
My thoughts exactly in what I said below. Concerning to see the same sloppy play from last year.
Someone at the other place cracked that Chip will leave, but not before signing Bradford to a huge contract and dumping Cox.
Ugggh. That would be Holmgren-esque.
What concerns me is SBs injury makes it harder to evaluate him. He has shown incremental improvement with better pocket presence better movement outside the pocket, better accuracy, but it is small steps. If the Eagles collapse continues, then his market value will! drop. I can see the Eagles signing him to relatively low cost, short term contract, letting Sanchez go, and going after a QB in the draft. All this assumes the Eagles have a top 10 pick in the draft. Either way, I think Lurie gives Chip another year. Let’s hope he learns from his mistakes. I am off the Chip wagon, but that doesn’t mean I believe all the crap about him that is said on the boards.
I want Kelly to be successful and was on board with all the changes he made in the offseason. I was willing to accept a step back in order to take three steps forward. However, all I have seen this season is a terribly inconsistent, dumb, mistake prone and talent depleted team. The offensive line is horrendous with no young, talented players on the roster other than Lane Johnson. The wide receivers have been bad all season (there may be some upside there because of youth, but has anyone really seen any yet?). Bradford has improved, but, guess what, he’s hurt again. The defense cannot get off the field. The “vaunted” front seven, the supposed strength of our defense, is either way overrated, a mirage or lacks motivation. There is no pass rush. The defensive backfield is still the same even after an almost entire turnover of personnel.
Bottom line, the changes have not brought any improvement to the team and there does not look like there is much upside to the current personnel on the roster.
Coaching? Well, Kelly put this team together. Whether he and Davis are scheming correctly is beyond my pay grade.
Tommy, love your blog – but surely there’s only so many times you can write such fluff? We need to focus on next week, players just need to start making plays for their teammates, blowouts happen in football, we’re not out of it yet, etc, etc… I enjoy reading your analysis of what’s happening on the field, not your excuses for what’s happening! It’s frustrating enough trying to get up each week at 5am on a Monday morning to watch the games, let alone having to read excuses afterwards – especially given it’s now way more than halfway through the season. At this point, I’ve just accepted that the team is what it is…
Sorry for the rant, but can we get back to analysing, and away from excusing/justifying? (please)
Rapid responses from Tommy. He’ll do analysis as the week goes on. He’s gotta look at tape and dissect what he sees. Can’t do that 5 hours after a game, especially since he has a full-time job doing something different.
My experience with fans is that on the day of a blowout, good analysis is wasted. People want to vent.
I wrote this as a simple reaction to the state of things.
I like Jimmy’s writings today better than yours. This should not happen.
Jimmy does good work. Just don’t tell him I said that.
Honestly, I like Tommy’s level-headedness after an embarrassing loss. The easy and natural reaction is to lash out at everything related to the team, but I do appreciate his broader view of things.
I’m gonna say this again…. We should have got Bruce Arians
P.S give Howie back control
I think a big issue is that chip has made a lot of questionable moves in his short tenure here that included letting a lot of good players go. I know the NFL is a business but when you make moves the fans question and then you fail to replace said players. It just puts you more in the spotlight. That is why people want chip gone.
Fans want coaches gone when the team isn’t winning as much as expected. Simple as that. Isn’t a Chip thing.
I do agree his personnel moves have brought extra frustration. Some of those players were very popular with fans.
Not just popular with fans, but productive.
DJax may have been a pain in the ass, but he was a much better receiver than Miles Austin, Riley Cooper, Josh Huff, etc.
McCoy may have been similarly a pain in the ass, but he was more productive than Murray has been, and contra what everyone says his elusive style probably actually fits this offense better because he’s good at making unblocked defenders (of whom there are many in zone read schemes) miss, which Murray is not.
Mathis may have been a declining player but he’s still better than the guard pu-pu platter of Allen Barbre, Matt Tobin, and Andrew Gardner they rolled out this season.
At this point it is clear Foles is a limited quarterback and not the answer. However the same is true of Bradford, and Foles was much cheaper in terms of both salary cap space and draft pick compensation.
Etc. Kelly has dumped players who played well here and replaced them with guys who have not played as well. That, more than the popularity of the players in question, is why the fans are mad.
LOL! “Guard Pu Pu Platter” just became my new favorite thing. Awesome.
Agree 100%. Kelly’s letting Mathis go and not drafting an offensive lineman in 2 yrs. has been his biggest mistake. Some of his moves have been good–Hicks, Maxwell, Thurmond. Kiko and yes Bradley may yet turn out to be good. LETTING Djax go was a mistake and Boykin should have been kept for this season. Cooper and Austin will be gone,, but the Eagles will too many holes tonfill next year to get to the playoffs and win one.
And this is why I never joined the line of people waiting to fellate Billy Davis and this defense. They always just set you up to let you down.
I want to believe in him. I really thought he turned it around this year and was going to finally have that stellar defense.
The talent is there, just not translating and you have to look at the coach. He’s never had a good defense wherever he’s coached.
I’m willing to let this game pass, but if I see more games like this going into the end of the season, I would hope we’d see some coaching changes – and that’s both sides of the ball.
Never been more than mediocre now in his 7th year as DC coordinator. Just out of his depth there and he’ll be an easy scapegoat this offseason.
Scapegoat is such a tough word. Question. Do you think a better D-coordinator gets better results?
If so, is it really scapegoating, or are you saying that they’ll blame him for everything wrong with the season even though the offense hasn’t performed well at all?
Yes I do think a better coordinator gets slightly better results and I meant blaming him for what else is wrong with this season. Invested a lot of resources in the defense the past 2 offseason with little to show for it.
Doesn’t help that Rowe is so bad that he can’t even get on the field in place of biggers or maragos. Ditto the ms2 pick.
Agree about MS2. I know rookie CBs take their lumps, so have to wait and see how it turns out next year.
I think a better DC gets much better results, but we agree that he might get blamed for everything else. The offense has been anemic and haven’t really shown any signs of being a stellar offense.
They are boring, and worse, unwatchable. I’d be fine with dinking and dunking if they could be consistent and move the ball and score. They can’t even do that.
Rowe was on the field today.
Though I only noticed because he happened to be in the general area after giving up a big pass to a wide open receiver.
Yeah. Saw that too. Wondered to myself why I hadn’t seen him in the game. Big pass play. There he was.
Yeah, it’s not like they were the Saints under Rob Ryan…
Hard to say what happened today. Tampa routinely had guys wide open, but the Eagles also occasionally had guys in position to make plays, and they just didn’t. So is it the players’ fault, or Davis’?
As with everything, probably a bit of both.
So, I guess the calls to bench Bradford in favor of Sanchez will fade away now…
Of course. I do think Bradford played extremely bad early on in the year. His last several games he’s shown steady improvement. I’m okay with him. I just can’t buy the notion that he’s a ‘franchise QB’ who can lead us to a SB. My biggest gripe with Bradford is that he doesn’t take chances down the field. In turn, he shortens the field and makes it easier on opposing teams to defend us.
I will say this regarding the QB situation. If Bradford can’t go Thursday, just start Thad.
I say sit them both and let the actual bench play.
This made me laugh. First time all day I’ve done that.
Kudos, sir.
is thad lewis’ nickname “the actual bench,” bc if that’s the case let’s see it. we’ve already seen enough from the sanchize
Trash Can will block for it
Sanchez is still the guy who helped choke away the division last year. I’m also happy to say I was never on the “bench Bradford” bandwagon.
I definitely don’t want to fire Kelly. Teams that fire their coach mid-season usually get an interim head coach bump and actually win a few games…
I want to lose as many games we can so we can taste that sweet, sweet high draft pick!
At this point I’m not sure I trust him to know what to do with it.
Making any coaching challenges right now serves no purpose but this reminds me a lot of the ’97 season for several reasons. Offense sputtered under Detmer, defense struggled, and Rhodes made a bunch of bad acquisitions that offseason and had a terrible draft too.
Team ended in a tailspin and then the wheels feel off the following season as Hoying wasn’t the answer, the team got thin on talent in too many areas, and this team tuned out Rhodes by mid season. Not hard to see something like that unfolding with the Eagles and Kelly over the next year or so.
Agreed regarding the coaching change. The ‘fire Chip’ brigade needs to chill. The reality is, he will definitely be back next year (unless he bolts back to the college game) and he’s earned that right.
I do have serious concerns going forward though. Under Chip’s tenure we have yet to draft a quality starting DB. We still haven’t found/drafted an stud OLB. Our defense has steadily improved, but still is extremely vulnerable as evidenced by today. I refuse to believe our defense can’t play at higher level with better coaching. Will Chip be satisfied with Billy Davis or will he finally look for an upgrade?
On to the offense. This is where I’m most concerned. In 2013, Chip revolutionized our offense. We finished 4th in points and 2nd in yards gained. Our QBs threw for 4,000+ yards and 32 TDs/ 9ints. The rushing game was first in the league in yards (2,500+) and in yards per attempt (over 5 yards!). In 2014, we finished 3rd in points and 5th in yards. The TD to int ratio dipped quite a bit (27/21) and our running game took a major step back – just under 2,000 yards (15th in the league). In 2015, the #’s are most certainly going to slide even more.
I know the excuses will come pouring in about injuries. Well, so what. Every team in the league deals with injuries. It’s Chip’s fault he didn’t think about building OL depth.
You look at the offense and you wonder what is there to be hopeful for? There’s still major uncertainty at the most crucial position (QB). We gave away Shady for an inferior back. We still heavily under-utilize guys like Sproles and Ertz. I love Celek, but he’s getting old. Ditto for Jason Peters. Our young WRs show promise, but have proven they are nowhere near as talented as DJax and JMac were. What Chip continues to see in Riley Cooper is beyond me. Teams around the league can find guys off the street to perform at a higher level than Poop. Whereas we use to stretch the field vertically, now we try horizontally and it significantly stalls this offense. The play-calling has become so bland.
Ugh. Sorry for the rant.
Disagree strongly Tommy about the season not being over. It ended today even in this poor division.
Even Spadaro on the 5th quarter was just dejected after the game and said he doesn’t know who this team rallies around. I thought it was a really damning comment from in organizational insider.
This team isn’t pointing fingers yet but I think they are a 1-2 losses away from doing that. Kelly’s act of placing blame on the players can’t be going over well.
Bob,
The Eagles may fall apart and end up 6-10. But the season isn’t over until it is literally over. I’m not trying to sell you hope. The point is that they have to keep playing. We’ll see what happens.
I was on board until today because they could possibly have gone 8-8 and won this division. I just don’t see this how this team goes 4-2 or better though.
They needed to win this game today, got rolled, and lots of terrible body language and post game comments. Momentum is overrated especially in the NFL today but this team doesn’t have the horses or the leadership/cohesion to pull this out.
I just against any knee jerk reactions. Your right they need to play this out but I hope that if it gets out of reach in the last game or two they start a few younger players to see what they have.
They wouldn’t do that, remember the last game of last season?
Math vs. Trust
The most important aspect of this season is finding out whether Bradford is the QB of the future or not. How the team does overall is less important. I hope we will have an answer to that question either way.
Seems like we already have that answer. No
Chip has a remarkable talent for having the team play progressively worse throughout the year.
The 2013 team got better during the year. Went 7-1 down the stretch.
Last year, no question the team got worse.
This team had gotten better from the 0-2 start, but today’s showing changed that.
