Who’s Who?

Posted: September 18th, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 1 Comment »

The Eagles offense has undergone a lot of changes so far and things kept rolling today.

With Jay Ajayi and Darren Sproles at less than 100 percent, the Eagles needed to make a move at RB. We don’t know the availability for either Ajayi or Sproles this weekend. The team may not know that until Saturday or even Sunday.

Adams had a solid preseason and showed NFL ability. He should be healthy now as he’s only been working in practice for the past few weeks. I think he could step into a game and help out if needed. The biggest question would be how would handle passing situations (as a blocker and/or receiver). I’m sure the Eagles would try to limit him being on the field in those situations.

Carson Wentz will be back under center in this game, but Adams would be a player he’s never played with in a game. Of course, he’s replacing Carter, another player Wentz hasn’t played with.

The Eagles might be bringing back a familiar face and old friend for Wentz.

Cutting Carter means the Eagles are down to Nelson Agholor, Kamar Aiken and Shelton Gibson as healthy receivers. They need help and right away. That’s why Matthews makes sense. He knows the playbook. He knows Doug Pederson. Matthews and Wentz are good friends and have a good chemistry on the field.

No one is under the illusion that Matthews is going to come in here and light it up. He’s on the street for a couple of reasons. He has had injury issues. He’s also a possession receiver in a league that craves playmakers.

Matthews can come in and play right away. He can help the team to move the chains. There is value in that.

The Eagles might just be looking at Matthews as a band-aid.

Maclin is faster and more athletic than Matthews. He’s also older and banged up. We’ll have to wait and see if the Eagles make a move with him next week.

These are not ideal circumstances for the return of Wentz. He’s going to play his first game since tearing his ACL and will have an odd supporting cast around him. I think the offense showed some signs of life in the 2nd half on Sunday so hopefully they can build on that.

Nick Foles was great in January and February, but he’s been highly erratic this year. Not having all his weapons certainly hurt, but the eyeball test tells you a lot of the offensive struggles were on Foles. He never looked in sync, for whatever reason.

While Wentz is rusty, he’s also a significantly more talented player. That makes an enormous difference. Just look at Patrick Mahomes. He threw 6 TDs in his third ever NFL start. If Foles has a really strong supporting cast, he can play at a high level. But he’s not going to make mediocre players all that much better. Wentz started 4-0 in 2016 when Dorial Green-Beckham was one of his key targets. Wentz can absolutely elevate the guys around him.

And the Eagles will need that this week. Something tells me the Colts aren’t too worried about Kamar Aiken. Or Jordan Matthews.

They will pay a lot of attention to Wentz. Rusty or not, he’s a big upgrade at QB and makes the Eagles a lot more dangerous.

*****

Wallace has a broken fibula. Doug Pederson made it sound like he would be out a few weeks. We’ll have to wait and see exactly what that means.

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Bad Day at the Office

Posted: September 17th, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | Comments Off on Bad Day at the Office

The Eagles lost a real game for the first time in a long while. That has more than a few fans in panic mode. I don’t know if they legitimately feel this way or this is just being done for the sake of nostalgia.

Jim Schwartz and his defense are getting ripped for their performance. The Eagles defense did not play well in Tampa. However, I think there is a definite over-reaction to what we saw on Sunday. There are really two situations where you should worry…lack of effort or lack of talent. Neither was the case on Sunday.

That game really boils down to two plays, each of them a 75-yard TD pass. On the first, Malcolm Jenkins simply made a dumb decision. He jumped an underneath route and let one of the fastest players in the league go deep on a CB with mediocre speed. Dumb, dumb and dumb. And Jenkins knows that.

On the next TD, O.J. Howard caught a pass about 10 yards up the field. Jordan Hicks had tight coverage and just missed deflecting the pass by three or four inches. Ronald Darby was there to make the tackle and limit the play to less than 15 yards. Inexplicably, he decided to try and strip the ball (or something like that). Howard went right by him and down the sideline for a TD. Darby chased him as hard as he could, but didn’t catch up until Howard was in the end zone.

If Jenkins stays in the middle and Darby makes his tackle, those plays are solid gains, but nothing noteworthy. Instead, there were two breakdowns and they gave Tampa long TDs.

The Bucs had three drives that went for 70 or more yards. Two of them were one-play drives. That means there was one long, sustained drive in the whole game. There were also drives that covered 22, 25, -6, 27, 21, -1 and 8 yards.

Here’s a shocker…Tampa punted more in the game than the Eagles did!

And let’s put some perspective on this. The Steelers just gave up 42 points to a QB making his third NFL start. And the Steelers were at home. Carolina gave up 31 points to the Falcons, who were 4 for 4 in the Red Zone. The Patriots gave up 31 points to Blake Bortles and the Jaguars. Last week the Saints gave up 41 offensive points to Tampa.

The Eagles gave up 27 points. It felt a lot worse than that, but it wasn’t.

We thought the defense might be great this year. That could still happen, but they have a lot of work to do before we can re-visit that conversation. They were bad in Tampa. Give the Bucs credit, too. That offense is clicking right now. Ryan Fitzpatrick seems to see every open receiver and puts the ball right on the money. The line is playing well and the receivers are making big play after big play.

Jim Schwartz will not be a happy man this week. He’ll see the mental mistakes on tape and it will eat at him. Jenkins knows he has to stay deep on DeSean. For some reason, he got greedy at that moment. Darby had several good tackles in the game. Why on earth did he decide to do whatever he did at that moment vs Howard? There was the play where Chris Godwin was wide open in the end zone. We haven’t seen a good replay to know who is at fault on that, but it was clearly a blown assignment.

Jalen Mills gave up a RZ score to Mike Evans. Mills had pretty good coverage on that, but there was a perfect throw and he couldn’t get to the ball. I’m guessing Schwartz will be fine with that. You can’t expect to stop every play. You just can’t have breakdowns that give the opponent huge plays. Those are devastating.

I need to re-watch the game a couple of times to really get a feel for what Schwartz was trying to do strategically. He had his guys play off a lot and that made shorter completions easy. When you face fast receivers like Evans and Jackson, there is no simple strategy.

I still believe in Schwartz and the Eagles defense. Sunday was ugly, but it was one game. We’ve seen too much good out of this unit for people to go into panic mode. There are issues to be sure. Veteran QBs give them fits. They aren’t nearly as good on the road. But at the end of the day, this is still a good defense.

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