Epic Failure

Football season is always a roller coaster. A lot of times, games are roller coasters. That was certainly the case in the Eagles season opener as they jumped out to a 17-0 lead and had control of the game, only to fall apart and lose 27-17.

What a disaster.

We knew there would be issues when we found out Sunday morning that Nate Herbig would start at RG and rookie Jack Driscoll would be the RT. They had three snaps of NFL experience. They were facing a good DL. And there was no tape to study. They would be learning on the fly.

The OL played well enough in the first half. WAS still got multiple sacks, but Carson Wentz mostly had time to throw. Driscoll got hurt and that really changed things. Jordan Mailata took over at RT. The WAS DL really took over after that. Mailata wasn’t the sole reason. Every single OL for the Eagles had their hand in this mess.

Wentz was sacked eight times and hit plenty of others.

You cannot blame this loss just on the OL, though. In the second half, you had the third string RG and third string RT playing. The coaches have to take that into account and adjust. Wentz has to know that and adjust his game. The Eagles continued to have a pass heavy offense and Wentz continued to look for big plays.

This goes beyond running the ball more. The OL wasn’t getting movement and the run game struggled. The coaches needed to focus more on the quick passing game, as did Wentz.

There were times when RBs missed blocks. TEs too. Zach Ertz had a huge drop on fourth down that really hurt.

And this wasn’t all about the offense. Jake Elliott missed a 53-yard FG. It went straight, but came up a yard short. That can’t happen on a day with no wind.

The defense had a complicated day. They did a lot of good things, but could not come up with a big play. The Eagles defense limited WAS to 239 total yards, 2.2 yards per carry and they sacked Haskins three times. But WAS did go 3 for 4 in the Red Zone. Getting just one more stop there could have made a world of difference. Just one takeaway could have made a world of difference.

For me, the biggest issue coming out of this game was the play of Carson Wentz. He looked great for most of the first half. He spread the ball around. He was accurate. He made smart decisions.

But his interception late in the half changed the game and Wentz struggled to overcome that. Some people are going to overreact to his performance and question Wentz. He absolutely deserves criticism, but just watch that first half performance and you’ll see how good he can be.

It was troubling to see him handle adversity so poorly. Things just kind of snowballed. One bad play led to another. He made poor decisions. His accuracy became an issue. Wentz didn’t show much of a feel for the game. When you are protecting a lead and playing with backup OL, be smart. Play safe. That’s not the time to go for big plays.

This certainly isn’t a time to panic. The OL will change in a big way when Lane Johnson comes back. The run game will get a boost when Miles Sanders comes back. All the young players got valuable experience today. They can study the tape and see what they looked like in action. That is a huge part of learning.

I’m incredibly frustrated because the Eagles blew a 17-0 lead to a bad team. You do not want to lose games like this, especially in the division. Pederson and his staff need do a lot of teaching this week.

Pederson needs to get this team’s attention. They looked great in building a lead, but once WAS started to punch back, the Eagles didn’t handle that well at all. Pederson must let his players know that is unacceptable.

*****

I’ll talk about what went right on Monday. There is plenty to be happy about, but a loss like this just puts a black cloud over the whole day. This isn’t the time to be putting lipstick on a pig.

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