I think the Thursday game will once again be much, much closer than it should be and I also predict us losing. I believe this game was the one that broke the camels back. However, I also believe Chip still doesn’t have “his” qb and will nab him in the upcoming draft. Too bad it didn’t happen sooner.
Who though? Not a good class.
You can arguable say that about every class. The class with Luck was supposed to be amazing with RGIII, Tannehill, Luck, Weeden. Luck and Russell Wilson (arguably) are the 2 that really stick out at me. It can go either way in other words.
I mean there’s Cardale and Vernon Adams that I could see him being interested in
Please no
No and no
It lacks a premier guaranteed 1-1 QB, but it’s not bad as a class. I think it compares similarly to the 2014 class.
Lynch won’t be there but essentially has all the tools that got Bortles drafted 3rd overall.
I think there’s a chance Goff could be there, because people are overthinking it
Wentz is kind of like an Andy Dalton/Cam Newton lovechild.
I’m not a Cook fan (because most of his teammates fucking hate him, not good for a QB) but some people are high on him.
Well, to be fair, a close game would be an improvement
Tommy, you have said multiple times that you like Chip because he is a smart guy and isn’t so stubborn that he will stick with plays that aren’t working. You lauded him for his ability to adapt. Do you still think this way and how do you think he will fix the problems going forward?
my name’s not tommy but i think the difference will be whether it’s scheme (which at least on offense i don’t think it is) or coaching which on both sides of the ball i think it is.
Ryan Day i think has to go. The QB play has been atrocious all year. QBs continue not to see the field, WRs are just running clear out routes and every ball either goes 10yds to the middle of the field to jmatt or a TE, or shallow to the sidelines (RBs). i’m not sure why they made the decision not to get WRs involved at all or make the reads such that we want to throw to the middle of the field first. But it’s gotta be the easiest team to defend just play coverage in the middle of the field or look for a screen.
I think there’s an issue w/ chip and the players. Almost every player that’s left has aired grievances with chip. and that’s ok when youre 10-6, when you’re 4-6 with a bunch of new guys that thought they were joining a contender it’s a bit more frisky. Bmax doesn’t want to tackle so i think teams are just running at him.
Worst part is we’re not getting blown out by good teams. We’re losing to bad teams, TB had the no 1 pick last year.
When was the last time you saw a WR make a contested catch 30-40 yards downfield for a big gain? Its either they are wide open and the qb happens to notice them or they don’t throw downfield at all. I find it funny that Huff’s stat line was 1 catch for 39 yards and a TD. He was never heard from again….
well it’d be too predictable to go back to him. i think we don’t play ryan mathews more b/c he’s got terrible hands and most of our passes go to RBs.
I was at the game today and I can’t remember a game so many fans simply left at the end of the 3rd quarter.
So many plays and such bad body language by some many players on the sidelines. Lots of guys not standing up but just siting down by themselves on the bench.
goad to hear this. its a tradition I have know since the early 70s ..you show up even when your team stinks but you cant stick around forever… ive always felt that the fans cant mindlessly obey ..management must know how pissed and how painful it is to suck ..empty seats empty stadium and no national games on tv say it best
My friend stayed and said if there were more than 2k or 3k by the end of the game he was surprised.
Sorry you had to sit through such a stinker, Bob.
We were watching the game on tv and wondered why there was no loud booing. Then the camera panned the stands, there was nobody there.
Boos were incredibly loud as they went in at half but in the 2nd half it was apathy and lots of exits during the course of the 3rd quarter.
Chip should have sucked this bad last year and go Mariota I could love with that.
And so it begins…
**************************************
One anonymous Eagles player questioned the effort of DeMarco Murray after he slid to the ground before taking a hit during Sunday’s loss to Tampa Bay.
At the end of a short-yardage run, Murray had an opportunity to run over or around Dolphins 185-pound cornerback Brice McCain. Instead of finishing his run, Murray slid at McCain’s feet. “Well, when you see DeMarco sliding before getting hit, you tell me. Was that giving full effort?” said the anonymous Eagles player. “You see that [expletive] and it makes you wonder.” Later in the game, Mark Sanchez and Darren Sproles were seen arguing after a screen pass that was intercepted. The Philly Inquirer counted “at least a dozen missed tackles” by Eagles players as Doug Martin ran for 235 yards. Dating back to last season, the Eagles have lost nine of their last 14 games.
Demarco has been doing crap like that for a few weeks now…. running out of bounds or not turning stuff up field…
for who, for what.
Waters ran behind just as bad as offensive line if not worse. He earned his yards here and always a shame this is how waters is most vividly remembered here. One of my most underrated Eagles especially with the underwhelming players he played with here at qb and offense in general.
for who for what also goes with bmax’s tackling.
As soft as Samuel but not nearly the corner cover or the ability to make plays.
another guy they are stuck paying big dollars too too at least the next 2 years. Only reason maxwell didn’t get more flak was as bad as Carroll was in the red zone and as biggers was all day long.
i thought biggers was decent before today. was sort of surprised not to see more of rowe, but carrol was putting on his best fletcher impersonation.
He’s not paid to tackle…. Deion voice
That’s not at all how I remember him. To me, he was the most complete back we’ve ever had in my lifetime (born in ’82). Honestly, he’s about as close to a HOF player without being one as you can get. Dude was an absolute monster. He was a duel threat RB. Great combination of size, speed, and power. He was outstanding in space and a great receiver.
I know all about that infamous quote. Back then though, I only watched ESPN and didn’t follow all the local coverage (I grew up in the York/Gettysburg PA area). So to me, his legacy wasn’t really tarnished – strictly as a player.
Top 5 all-time for me. He was always one of my favorites.
Anyone have video of the slide? That does sound weird.
Just to clarify that blurb was taken from Roto who took it from an article by McLane. They make it sound like all that happened today but it’s actually referencing last week’s game as well.
i thought he slid to get out bounds.
Waiting for him all year to look like the guy with the Boys last year and besides late in the Dallas game I haven’t seen it.
Being stuck with this guy for 2 more years at big dollars is going to be a real problem. Let alone if he starts acting like a prima donna grousing about his carries.
this is one of those games im glad wasn’t aired in my viewing area. i thought i was going to listen to it online on the 610 site. then i saw on the ticker of the redskins game that winston had already thrown 3 td passes and i thought better of it….
Justice impressed me today. He wasn’t asked to do that much but made a couple of real money throws including a few in the red zone in tight space.
His only real ‘mistake’ was forcing the throw despite barwin being in his face and unblocked.
Tommy, I have to respectfully disagree about giving the Eagles 1 mulligan a year for a blowout loss. In 2013, we got smoked by an extremely potent Broncos team. They were a matchup nightmare (Manning vs. a historically bad secondary). Last year, same situation except it was against the Packers. Aaron Rodgers, Peyton (when he still had an arm) Manning. I don’t think anyone was really shocked by those losses.
I am not shocked that we lost to a subpar team today. I am shocked, however, with the ease at which they steamrolled us. This wasn’t a potent offense we played. Sure, they have some nice weapons. They scored 10 points in the previous week against the Cowboys. Winston had 10 TDs/9 ints coming into this game. He threw for half his season total through 9 games against us in basically a half. He should have had a 6th, but his WR let it slip threw his hands. His previous couple of games he played well in were against the NFL’s bottom feeders.
Doug Martin is a good back, but there’s no excuse for the horrible job of tackling our defense displayed today. There were 2 3rd and short runs he made where our defense showed terrible awareness, lane assignment, and pursuit.
I definitely think some of the guys quit (not for the season, but at least for the game) today. I saw Taylor Hart once get pancaked horribly. Just flat out destroyed as if he was a rookie lining up against Anthony Munoz. Just one of many embarrassing examples today.
You look back at past coaches who have led their teams to SB titles and in most cases, you start to see a major upward trend by their 3rd season. We are seeing the opposite. Not saying Chip can’t get the ship headed in the right direction, just saying we are in the midst of some very turbulent waters.
If you likes the Manning and Rodgers shows of years past, just wait until we play Brady in a couple weeks.
The only guaranteed loss I was willing to concede going into the season.
Most embarrassing part is that it was the pedestrian Doug Martin who simply owned them today. Nothing fancy just was trucking guys today especially as Eagles players were going for the strip at times today instead of just trying to tackle him,
This wasn’t vintage Emmitt Smith running behind those talented Boys lines and wracking up yardage in larger and larger chunks as the game went on at the Vet.
not disciplined running. ike reese said that hicks + meco are way more fundamentally sound than kiko + kendricks. Said those two are likely not to have proper run fits / overrun plays. Heard kiko also looked a step slow.
I think Kiko is very rusty… he hasn’t played most of the year
He looked a whole honking foot slow.
we tend to hate on arians, but that’s a well coached team.
Sigh. It doesn’t feel right to agree because I think he’s a crybaby. But he’s a damn good coach.
Its getting hard to watch this play it safe offense. As the game goes on the opposing defense starts creeping down and condensing the field because all we do is throw it short, dump off to the backs and run.
For some reason we go long stretches where the QB doesn’t even look at the outside WRs. On that first pic, Agholor was wide open.. We never even looked Huff’s way
There are better looking offenses in Pop Warner football. That PW footage of Jameis was more exciting than anything the Eagles did.
it’s gotta be coaching right? doesn’t seem like either qb moves beyond first read.
Im sure our WRs(who have been playing better) will take the blame for this.
Here’s an interesting follow up question to this.
Do you think Chip is trying the short stuff to find some consistency, then try and spread things out? Or, is it the design of the offense to always do this?
maybe that’s what it is.
I can’t figure it out, but I see one of two scenarios.
If it’s just consistency, maybe they figure it out but realize they need better players.
If it’s design, then this won’t last more than next year.
better players? all your top draft picks are ball catchers. but we don’t have anyone that really helps the qb
Maybe we go OL heavy this draft? Trade the whole draft for Mariota?
Ertz was overthrown a lot today. I still think Jmatt is wasted in the slot
I feel like we never play to any of our WRs strengths. We have big WRs we just throw outs, ins and crosses all game.
we know Cooper can magically get deep and Ags has the speed as well
I don’t know… I thought we started out good early in the game. Then we just settled for shallow crossers and dumping it off o the back. We have the oddest offensive play calling I’ve ever seen
The Eagles would be in much, much better shape with a healthy Parkey all year. As bad as they have been, today possibly the worst, they are could have won several more games with a 100% kicker.
i felt differently last week, i’m starting to feel like sturgis isn’t the issue.
I think Dorrenbos has been an issue on some of the misses this year.
He’s part of it but if Parkey makes those kicks do you consider the team lucky like when they had the #1 special teams or do you consider this a work in progress, flawed but group effort team?
might be able to hid issues but team will still eventually get exposed. maybe they’d be playing harder if they’d won more but the team is still bad.
How frustrating is that last sentence after all this bullshit hype for 3 years, as of right now, this team is just bad. A bottom third team. They were able to catch the league off balance in the first year but lost the playoff game. The league was “caught of guard” with the emphasis of ST and the Eagles got away with some real stinkers. This year, they are just bad….. Three years of build up and let down. It really sucks as a fan knowing the team you love may not be any closer to a SB than they were 4 years ago……
really gotta hope chipper learns. i think he was pretty arrogant after first two years, hopefully someone can get through to him
I consider the lack of 80% plus of kickoffs being touchbacks a major issue; that is all Sturgis.
When you waste a roster spot on Barner rather than allowing Parkey an extra few weeks to heal up; those type of things happen.
gotta be nice to have a fitzgerald.
Or an offense that runs pro passing concepts/routes
or a coach that knows how to deal w/ nfl players.
or a coach that doesn’t settle for mediocrity.
Isnt that how we got into this situation? Because Chip wanted to be great and good?
i think dumping mccoy, maclin, mathis, etc. rubbed certain guys the wrong way, think they felt the same way about foles. i wonder if the homegrown guys were a little suspicious coming into the year.
guys he bought in this year were mercenaries not “high character” guys so it’s a little weird when you’re dropping homegrown talent for run reason and then bringing in new guys that don’t meet your main criteria.
I think Chip had a pretty picture in his mind… but it didn’t look as good once he started putting paint on the canvas.
This team has no identity and I think that is on Chip. We have no go to guy…. not because of talent, but because Chip has harped on this WR by committee BS or WR corp. The team doesn’t even feed its best RB….
Good teams get the ball into their playmakers hands. We don’t care who we get the ball too
What moves made us think that we truly would be good though?
Alonso? Injured most of the time. One year wonder?
Bradford? Well..if you think he’ll truly be that system QB after years of being not good..then I have something to tell you.
Letting Mathis go and letting Tobin/Barbre start? Nope I don’t care how you’d like to spin it but Mathis is still doing better than both guys in Denver
Murray and Mathews? Great but now we have so much money tied up in one position that relies on the OL to be good. The OL is not good.
Maxwell and Carroll? Anything is better than last year but how good can they be when their old teams thought they were that expendable?
Thurmond paid off in coverage but we definitely are weaker in the run game since Thurmond tackles like a CB..oh wait he was a CB.
When you keep banking on hope and potential, you’re going for broke. Chip is not taking well calculated gambles especially when he thinks he can take turds and polish them into gold.
Im not the guy who sunk the team… Chip gambled and he lost
We’re all mad, but some disagreements here.
Maxwell > Williams. There’s no way around this. He’s horrible in Seattle, and their defense is suffering because of him.
Anyone > Fletcher. Carroll is an upgrade, though it’s tough to make that argument after the worst game of the season. To me, in short, the defensive backfield is way better than last year.
I’ll take Thurmond’s lack of tackling on runs over Allen’s missed assignments, bad angles, and missed tackles.
Can’t use Tobin as a starter for an excuse. Gardner got hurt, but improved after his first start. Barbre is average. Tobin is average. Mathis was too, and never healthy a full season. He’s doing okay in Denver, but there’s no guarantee he’d be playing at an all-pro level in this offense. Lets not forget he got rid of Herremanns who can’t even start now. Those weren’t bad moves if they like the talent they have. The OL is the one place where they need talent, but the people they got rid of aren’t making a difference on this team.
Bradford as a system QB has kept improving. No he’s not a “franchise” QB, but where will we get one at this point? Taking a shot on him wasn’t a bad idea since we knew Foles wasn’t the guy. A system QB that doesn’t turn the ball over (which Bradford was getting better at) might work when others aren’t making terrible mistakes. There’s no one here that thought Kelce would be a detriment this year. No penalties today, but there were bad snaps. Sigh. That’s a different story tho.
I’m not so mad at Chip the GM because the guys he got rid of weren’t going to make this team significantly better.
I’m mad at Chip the coach, because I think he needs better assistants and better game planning. I like the talent we have, but I don’t like how it’s being used. Week to week we see mental lapses and mistakes that should have been fixed over the previous weeks.
The offense seems boring and predictable. After today I have to say the same thing about the defense. This isn’t talent IMO, but coaching. The coaches have failed this team over the last few weeks and I’m not sure they know how to fix it.
He let great be the enemy of decent.
need OD to give us some inside information
Haven’t seen OD around much lately.
Not since we started losing?
Yes, since the season started.
Just joking, but his frequency of appearance did seem to decline around that time. I enjoyed having him around here.
I believe he had a rather serious and morbid health issue. Of course Im not 100%
He’s popped into a few comment threads over the last few weeks, but nothing major.
When did he ever have any? I remember him making a lot of claims before the draft, and not a single one of them amounted to anything.
Seriously, he’s just another guy on the internet.
The problem Tommy is that it’s not just that we lost today’s game in an embarrassing fashion. It’s that the loss is the latest nadir in what this point is a clear downward trend. Kelly came in and in first year finished strong, won ten games, and made the playoffs with what everyone thought was a very undertalented team. He made some significant changes and the next season his team finished poorly, won ten games, and missed the playoffs. He made even more drastic changes and now it appears they’ll be lucky to finish .500. The ship appears to be taking on water and it’s increasingly hard to have faith that Kelly is the one to fix it. Bruce Arians dismissed Kelly’s offense as a college gimmick in 2013. We all scoffed at him for it. But what if he was right? At this point, what evidence do we have that Kelly is actually a transformational coach and not just the latest failed flavor of the month?
Defending Chip and the team is admirable, but if anyone should be playing the role of cheerleader it should be Lurie. If he chooses not to, then that’s just another slap in the face to the fans.
“The team isn’t out of it until they are mathematically eliminated. And
even then the team has to keep doing everything they can to win.”
They’re out of it, Tommy – it clearly showed on the field today, whether you want to admit it or not. Sure, they didn’t literally lay down like Albert Haynesworth did on that infamous play with the Redskins, but they were definitely not giving 110%. And I think we’ll see that again this week, with the short week, being on the road and going against a Detroit team that has some momentum with 2 straight wins. Something on the order of 31-13 snooze-fest I predict.
No, Chip is starting to get a Richie Kotite feel to him – namely that those early W’s were just a mirage (remember that Kotite actually won 21 games his first two years as HC). This is not to say that Chip is as bad a HC as Kotite, but his gimmick offense has gotten exposed and he is proving himself to be woefully bad as an NFL GM/personnel guy.
And in terms of the team having to keep doing everything they can to win even when they are mathematically eliminated, give me an f-ing break Tommy. If this was “players coach” Andy, yea I could see that potentially happening, but with aloof Chip and his general indifference to his players, are you kidding me – they’ll be playing to avoid getting hurt, not to win games for the Chippa, who they know can always head back for a multi-million dollar payday back in the college ranks.
No, stick a fork in this team – they’re about to become as done as the old turkey on Thanksgiving.
The offense is not gimmicky.
“In marketing language, a gimmick is a unique or quirky special feature that makes something “stand out” from its contemporaries. However, the special feature is typically thought to be of little relevance or use”
Looking pretty gimmicky now.
Ok so by all means explain how a spread offense with a zone run scheme and WCO passing game is a gimmick?
Or is it a shitty lazy way to dismiss offensive struggles?
not gimmicky enough if you ask me. Vanilla as vanilla gets.
The offense feels almost sarcastic. Like if by some miracle we got to the superbowl Chip will finally unveil his playbook.
What is gimmicky about the offense?
Not that it helps. Even though I’m critical of Billy D, he seems to always know what he’s talking about. I don’t understand the disconnect between when he talks and what happens on the field.
Of Davis or Shurmur, I feel like Davis should be an excellent coordinator. Has the resume, the pedigree, and the knowledge. It just doesn’t seem to translate all the time.
some people can talk better than they can walk
Sometimes this is the conclusion that I struggle to come to. But yeah, it seems if you can talk the talk, you can walk the walk.
*should walk the walk…
I’m still waiting for our CBs to press WRs at the LOS. We have been quick slanted to death all season
we’ve been hearing we’re a press man team for 3 years
Jam the Wr and blitz the QB…
I cant stand rushing 4 and playing coverage
yeah there’s always an excuse for why we can’t get to the qb, but that’s how you beat quarterbacks is to sack them.
I like the tension in the NBA right now; what happens first, the Sixers get a win or the Warriors get a loss?
The latter, and it’s painful to say that.
We are either going to beat the Wolves tonight or the Lakers on December 1st, I figure Okafor will have his biggest game of the season against one of the two franchises that passed on him..
Not a Sixers’ fan–you guys are trying to tank, right? Or has he flipped the switch to trying to win now?
Worried about the coach now. They’ve lost winnable games, and they have more turnovers than Stouffer’s.
happiest guy after 2014 offseason, matt barkely.
The sad thing is: the Lions are the better football team right now. Don’t think Eagles will come away with a win.
Thursday night games are always weird. Factor in it’s at noon, and who the hell knows. It’s about as likely that we win 50-7 as lose by that scoreline.
True. But my expections for this team is as low as the EUR fx rate against the dollar these days.
It’s a flawed team, but not as broken as people make it out to be.
I mean we’re not Chelsea.
Haha. Nice one, mate. I’d be happy to be West Ham these days!!
Media Mike is blowing bubbles in joy.
Frankly if Arsenal doesn’t win it I hope Leicester wins it all for the sheer absurdity.
Arsenal may have never had it easier to win it all. Leicester winning it all would be even more funny than Eagles getting a franchise QB though…! 😉
Unfortuantely the injury crisis at arsenal is currently killing us. We literally started our backup LB at LW the other day. We played our 8th choice RW the game before that. We have no healthy DMs left. So frustrating. I’m starting to notice a recurring motif in my sports fandom…
But you still have one of the greatest German defenders of all time…! ;))
I love me the Big Fuckin German. But come on now if we’re talking German Arsenal players its gotta be the maestro Mesut
If there was a big portion irony involved in your reply, I’ll defo agree. But unfortunately Ozil has been a shell of his former self, at least in the last caps played for Germany. 🙁
He’s leading the premier league in assist. He’s been amazing.
Wow. Didn’t know that. Let’s hope he can carry this over to the matches for Germany.
He’s also leading the league in chances created.
Isn’t part of the problem with Germany that he gets forced to play LW?
He’s thriving for Arsenal as the 10 in a 4-2-3-1. He gets to orchestrate the attacks and does a good job drifitng to find space and angles that other people don’t see. He’s been playing at this level since he came back from injury last spring. It’s absolutely a sight to behold.
He’s going to finish the year with something like 10-15 goals and 25-30 assists (and a hell of alot of hockey assists).
That’s insane numbers.
To be honest I don’t know what his problem is when playing for Germany. He’s not playing LW as he’s been playing more center / right field only. Maybe it’s because we have already a typical ’10’ with Tony Kroos and/or Marco Reus. Our midfield is packed, or shall I say stacked! A nice problem to have though. 😉
Ahhhhh someday America will have a real number 10.
Everyone claiming that Lurie is gonna fire Chip or not resign him are just delusional. Chip isn’t going back to college either or gonna get replaced as GM after 1 year. what kind of billion dollar team do u think Lurie is running ?? All you cry babies dry your eyes. And I’m tired of all these talking heads running their mouths about all the players Chip cut. Look at their stats… they aren’t exactly setting the NFL on fire. It would have been great to resign Maclin but whatever… he chose otherwise. The Eagles need more playmakers period… Playmakers who will work towards team goals. that will take time to acquire and high draft picks. I don’t believe Chip is so blind to his vision that he will not change his tactics but he has a vision and a strategy. I’m sure we will see some coaching changes this off season but who really knows what goes on behind closed doors. Everyone is trying to read Chip’s mind by his brief press conferences. This is a rebuilding year no matter what anyone thinks… look at all the personnel changes. At least we will get a better draft pick… I was also optimistic about winning the past 2 games n the Lions game but now I see a struggle to win 2 more games. But I don’t see Chip going anywhere n he’s gonna build his team how he envisions it. I’m sure he had plenty of facts to support his contention that he needs GM authority to build his team. Bash me if u want…
I generally agree with your thoughts on the fact that Chip isn’t getting fired, demoted from GM, and/or going back to college.
What I don’t agree with is; “This is a rebuilding year no matter what anyone thinks… look at all the personnel changes.”
The teams to whom the Eagles are losing aren’t acceptable. Neither is this 4-6 record.
But I agree with your core conclusion the Chip will be here next year.
If this was a rebuilding year then the Eagles shouldn’t have invested such large and long-term dollars in Maxwell and Murray via FA then unless Kelly thought they both would be productive starters over the next 3-4 years after signing them.
I could see why he maybe thought that with Maxwell given his age even if the track record wasn’t there. Murray signing I just don’t get then. It was more of a ‘well we didn’t get Gore and traded McCoy so we have some money to spend on something shiny.’ That is a poor way to allocate resources and quickly runs NFL teams into real problems.
How many years has Chip been here? 3 years? And the roster is a mess and he is just beginning to rebuild… will he be able to?
Now… dunno… got some LBs, a DT.. one OT for the future and a couple WR.
But… QB QB QB… ahrg
It’s time to start playing for draft picks.
This is Chip Kelly we’re talking about. He’ll probably end up 6-10 and somewhere around 14-20th pick somehow.
Why necause we are so good at drafting
Man the calls are looking predictable.. The D looks the same too.. What happen to Rowe on outside n Carrol on inside for Nickle.. Biggers was getting schooled.. What happen to running under center.. Add it in for 1 game hey it works then never see it again.. The 2 Gs n even C Kelce needs to be upgraded next year.. Kelce needs to look himself in the mirror, beef up next year, do something coz hes taken a massive step back.. Eagles are supposed to be a press coverage team n they been getting taught it?? Those quick slants are kicking your a** Billy D.. Chip stop throwing your players under the bus.. Sanchez, Austin n the rest of those culture fit but less talent players are guys you selected.. Looking forward to next year FA n Draft.. This team not gonna make playoffs n if they did win the Div gonna be in n out just like that.
This is why I hate Davis. How many times this season can I say;
“we’re not really getting any pressure on the QB”
and
“they’re really wearing us out with those slant routes”
before something gets done to fix it?
EJ Biggers was the answer?
Who is the great 2 gap DC people want?
That’s a very fair question. I’m waiting to wait until the end of the year but if this defense finishes with their current stats Davis desires to be fired.
Not so much that this is a great coordinator out there who is readily available. Just the guy you have had 7 years with 3 different teams to prove he isn’t anything more than a mediocrity at best. He hasn’t in a single year so far.
I’d be willing to go with someone else at this point next year.
“…if this defense finishes with their current stats…”
Just curious – what stats are you going on?
Before the last game, Eagles defense was 2nd in the league by DVOA (behind Denver). Obviously will take a hit after Sunday, so if games like that keep coming the end-of-year stats will look ordinary at best. But up to now, I would have expected the defensive stats to be pretty good using any reasonable metric.
I think our personnel could 1 gap very well, but Chips isn’t about that.
Maybe this is where Chip self-scouts and it doesn’t have to be 2-gap. Maybe he just goes for the best 3-4 DC he can find, and it’s an upgrade to the defense he has.
I don’t know who will be available at the end of the year, but I have to think some people will be available.
I really hope that this team hasn’t quit on him and we see some better play going into the end of the year. I think there has to be changes in coaching. Undlin has made some difference, but we are seeing the same plays beat our defense. I think that’s more structural than talent.
Same with the offensive side of the ball. I kind of losing faith in the plug-and-play model. I think Ags is a playmaker, I don’t think Riley or Austin have that ability, but they are on the field more. I don’t even know if they looked Huff’s way much after his first TD. I think that’s the playcalling.
So after all that, how do you see this shaking out if it a) stays the same or b) it gets a little better to end the year?
I think the D staff mostly stays. I’d like to see them try to get Kevin Greene in some capacity, but otherwise I don’t have much problem with that side of the ball.
Bicknell can take a rocket into the sun. He needs to go. Day can stay but he has to move to WRs. I’m ambivalent on Shurmur because I have no clue what the hell he actually brings to the table. I’d like some kind of consultant from the Air Raid derivatives to bring some new ideas to the passing game. And I want someone in the room who Kelly trust enough to do some of the heavy lifitng.
The biggest thing I want is for Kelly to delegate some. He’s burning too many candles trying to be HC/OC/GM right now. Playcalling has suffered. Pro personnell has suffered. And I think some macro level things that he should be working on as head coach have slipped.
Ha, ha, ha. You made me smile Tommy. You really compared yesterday to the Patriots loss last year? Belichick? Seriously?
I watched the game. After the Eagles 1st scoring drive I wasn’t excited, I suppose I was waiting to see how they would screw up. Even a week earlier, when they went ahead 16-3 I wasn’t jumping up and down and when they missed the FG I thought oh, oh.
Early in Andy Reid’s tenure I developed the opposite attitude: I expected the Eagles to win, no matter the score or circumstances. It has nothing to do with reasoning or glasses half full or empty. It is the eye test, it is my gut telling me the opposite with Chip Kelly at the helm.
Reading comprehension.
Oh sorry. I must have missed the point that it wasn’t an explicit comparison. I suppose bringing up the Superbowl champion team, coached by someone who has taken the team to six superbowls and won four of them and who is justifiably considered the best coach in football as a reference point, is a valid reference point. (I apologize for saying ‘reference point’ twice, oops, thrice, now)
This Eagles team is a bad team. It is not mediocre, it is bad.
I enjoy Tommy’s column, have for years, but he is way too optimistic and at somepoint you stop cheering and face reality. And yes, I am pissed at Kelly and the team and right now pretty much everybody.
(I’ll be fine as soon as I stop reading blogs, which is…now)
It’s ok.
Sanshite.
quick — queue the “other teams suck so it’s ok for us to suck” thread before we lose the crowd. The queue the “we’re a talented team” song before people start jumping..
…..
for those who never understood why Sanchez is not a starter, maybe(finally) it’s setting in as to why he’s not and why he’s a back up. Sanchez is not an nfl caliber starting QB.
….
I still stand by CK’s decision to get Bradford. He knew Sanchez ceiling and it’s not pretty.
….
Day 1 with CK — I kept saying — keep the ship pointed in the right direction and everything will be ok. The ship is not pointed in the right direction.
….
#whatculture
Tommy, I respect the heck out of you and your opinion, mostly. I love the site…its my first read of the day. But, I’ve got to say I think you’re being way too easy on this team and this coach. Not mathematically eliminated?!? This team is cooked. Its over for this coach with this team. Its not just that embarrassment yesterday. Its not even the losses early in the season. Its not even that they haven’t put a complete game together all season, even in the wins. They now are 5-9 since beating Dallas on Thanksgiving of last season. And a putrid 5-9 at that, with some horrible performances mixed in.
I think most Eagles fans can see that this is the beginning of the end of Chip. He clearly needs to go after the season. I’m saying this as a guy who believed in Chip, his system or culture or whatever you want to call it. I thought he was a great hire. But its now clear that its not working. I don’t buy it and now it seems the players…the players Chip wanted on this team as “his guys”…no longer buy it either. I’ve resigned myself to that notion at this point.
My only fear is that Jeff Lurie will allow this debacle to continue next year. Here’s hoping Lurie can see the writing on the wall and make the change quickly, so we don’t have to suffer throught another 4-12 season next year. Hell…we may end up 4-12 this year. Can you honestly look at the schedule and see this team definitely winning any of those games?!?
It took me about 10 seasons to be fed up with Andy Reid where I thought it was time for him to go. It only took me 2 1/2 seasons with Chip!
not only addressing you — but everyone that’s calling for CK’s head — it’s not going to happen this year or next. You can stop tossing the coins into the wish fountain. You don’t turn over the keys to the kingdom and then fire the guy. Lurie believes in the long term success of CK – which is why he gave him the keys.
…..
The alternative is to fire everyone and rebuild the coaching staff AND rebuild the roster and a brand new 3 year plan? Then when next year, under a new coach, the fans will call for his head too….team sux right now, but you have to give it time….
You would have to rebuild the front office too.
yeah, I don’t want to think about all “that”…
Now that’s more like the Tommy I’ve come to know… “The sky is not falling! I rewatched the game, and the Eagles actually looked good!!”
Well, it could be worse. The 76ers 0-14.
Two weeks ago, I asked which team would have more wins on New Year’s Eve. Since then, neither team has won a game. I guess the “race” is still on.
It’s actually a 3-way race right now. The Flyers are doing their best to compete with both.
I missed the game due to a social obligation…and I’m really, really glad I did.
Chip doesn’t have his QB yet. It’s quite difficult to win without one…
doesn’t have his ol yet either.
or his OC
Disgusted… That last thing I care ahout this week is that the Eagles play on Thursday. With that said, this performance was Pathetic, disgusting, but I don’t think there is any chance chip gets fired. He will be back next year, so instead of banging my head against the wall talking about some nonsense that won’t happe, nothing to do but hope An UGLY season is just what chip NEEDS to shelf the silly offense, and grow/evolve into the pro coach LUrie envisioned he could eventually become. After all, Chip was NEVER hired because of the coach he was, he was hired because LUrie projected he would be smart enough to grow into a quality pro coach….Chip will be here next year, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I have no answers….as bad as the defense was, Billy’s Defense has been the best unit we had all year, shame on you if you let Chip Scapegoat Billy after he has done a better job with the defense than Chip has done with the offense… Also have to wonder how the Accumilation of all the extra time chips offense forces the defense to play has effected our defense? Are Guys tired? Are they just frustrated from showing up for most of the season and the offense keeps shitting the bed? If we are going to assign Blame for THIS SEASON, Billy is way down at the bottom of the list of coaches to blame…
..
There is a lot about chips offense thatt I like, but I find it hard to continue and justify running such a specific offense, that refuses to take advantage of so many formations, plays and concepts that have been successful at the pro level for years… There is so much more to football than Linning up in shotgun every single play… QUALITY of SNAPS OVER QUANTITY of Snaps is what chip needs to learn… I’m tired of losing games, and hearing chip sound happy about the fact that we ran 90 plays. You don’t get a medal for running the most plays. I don’t see how it can be a good idea to be so limited on offense, and refuse to take advantage of all the different schemes and formations you have at your disposal.
..
Look at the ugly pick 6 between Sproles and Sanchez. that was like the 4th or 5th time that game we attempted that same bubble screen. Heck Sproles scored off of it earlier in the game. At the pro level, you keep running the same play over and over and you think a baller like Lavonte David won’t eventually pick up on it and make you pay? So many ways to attack defenses and we ignore it all to run a few same plays out of shotgun all day? While I watch the patriots chamelon offense look comletely different every week because they don’t care about winning with a certain set of plays, they want to run whatever it takes to best Attack their opponent. Chip needs to start caring about winning, instead of proving his offense can win…. I care about the W’s, not the means you go about getting the Ws… I can’t continue to support such a limited offense system…. Evolve, or you are wasting all our times..
Dirk Koetter didn’t give a shit about making the Dirk Koetter offense popular, he ran whatever best took advantage of what we were doing ande embarressed us ,,, tired of being tied to such a limited offense, with a playbook that looks like a thin pamphlet
“So many ways to attack defenses and we ignore it all to run a few same plays out of shotgun all day?”
My 12 year-old would kick Chip’s butt in Madden
It’s like they are purposely trying not to use their talented and young receivers. How does Miles Austin have twice as many snaps as Huff? How come they aren’t drawing up plays for their 1st Rd pick? I love Agholor but damn, if you aren’t going to use him, couldn’t you have drafted…say…an offensive lineman? I’m not on the fire Chip train…but I’m definitely on my way to the station.
Winston make plays with his legs? From what I’ve seen of him he’s the prototypical pocket QB, almost as unlikely to run with it as someone like Bradford.
Black QB, dood!
He wont make many plays with his legs but he will sure make a play on some crab legs.
“I never expected this team to be 4-6”
This is what I don’t understand. Why were expectations so high? Was I the only person in this fan base to see that our QB depth chart had Sam Bradford and Mark Sanchez at the top?
This season was over the second Chip pushed Roseman out and made a slew of impulsive personnel decisions.
This was a 10-6 football team the last two seasons. Pulling back the slot machine lever and mixing it up with equal, but different parts was not the move to make.
Ironically, now it’s Kelly who find himself in that situation, with Lurie holding the lever.
A lot of people think Bradford is very talented, a franchise quarterback hiding under seasons excuses for mediocrity. He was the #1 draft pick, he throws a pretty spiral, he won rookie of the year, therefore he must be good. The objective data does not support this.
Agreed. It bothers me when people use the “he had no receivers” argument. The reason his receivers didn’t produce in STL is the same reason why our receivers aren’t producing now. WRs are products of their QB play. Even Randy Moss in his prime struggled to produce in Oakland without competent QB play
count me as one of these people. And a small part of me still squeeks up saying “well maybe if given more games or another year, he has been improving every game etc…” Would not be surprised to see an extension in off season, given Kelly’s “dont throw baby out with bathwater” attitude.
Let’s put it this way Tommy, do you think there are any lessons, specifically, Chip should vs will learn from this season? We’ve been clubbed over the head with “can’t do anything now”.
So what do you think should (and can) be done with this off season? The Eagles can’t think ahead right now, but we can.
On a separate note, seems like 3 years straight now the defense has dropped off pretty significantly in the second half of the season. Are they wearing down? If we ever do get to the post season I feel like our D would have dead legs.
“Mr. Lurie, I’ve learned a lot this season. I realized I need even MORE POWER! Muhahhahah!”
And MOAR MONEY!
[…] Calmer Thoughts – Iggles BlitzHave we lost perspective? The Eagles got their butts kicked today. They got blown out last year. It also happened in 2013. And 2012. And 2011. And so on. This one is especially painful because the Eagles lost to a rookie and it happened in a game that the team absolutely needed to win. Trust me, I was screaming at the TV today with a level of anger I’ve not had in a while. Still, bad games happen. This is part of life in the NFL. […]
Is this how limited the Eagles’ playback has become this year with the current personnel and Sanchez at QB?
http://www.sportsgeekery.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/tecmo-1.jpg
Top right was my jam. Ride QB EAGLES to victory…
http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/230/041/QB-Eagles-tale_display_image.jpg?1274223304
Pretty much since Byars/Sherman were next to useless on the running plays especially that outside running play with Byars.
It all all about throwing bombs with Cunningham to Barnett, Williams, and K. Jackson or running crazy with Cunningham who very few DLs/LBs could catch in that game.
What I wanted from Chip is to do Oregon here. I wanted RBs to rack up 230+ yards and wear down the defenses. I could care less if we even carried QBs on the team, I like the run game. I started to get pretty turned off last year when Shady had some bad outings and the run game started to lose its efficiency.
I was too and it is really an interesting question to see if this scheme was so superior or it was largely the personnel/health that lead to such dominant rushing results in ’13.
I have a feeling it is a mix but lean more to have 5 OL who were above average/very good as a unit, had perfect health & played previously together with a lot of new faces, and had a RB who was one of the best 3-4 in the NFL that year.
Led Kelly to believe make some errant conclusions about his scheme & his ability to succeed at the NFL even with slightly lesser personnel at G or declines in some of the starters of that unit.
I am blaming all of this season on Shurmur. Because, why not, i am at a loss. I remember not liking the Shurmur hire when it was speculated he would be bringing more nfl type passing plays to Kelly’s offense. I wanted to see full blown Oregon offense, 60+ to 10 type of wins. For Kelly to hire Shurmur could have been seen as Kelly doubting himself before his first game. (of course, not sure how to fit the first good offensive season with Shurmur’s help into my narrative here) Then, I can blame Shurmur in spearheading the Bradford trade, getting in Kelly’s ear this offseason.
I almost would like to see Kelly just go get three running quarterbacks, and go full zone read every play. Can’t do this because a QB will get hurt in the NFL doing zone read, so that is why you have 3 or more running QBs. When one gets hurt, just put the other one in. There are lots of exceptional runners who play QB in college, and very few exceptional passers. Pass as something to do to throw the defense off balance. Otherwise, run left, run right and run up the middle over and over, like he did in college.
The fact that he talked about the need for an elite quarterback and theorized on how a team is able to get one of the five elites any given year, seems to go against what i was expecting from him, a run first and run second coach, with new ideas how football could be played at the NFL level. A focus on getting an elite QB or bust, just makes Kelly an ordinary NFL head coach (unless he gets his elite QB).
It seems like the Eagles are struggling to tackle the last few weeks since they are trying to strip the ball too much at times.
I noticed that an awful lot yesterday especially from the secondary. I know Kelly emphasizes turnovers on defense but has anyone else seen the same thing?
Maxwell doesn’t like to tackle generally, but otherwise I agree, lots of focus on forcing TOs probably give up 2-3yds per play.
So here’s the deal: I’m ready to accept money for watching the game live on Thanksgiving. The reason why? The Eagles are 0-3 when I am not watching them live. Same again last night as I am spending the Thanksgiving holiday week in Germany. And since I am not really keen on having the Eagles ruining Thanksgiving dinner with my family, the bids need to be high and tempting.
Don’t watch! You’ll only screw up the draft at this point!
There’s a catch, though, because Thanksgiving is not a German holiday. Therefore, we should pay you to watch the game, but only if you watch in the Continetal U.S. Otherwise, you should pay us if you watch the game in Europe and they tie the Lions. Follow my logic?
Best
Brent Celek +5.0
Lane Johnson +3.7
Jason Kelce +1.9
Dennis Kelly +1.6
Josh Huff +1.2
Allen Barbre -3.5
Kenjon Barner -2.4
Mark Sanchez -2.2
DeMarco Murray -2.0
Miles Austin -1.6
Nelson Agholor -1.2
Jordan Matthews -1.2
Fletcher Cox +4.1
Mychal Kendricks +4.0
Connor Barwin +2.5
Vinny Curry +1.2
Taylor Hart -3.1
DeMeco Ryans -2.0
E.J. Biggers -1.7
Marcus Smith -1.4
someone in the front 7 got bullied, , the fact that 3 of the starters got positive marks…says someone really shit the bed to allow that historic night happen (or D3FB is right and those grades are garbage :-D)
i thought i’d see kiko with a horribe grade, he gave up one of the big runs.
PFF is garbage
Meco and Kiko had a terrible game. They couldn’t get off blocks all day. The Big Doug Marting 80 yard run where Barwin pushed him out right before he got into the ENDZONE was on KIko. instead of taking on the fullback to close that Lane, he dived at the fullbacks feet giving DougMartin a lane to explode thru. Damn shame because if you look at how we defended that run, every Lane and run fit was accounted for, and Kiko refusal to take that fullback straight on, is why they were able to run down our throat on that play… Which is a shame, and kind of odd, since earlier we saw Kiko take on a Guard like he was supposed to, which allowed kendricks to make the tackle in the backfield… He takes on a 300lb pulling Guard, but won’t take on a FB? Odd…
Dennis Kelly had multiple hospital blocks against the Dolphins. He got a minus like 1 some things because he hopped on the fumbles (that his man created).
Tobin didn’t play great but also didn’t have any oh sweet jesus what the actual hell blocks against the Dolphins and got a -6.7.
PFF grades are worse than trash.
Kelly is exactly right. The team is good. Except at two of the most important postions in football. QB and O line. He was right he was out coached too.
I have been on the fence since he became GM. I’m off now. He isn’t good at either.
i too am at a loss. this feels like 2012 again
A lot of those 2012 players are STILL good players in this league. They quit on the team that year though. You are very right. Chip lost em.
Tommy, one of the main concerns I have at this point is Chip Kelly’s refusal to take any responsibility in any of his postgame conferences and how he tends to put the blame all on the players. This is something that i do not usually see from the better head coaches in the NFL and I don’t understand why Chip is knowingly creating this divide between him and the players.
yeah that’s always been a pet peeve.
This is so ridiculous… 99 problems and people dwell on how he handles press conferences? Who gives a shit at this point? Who cares what he says, if we aren’t winning, Talk is cheap and there is NOTHING he can say to make me feel better.
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Chip is on my shit lists, so I don’t feel like defending him. But if you want to rip they guy, pick one of the countless mistakes that actually matter.
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I also think chip is being misunderstood in press confrences. Chip ISNT coaching well right now, but he isn’t a stupid person. I can assure you he understands that when he is the HC and GM, it’s OBVIOUS and UNDERSTOOD that the Buck stops with him. it’s such an Obvious concept that I think chip expects that HIm beimg RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING is an UNDERSTOOD GIVEN. I also think this narrative that he refuses to accept blame is total BS..
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pick ANY LOSS this year and I can find you a quote where chip admits he was outcoached. It happens after every loss. If it wasn’t made clear in the game after press Confrence, he makes it clear on Mondays press Confrence.
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I believe he looks at it as a Given that he is always ultimately responsible for ny of our short comings. After the game he is being asked why something didn’t work. he has NEVER been ASKED, Who is to Blame? So I think it’s so obvious that he has to take full responsibility that we DONT need him to say it 10 times after every loss for us to understand it’s his fault.
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I counted 3 times since we lost yesterday that chip said he was outcoached, yet people still continue with this fairytale narratove that he doesn’t accept blame? He is smart enough to understand that a coach/GM will always be held FULLY Responsible for ANY Shortcomings.
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So many things that need fixing, that haven’t been GOOD ENOUGH, and half the FANBASE fixated on press confrences?
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Talk is cheap, when you look so bad, who the hell cares what he has to say? If it were up to me, afyer such a shitty loss, chip would have walked into the post game press Confrence and found the room completely empty with not one media member giving a shit what he had to say..
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So much is wrong, you have tons Of real problems to complain and worry about. With All our PROBLEMS, the Last thing that should matter is a press Confrence
I agree with you 100% I personally did not watch all of the press conference so he may very well have acknowledged his role in the losses. I understand that this does not seem like a huge issue compared to the way this season has gone but I guess I would just like to hear about him take some sort of responsibility for his game plan after a loss instead of this repetitive narrative of him only blaming the players
he said coaches were outcoached, not a well coached game, etc. he took accountability after dallas game. but there were plays there on offense, sanchez just didnt make them.
felt like they toned down tempo fir sanchez, but i think he needs to run it really fast b/c he can’t read defenses.
I still see some people in the Eagles’ blogosphere talking about this team making a run at the NFC East title. I think this classic is apropos:
http://youtu.be/U7fjDS0jKiE
The game this Thursday will tell if #culture really makes a difference. Chip chose players with “team first” attitude and got rid of talented “me first” players. If that, indeed, is true, we should see the team bounce back from an embarrassing loss. If the Eagles lose again, then the season is really lost for good and the FO has to rebuild from ground up.
I refuse to believe that Kiko is not playing injured. It would be unprecedented for a Lber to go from what he was in 2013 to this just because of rust. He has to be hurting. He is a shell of what he used to look like.
Kiko isnt hurt because he hasn’t been getting any treatment from Trainers..
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Unfortunately when you have to miss almòst two months because of an injury, it take like 3-4 games to knock the rust off and get back to your best.
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Just look at Kendricks, when he first came back from his injury this year, he was very underwhelming the first few weeks, and Hicks was looking so much better than him.. KEndricks stayed healthy, knocked the rust off and he is now rewarding us with solid play, and looks much better than any LB we had on the field yesterday. Mychal came into yesterday’s game with a sack in each of his last 3 games, And he looked like one of the few defenders that were flying around yesterday.
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KIKO is a much better player than he has shown. The problem is that we aren’t going to get to see the player he is unless he stays healthy and can put together 4-6 games in a row.. If he can avoid injury setbacks from here on out, Id bet we see his talent before this season ends, even if it’s too late to make a difference in this season,..
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Meco and Kiko were both terrible yesterday, they combined for only 3 tackles
he did the same thing later in the game i think, and it seemed to work well, he absorbed the block by going low at the legs like this which allowed Kendricks i think to get a good tackle. He might have been keeping to his gap, taking up a lineman, which limits the ability of the running back to cut back (to the running backs right), allowing for Ryans to make the tackle in his gap. But Ryans is off to the right on this play. Might be that Ryans is the one out of position on this play.
If i am wrong, than this is one of the most ridiculous looking plays by a middle linebacker, running up to a o-lineman and taking a knee as running back runs by.
Off topic people but many of you need to face reality.
-Chip isn’t going to be fired.
-His GM duties are not gonna be stripped away after this year.
-This is not a good team at all but there is talent there.
-An adequate QB, because I was optimistic about Bradford and Sanchez but neither is more then a backup QB, and some young infusion on the o-line will make a tremendous difference.
-The offense is not a gimmick offense that has been figured out by the league like most are saying.
-This offense with the right pieces can be very successful.
-At least one WR must be added whether that be a veteran of rookie.
-There is going to be a couple of good options available at offensive guard in Free Agency that can fit this system
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My basic premise is this team is not good at all this year and most of the blame can be put on Chip and Co. but also players must accept some responsibilty. But there are enough pieces on offense and defense that a one good free agency and draft can put the Eagles into a good position to be a good team next year.
Everything you said is exactly right. You didn’t address though is the horrible coaching job we are witnessing.
Put say Carson Palmer on this team, and and fix the O-line. The coaching job we are getting doesn’t change the outcome.
Agreed Tum. I am a huge Chip believer and still am but his stubbornness to not change his scheme one bit is maddening. He calls plays that doesn’t work all game yet he continues to call them over and over and over. I know he believes that his scheme will work as long as it is executed correctly but when we don’t have the players to execute said plays then stop running them. Adapt and try new plays.
That and much more man. Jordan Mattews is crap all season. He keeps feeding him the ball knowing that the guy has to get going for this offense to succeed. He gets it going, and he stops going to him. Demarco sucks all season, but he knows he needs him and keeps riding him. He gets really going and he stops using him. They tell the Fox crew they have a plan for the giant Buck WRs. That plan is to put Carroll 3 on an island.
Yes most games this season the execution argument has seemed to be valid, but this one was horrible coaching on top of everything else. The defense has been ground into dust. They should be an elite unit.
I am feeling pretty helpless as an Eagle fan right now. Sort of how I feel with my beloved Oriole Birds.
If it makes you feel any better, at least you’re not a Phillies fan.
As a fan of all the sports teams in Philly, the despair surrounding how bad all the teams are playing right now is only growing.
We are in the Dark Ages right now in Philly Sports.
At least the Phils will spend money and get out of it. Our only hope is to develop stars.
So signing DeMarco Murray and Byron Maxwell to big deals probably not the best moves, eh.
At least we didn’t sign Bradford long term as well.
Not yet.
what should we have done at cb?
i mostly agree, but if the choice turns out to have been expensive crappy CBs or cheap crappy CBs . . .
then we’d hate chip for not spending money and getting another bfletch.
can’t disagree, but we complain no matter what. we complain when the wins aren’t dominant enough. we complain when there’s too much cap money. we complain when there’s not enough cap money. better to get complained at and have the money, but you’re correct that it’s all hindsight.
murray avg 5ypc yesterday
I don’t think he’s done anything close to warranting his contract this season.
There’s a reason why you don’t give RBs big money.
It’s telling that Mathews has looked so much better at a lower $ price.
Won’t be a blockbuster, but it’ll be higher than you’d like.
man Tampa Bay is good.
I still cannot get over how Josh Huff remains on the sideline during long stretches of the game. It took him a while but he has a spark, just maddingly frustrating seeing Miles take snaps from the kid. Huff makes plays with the ball in his hand. That catch and run yesterday was beautiful. Then he gets taken out of the game. I do not get it.
And yes I understand he is not the prototypical outside wr. But come on, he needs more touches.
ONLY WR who made a big play for us, it came on the first series, and Huff goes on to play 17 snaps yesterday while Miles played 31 snaps? Unacceptable.. The answer he gives is that’s how the WR rotation works, and im pretty sure he leaves that up to the WR coach, delegating is only OK when your assistants are doing a good Job. At some poïnt chip needs to grab the WR coach by his throat and tell him to get Miles Austin out of the fuckin game..
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It’s not OK to let your,assistants make the decisions on rotations if they aren’t doing their job well enough
I’m not buying into the rotation anymore. Huff and Agholor need to be on the field more than Austin and Cooper. Cooper caught his first pass in 5 games yesterday, yet he’s getting more snaps than most of the guys.
When things don’t go well, this is the type of stuff that surfaces and gets everyone angry.
I took a picture of the road leading into Novacare Way earlier.
http://pre14.deviantart.net/7e8c/th/pre/i/2012/195/9/d/the_dark_ages_by_jonasdero-d55wvrb.jpg
i thought that was Camden
Palmer thoughts .. he looks great.. wish we had lured him outta rrtirement
https://twitter.com/SI_Wire/status/668866987385311232
0 sacks this year. $7m.
if he can blow a knee out we might take a look
I have to agree with Ron Rivera here.
https://twitter.com/SteveReedAP/status/668872547753140225
I will probably be more into cheering for the Pathers to kick Dallas ass on Thursday, then I care about Eagles vs the Lions
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The Lions SUCK, they are terrible, yet I have zero confidence that we will go to Detroit and beat them.. If that ain’t Rock bottom, I don’t know what is… I didn’t feel good about going into the Tampa game, and I feel even worse now..
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I haven’t experienced having no confidemce gpimg into a game against the worst teams since like 2012. … There is a real possibility that we go into New England on a 3 game losing streak… This was supposed to be the fun part Of our schedule, Instead we are miserable
I agree with every one of your points. At least misery has company.
I can’t believe vegas has us as a one point favorite going into detroit
Even crazier is they have Panthers as a pick or +1 against Dallas. I wonder if the spread will change as action takes place.
yes
You know when the coach says something (even though he was prompted), the Panthers are PISSED, they will obliterate the Cowboys.
keeping us in the hunt
The Jets cut 2012 1st round pick Quintin Coples today, WTF do we have to do to see Miles Austin get whacked? No one gets benched no matter how bad they play, no one has to worry about gettng cut… This is a problem for me
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If the Patriots Starting RB fumbles, his ass will be on the bench for the rest of the game..
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How can I expect anything to change, when there is NOTHING an Eagle can do during the season to lose his job?
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Andy was the Patriarch of the Eagles. He protected his players, but even Andy at times had to whack someone to get EVERYONEs attention..
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There has to be something a player can do to get himself Benched.
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I understand Miles Austin has guaremteed money. We have to pay him either way, so since we aren’t getting ANYTHING out of the money we have to pay him, maybe we would get something out of Chip whacking him and showing to the players that GUARENTEED money or NOT, they are he,d Accountable.
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Miles Austin seriousLy, might have had the worst Perfomamce I have ever seen from a WR against Miami last week, and NOTHING HAPPENS, he gets 31 snaps the next week while Huff gets 17 after being the Only WR to make a big play yesterday? If that’s not bad enough, this fucking Cowboy reject dropped another pass yesterday.. WTF has to happen to see a guy benched? Cut? Held accountable in some damn way?
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Cutting Miles Austin, the message it sends to the locker room, would give us more for what we are paying Ausin, they We will get out of him by continuing to let him be an Eagle? We have seen plenty of terrible WR in Philly the past two decades, yet I don’t know that I ever seen anything worse than Miles performnce against the Dolphins.. Instead of making up for it yesterday, he was as worthless as ever
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10 catches for 105 yards by our WRs… SMH.. huff leads all our WR’s with TDs, he has a measly 3 TDs.. he has a TD on the game opening drive last week, a TD on the first drive yesterday,and instead of trying to build on it, and try and get Huff going, he goes on to play half as many snaps as Austin played? Are you fucking kidding me? huff can block. So it’s not like he can use poor blocking as an excuse..
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Agholar catches 3 Passes for an average of 3 yards lol… But how can I rip Agholar, When Sanchez Never even looked his way after the first drive..
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jordan Mathews 4 catches for like 15 yards? I won’t say Jordan is ELITE, but I do know he is better than THAT
Austin has no business playing.
http://static1.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1551/15517906/2882473-8979705387-Preac.jpg
The ONLY thing that could get me remotely interested in this Lions game is the fact that Bradford is back on the field today, Rushing back with a jacked up shoûlder to try and save our season. He prarticipated in individual drills today, not sure past that, or if he will even play on Thursday..
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While It hasn’t manifested itself in wins and a productive offense, for Me, the improvement that Sam has started to show in the Carolina loss, the dallas win, and most of the Miami game before he got hurt, is like the ONLY thing positve I can take away from this offense the last 4 games..
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Since I don’t trust Chip to see what THAD Lewis can do instead of sanchez, Bradford gutting it out and playing in Detroit even tho his non throwing shoulder is jacked up, is like the ONLY thing that can interest me from this offense… If Bradford doesn’t play Thursday, there is NOTHNG this offense can do to even interest me this week… I can’t take one more game with Sanchez startng.
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How the hell are we even a 1point favorite going intoDetroit?
This is a guy that’s in his 2nd year in this offense. To those that said there wouldn’t be a dropoff between Sanchez and Bradford have to realize that there absolutely is.
Even if Bradford isn’t a franchise QB (still think he could be that guy) and is just a system QB, taking care of the football and moving the ball is important than game-changing turnovers.
https://twitter.com/MattLombardo975/status/668816610627616769
Almost half of Bradfords INTs weren’t really his faults… Every INT yesterday was SANCHEZ FAULT!
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Bradford is trying to get confidence in his body holding up, While getting comfortable against NFL defenses after barely playing for two years, all while trying to get comfortable in this new offense, with a bunch of new teammates…. sanchez has been healthy, and has been in this offense for two years and even got game experiemce in this offense last year…. I have Noal DOUBT AT ALL that SAM is better than what we have seen.. HOW MUCH BETTER? Enough to eventually win with? Will his body hold up long enough to get comfortable in this offense to ever play to his potential? NO Idea..
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What I do know is Samchez has shown ZERO growth in yeàr 2 in this offense, and friggin Bradford has looked better than Sanchez, and Its been YEARS since Bradford even got to work on his QB skills during the Offseasn because he has been busy rehabbing injuries… Yet he still looks better than sanchez..
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I will be IMPRESSED if SAM plays thursday, goes on to finish the year only having missed one start… before he got Hurt, I have actually been impressed with the Hits he has taken This year, and continued to figjt for us… The hit Dennis kelly allowed him to take aganst Miami would have injured most QBs..
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If SAM can get thru the rest of this year, I would be very interested to see how much better he can get with an offseason that he doesn’t need to spend rehabbing the entire time.. A summer to work on his footwork TIL it becomes second nature in this offense, learn the playbook as well as Sanchez knows it, build. Chemistry with WR the entire offseason, heck Even hitting the weight room a bit, instead of having to lift to rehab the entire offseason, would absolutely interest me. It’s not going to be easy to get our hands on a QB more Talemted and skilled than SAM.. So as long as health permits, I absolutely want to see SAM get more time before we give up on him..as long as he can play this season out and avoid signifcant injuries… If SAM is fully healthy the day the offseason starts, I think we would be stupid to give up on him after 1 year, sorrounded by an offense with a ton of issues..
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If he can get anothet 5 or 6 games of game experiemce this year, a healthy offseason and preseason to really get ready for next season,I would absolutely want him back for next year…
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After barely playing two years, he was cleared to start practicing August 1st in a new offense, with a bunch of players he never played with, in an offense that lacked talent at OL which is crucial to every QB.. You can’t take a kid who hasn’t played in two years. Put him on a new team, only give him 1 month to prepare for the season, and think we are going to be able to see the best he is capable of…. the Best thing that can happen to this franchise, is SAM being able to play another 4-6 games This year and go into this offseason fully healthy, with the Knee injuries Behnd him.. That won’t Guaremtee that he will be our QB of the future, but he needs a real chance before we Give up on the most talemted QB we can realistically get our hands on
Was Bradford taking care of the ball when he threw those redzone interceptions? I don’t get your fascination with Bradford as the franchise QB.
If JPP doesn’t have a thumb anymore, then why is he allowed to have a fake thumb on his cast?
Sanchez is allowed to have a fake brain in his helmet.
Eagles fans are terrible, at least we are the chargers. No one questions that team or whether it’s falling apart, they’re losing the lockerroom etc. and they’re sitting at 2-8 with tons of vets.
I think it’s the nature of the beast. If you are a salesman, you’re going to get under people’s skins, annoying, cloying, pandering, but if a buyer needs what you got, you’re a godsend. Fans are typically impatient and in need of constant assurance that their team is worth their emotional investment. At this point, I am so glad that Jeff Lurie is not Dan Snider. I love Kelly’s demeanor and approach. He will not panic, and I am pretty confident that Lurie understands the inherent risks of change and remaking a roster. The lingering question I have about Kelly is his attraction to “character”. If that is at the expense of ability, I think he’s imposing a tight ceiling on his roster.
Winning the World Series did get the Phils a year of good grace including Lidge who was historically terrible in ’09.
Whew, here we go.
Demarco Murray getting sniped by anonymous Eagle in the media:
“Well, when you see DeMarco sliding before getting hit, you tell me. Was that giving full effort?” said an Eagles player who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You see that [stuff], and it makes you wonder.”
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/eagles/20151123_Eagles__effort_comes_into_question.html#vYwe1UbUvSEvbV4D.99
And Joe Banner casting some serious shade on Byron Maxwell:
I thought Demarco slid to get the 1st down n out of bounds on that play? When i saw it i thought sweet move 1st down 2 players coming forward no risk of fumble start the next series.. Maxwell yeah man i got no prob with casual personas but casual tackling get of the field sheesh
Yeah I’m not sure what the play or plays in question are, I’m more interested in the fact that anonymous Eagles players are going to the media to air laundry. That’s never a good sign for the state of the locker room.
maybe. but anonymous is still a bitch move
Or it means it was a waterboy, or the guy who deflates the balls, or completely made up. There is a reason anonymous sources are considered questionable.
Good thing about yesterday game was Ertz getting up n walking off.. Thought was snap city for sure for him.. Chills down the back watching it
yeah that was scary. gotta be careful going into the air
It’s obvious that chip will ride or die with his offense
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When playërs execute It correctly, there is a lot to like in his offense…but I will NEVER agree with being so limited on offense. So many concepts and formations that have been successful in the NFL, I cant be ok with being limited to a handful of fornations,,
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What’s really a shame is his offense is established already, I would LOVE to see Chip add 5 new plays each week to his game plan that are run out of formations Chip HASNT put on Film yet.. Because he is known to NEVER run so many traditional formations, we are wasting an opportunity to catch opponents completely off balance, with Formations and plays they are completely unprepared for because we haven’t put them on film at all these past 3 years… For Example:
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In 3 years, opponents can’t find one example of chip putting a play on film where his RB runs behind a lead blocker. You can bet, teams that prepare for us, don’t even mention or prepare for the possibility that we will run at them behind a lead blocker. So you don’t need to change your offense, but why not take advantage and implement 5 new plays in each game plan that we know for a fact that our opponent HASNT prepared for?
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Im not suggesting to go and sigń a fullback, but one time, you can stick Celek or Burton in the backfield and let him lead block for a RB to pick up short yard on a play the defense hasnt prepared for… Look at the play tampa burned us with, it was 3rd and short of 4th and short(DONT remember).. Bucs had a fullback on the right with the RB behind him. The fullback Iead blocks to the right, our defense starts to flow to the FB, but WInston Flips a toss to doug Martin and he runs to the Left, opposite of where his lead blocker is going, we were completely fooled and their RB got a big gain out of a short yardage situation…. If the Eagles came out against Detroit with a lead blockerina short yardage situatipn, Detroit would be completely unprepared for it. They can’t spend time practocing for something we haven’t put on film in 3 years.. Would
Love to see us use a lead blocker for a short yardage play, either have a RB run behind Celek, Burton, or we can even let Mathews lead block for one play since he weighs 230lbs… Pick up the first down… And later in the game, we can show the lead blocker look again, send ryan Mathews to lead block on the right, while we flip toss it to Sproles who runs left away from the lead blocker, executed properly against a defense who would never expect it can be a big help for us..
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Last year, chips ezcuse was that shady and Sproles were too small to lead block.. With Mathews and Murray, what’s his excuse now?
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And This is just one different formation concept that we haven’t put on film, andthere is so much we could implement to burn defenses, and we ignore it all for a thin pamphlet of plays,using the same 4 formations,.. So much football, that we waste and that defenses DONT even have to bother preparing for.. Yet he refuses to turn it into a strength and take advantage and implement 5 plays in each gameplan that you KNOW the defense isn’t prepared to see? Why?
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Whip out a two back pistol every once in a blue moon, give the defense something they aren’t expecting to see. We have multiple dangerous RBs. Put two in the damn backfield so the defense doesmt know which is getting the ball, and which way he is running. The other can lead block, or fake like he is running to the opposite direction..
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Heck, we have Sproles, why not whip out the Andy Reid Shovel pass on one crucial 3rd and 2…
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There are so many good plays and formations that fit our personnel that chip HASNT put on film these past 3 years, why aren’t we taking advantage of the fact that there is so much we could be running that opponents won’t be expecting to see when they play us? He can keep running his offense, but 5 times a game, he can try to catch the defense off balance with something we know they haven’t prepared for
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Our offense is so limited, that there is so much that opponents DONT have to even spend a minute preparing for? Start showing different things, to atlest give future opponents something else to prepare for besides our thin pamphlet of a playbook
most frustrating thing about this season has been this limited offense. gives impression that kelly checked out awhile ago. or maybe he is not the innovator i thought he was. maybe he innovated for a few years a long time ago and has refused to change since then.
to my eye the plays work if you run them right. but it’s all predicated on being able to run the ball. think key to scheme is ol, just think it took us this year to realize how important the guards spots are.
maybe he thought with sam you could be agnostic w/ run or pass, but hasn’t worked out that way.
Teams have been trying to pick on Nolan for weeks and he held his own for the most part, but yesterday the flood gates opened on nolan and he was drowning out there…Nolan is beter than That… Hopefully he understands that WHATS done is done and puts yesterday behind him, because it doesn’t take a brilliant football mind to know what the Lions game plan will be, they will line up Calvin in Front of Nolan and throw at least 12 balls to Megatron.
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If he doesnt put tampa game behind him, he is going to get killed Thursday. They willl go after him early and often and if Nolan doesn’t hold up and defend himself, it will be a long day Of getting picked on again…
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At least ROWE got a few snaps yesterday as our outside corner during a few plays we ran dime… I Hate ropkie cormers so I don’t mind seeing ROWE on the bench, but it be nice to see ROWE grow enough to show us that he is heading in the right direction before this year ends,.
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I LOVE Bennie Logan, but if I ever see him joking around with the opposing QB during a game where our defense is getting Killed, Im going to Lose it,.
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As a fan, I’d love to be able to walk in the locker room after a pitiful game like that and just ask these players at what point will they get tired of opponents coming in and spitting in their faces? At what point do we get tired of gettng our asses kicked, get mad and go do something about it? Stand up for yourselves for cryng out loud
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Today chip said he doesn’t raise his voice to playërs because that’s “Harry Highschool” And Grown men don’t need to be yelled at… disagree. You can’t tell me playërs didn’t deserve to get chewed up yesterday for such a gutless effort…. I do think chip is right that we need to be even keeled, not get too low, or too high, but EVERY once in a while a coach needs to kick some ass… Yes you want players to not get too low or high, but the FIRE NEEDS to be there, and the ONLY players that showed fire yesterday were Cox And Kendricks. Everyone else was gutless..
calvin and golden tate. think is they were just in bad positions sunday. nolan is never going to beat a 6’5 WR on fade routes in the end zone.
It is hard to see a head coach just so quiet and stoic and complacent, standing on sideline in his own bubble, playing chess in his mind. Players have to be looking over to him to see how he is reacting and even subconsciously matching his emotion and energy level with their own.
Players grow up with yelling, in the face, coaches, who pump them up and lead with emotion. I was yelled at in 5th grade all of the time by my coach and it was just normal. Because it is “Harry Highschool” means the players are likely used to it from or before highschool onwards. They might make 63 million but might still respond, like a high school player they used to be, with a coach in their face. When a coach is in your face yelling you might in the moment to just go back to being in high school, and forget about the 63 million dollars.
Past half way mark of the season.. Has the Eagles improved from week 1?
they are still looking for gel
Vaseline?
Might make this weekly ritual a little less painful.
hahaha
sammy looks better. that’s . . . about it, really.
Entering December 2013, Cam Newton had a 4-8-1 in his last 13 regular season games. Since then, he’s 13-0 in regular season games. Remember when people wondered why Rivera had a job still?
Damn man Newton has taken his game to another level.. Remember when they lost Benjamin peeps were saying they gonna struggle with no receiving options.. Everyone been proven wrong
fixed the run game. starts w/ oline.
this is why we have to give Coach Potatohead more seasons.
gotta say nfc south was terrible last year, feels like panthers made playoffs at 7-9, gotta stay focused on that goal. think among players there’s really no leadership.
one good trait about winston is that team believes in him already.
he looked pretty believable to me too.
have we ever covered a slant properly though?
seemed pretty easy for them
aaaaaand we’re so bad we’ve been unflexed: http://www.bleedinggreennation.com/2015/11/23/9785286/nfl-schedule-eagles-vs-patriots-game-flex-start-time-chip-kelly-bill-belichick
thank god
Eskin just said no Ertz or Mathews on Thursday.
trey burton time!
just . . . no austin or cooper. i’d rather see marcus smith running routes
[…] Calmer Thoughts – Tommy Lawlor, IgglesBlitz.comTommy Lawlor tries to put things into perspective after the team’s loss … […]
to me, players gotta get benched at some point. thats one difference between chip and bill
well I stopped by but really there is nothing I can say. Sigh.
your avi is going to look ironic in a couple of weeks
Or prophetic!
Nah, you are right. Just ironic.
Until you zoom in, it kinda looks like a Patriot headbutting an Eagle in the nuts. Which may prove apt.
I need a win that game. Have hope!!
I don’t get the comments on leadership. We hear all about how Demeco is a leader, Bradford is a leader, etc when the team is winning. Then they lose and all of a sudden there are no leaders. What if I told you the concept of leadership is not concrete and is subject to wildly inconsistent interpretations?
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The mean statistical performance for this team is not high enough, there is no questioning that. Worse, the standard deviation for performance is far too large. We see the wild swings every week, and it’s now spread to the defense.
I’d argue that the avg. performance this year is somewhere around average. For as many solid position groups that we have, there have been others to counteract it. We’re great at DL and debatably OLB, but we have no receivers who consistently show up. Maybe the Guards will show up to play, but Kelce will miss blocks and get wrecked to make up for it. Sam will be on target, but his receivers will drop balls. The running game will get going, but then the play action fails when wide open WRs are missed.
I think the team itself is good enough to win, but what really is starting to get to me is the very high level of variance. To me, that speaks to a lack of discipline and inconsistent (at best) coaching. The NFL is a lot closer to a roll of dice than any other sport, but there should still be some level of consistency in performance. We haven’t seen that.
That is pretty mathy stuff for the day after a crushing loss.
I think the mean emotional response at this point is primarily grunts, head shaking, and breaking stuff with a standard deviation ranging from catatonic rocking from the fetal position up to bargaining with God and seeking silver linings (like how, apparently, the loss was so bad it isn’t even fun for the trolls to tell us it was bad).
Hard to quantify it, but there is something about the gut feeling while watching a game that tells you the players have quit, the coach has “lost” his players. Had that feeling early in Reid’s last year. I was not a Reid hater, but when it it felt like he lost his players, lost control of team, (whatever that really means), it seemed obvious he had to go. It is hard to have a team that looks like it quit, come back and make a playoff run. I would bet that even with that 45 to something loss for the Patriots, it did not seem that Belichick lost his team, lost control, or his players quit on him.
I am becoming tired of the real importance of an elite QB to winning – hurts the league. Of course, QB for a very long time has been the most important position, but it seems it is becoming more and more critical. If not a Rodgers, or a Manning brother or Brady then have little shot, unless have elite defense. So instead of this Hinke-like quest for an elite QB that Chip seems to be on, i would rather just focus on creating an elite defense and then get a running around, big play QB (a Wilson or a Cam) with a focus on the running game and put all other resources into the defense.
An offensive minded head coach is worth very little without an elite QB.
well we did spend that first on an olb
Billy Davis has never lead a top 20 defense. I doubt he ever will – even with the right personnel. What are the odds Chip cans BD? I think unlikely. Even if he would, who wants to coach here with our broken down offense that gives the defense no time to rest?
Yep I think he lost em. Tommy says he was yelling at the TV yesterday. I really had very little emotion about it.
That team we saw yesterday was as bad as 2012 ever got.
Cam Newton is the only player in NFL history with at least 100 passing TDs and 25 rushing TDs in his first 5 seasons.
And since you mentioned Parson Calmer .. msybe Bradford will improve on a similar trajectory
I hope Davis is watching…. this is how you send pressure
gotta think the bills would destroy this division
https://twitter.com/JoshPaunil/status/668882377859575809
That play he whiffed on should count as 5 TDs against him
Everyone looked bad yesterday. Not just him. If he was the only one, I could understand the criticism. But IMO it just doesn’t feel right to single him out in a game that everyone sucked.
I’m just pointing out one play… every time I see that replay I think he’s going to pick it or knock it down
And while he hasn’t given up a TD….. I don’t think he has hit anyone in weeks 4-10 either
Okay, I know a lot of people on this board have been ripping him as if he’s the issue. I think he’ll continue to improve as he gets a feel of the guys around him more.
He’s way better than what we had last year on the outside, especially considering they just benched CW in Seattle.
No one’s ripping him as if he’s the issue, he’s just one of many issues. And honestly if we’d paid him 23 million instead of 63 million we’d probably say ok, well he’s been better than Cary or Fletch so that’s ok.
We’re paying him star money and he’s been anything but.
Up until yesterday, he was playing decent ball for a few games.
His effort bothers me at times…. Nolan got torched yesterday, but when you watch the game he’s the only guy chasing down RBs and Wrs to prevent those long TDs.
Remember him giving up on the Terrance Williams TD in the first cowboys game? That made me sad.
#tiredlegs
If I remember correctly, on the first long run Maxwell was the closed to catching the RB before Carroll passed him and made the tackle.
I’m really not down the guy or anyone on the defense that much…A game like this was bound to happen with the way our has been playing….
I just think Maxwell and Jenkins need to make those Ints they botched
It seemed a lot of players looked resigned yesterday.
lots of players look like they shouldn’t be re-signed
If Cooper is here next year, I’m going to be mad. I understand the dead money with Austin, but there’s no good reason to keep Cooper who takes snaps from better players.
Austin should have been cut last week
I’ll admit I don’t have much love for Maxwell but he has played better and been an upgrade over Fletcher/Williams last year.
Yeah he only has 1 INT but he wasn’t a guy or making plays either in the secondary. As for the ‘soft’ rep he has had a few egregious plays that stand out but it seems like analyst/fans (myself included) are looking to harp on his miscues.
Is he is a Top 15-20 corner? No but he is a solid-enough starter. Question is how does his overall production match his paycheck and what opportunity cost does/will that have on the Eagles.
We’re all mad after this loss.
i miss shady
Yeah Shady looks real good tonight.
It’s sad to see that even Tyrod Taylor is allowed to change plays at the line of scrimmage.
bills also don’t use the wr they traded a first rd pick for
I was thinking a little bit ago…when is the last time the Eagles threw it over the top to a receiver?
skins game i think
Sad, I can’t remember.
We throw a go to Huff in the Dolphin game I think… he got tackled and drew a penalty
Eagles would get called for PI on that Chung no call
billy davis vindicated?
tommy lawlor should take off his chip glasses and stop defending this horsecrap coach and team. it gets embarrassing when chip lovers can’t see how bad their fast talking fraud really is.
Is it even remotely annoying to have to change screen names all the time?
i don’t chg my screen name dooosh
hopefully billy d is paying attention here
Hopefully CK and BD are ass deep in detroit study…
eh they’re going to run the same plays anyway
tom brady yelling again, bt it’s ok b/c it’s tom brady.
He kinda has rings/record to do whatever the fuck he likes at this point. If he ate a baby on the sidelines most Boston fans would be totally cool with it.
But he doesn’t dance like Cam
smmy watkins 0 targets, only targets are woods and mccoy.
Rex Ryan with that Chip Kelly game plan…don’t throw to your #1
Marvel at what Brady is doing while Manning already started to fail apart at the same age last year.
So easy to root against him though even if you are indifferent to the Pats or even football.
All those “lighter” balls all these years have saved arm strength…
You also haven’t heard the same type of stories that have come out Jordan and Woods. Both of them genuinely are horrible people off the court and fairway respectively.
If anything, Brady stays out of the spotlight and is chronicled for being kind of a boring guy of the field.
Brady does do a bunch of charity work and is one of the Top 10 athletes in the NFL in terms of the money he donates annually (Forbes, Aug 2015).
Actually people have come out and said that both Peyton and Brady aren’t as “golden” as they both come off as. I doubt any one of them reach Tiger’s level of douche though.
Not saying brady is a horrible person… just that he’s probably isn’t the saint that a lot of people think
Chip got rid of Foles because he knew what he had in him. I would think he knows the same with Sanchez. Can Thad Lewis be that much worse than Sanchez? Why can’t Thad get a shot Sunday if Bradford can’t go?
i think i understand…chip kelly writes this blog but uses the name Tommy Lawlor….only way to explain the unfrigginbelivable blind loyalty to a sucky college coach
Funny
Interesting they use the referee to set a pick
More Sammy Watkins
Edit: that works
shady picking up the slack
He looks trim this year
looks healthy
Shady >>> Demarco & Kiko
Its hard to judge Kiko.. Guy has played little more than a 100 snaps in 2 years.
Murray just looks like he doesn’t care at times
Actually, it seems pretty easy to judge. He’s an injury prone player with a lot of potential. He’s unreliable. Demarco is just wildly overrated. All finesse, displays minimal strength. And he looks at least 2 steps slower than Shady.
And Ryan Mathews
Its an ACL… can happen to any athlete.
It sounds like him missing time this year was because of a set back with his healing knee. Not uncommon.
I’m getting tired of Chip telling us that they didn’t do anything offensively because a team played cover-2. Really? That’s all it takes in the NFL to shut an entire offense down to check downs and 1 yard passes is to play cover 2? That’s asinine! You know how you beat cover-2 and zone coverage? You have playmakers that can handle such revolutionary defensive concepts as zone coverage. Perhaps you play WRs other than Cooper and Austin who are skilled enough to catch a pass against either zone or man. Chips aversion to players that can make things happen with the ball in their hands is getting out of control. Even if Cooper or even worse Austin actually catch the ball, they’re not doing squat with it after that. Play Agholar and huff and sit those bums on the bench!
it’s not the scheme, the offensive issues were on mr. sanchez i think. kelly doesn’t trust putting the ball in his hands, that’s obvious so there was very little downfield. the offense moved when we weren’t turning the ball over.
Trade Kelly for Arians straight up
That MF bothers me…
Chip Kelly not being accountable and stubborn bothers me. Plus he owes me like $300 because I can’t enjoy wearing my lesean pro bowl jersey or my maclin jersey. He broke this team and I don’t think he has a smoothie that can fix it
PS winning makes me feel good and Bruce knows how to do that even with 3rd string QB’s
wow hurry up looks good when good teams run it
Esp when you throw the ball downfield and make the DL run
How can the bills think they get to sub there? Pats do that all the time.
refs would never let us get the ball off that fast
That’s true too. But we’d also false start, one WR would be too far off the line and Kielce would snap it early before QB is ready.
LOL illegal formation all day
pats get away w/ a 12th man
One Bill was 15 yards offsides.
Rex team doing Rex things
TT needs to lay that ball out there and let Sammy run to it. He keeps having to wait on the ball