Assessing the Eagles

The Eagles lost on Sunday and that means the next couple of days everyone will dissect the loss and assess blame accordingly. Kenny Pickett stunk. The defense stunk. The special teams stunk. The coaches stunk. DeVonta dropped the game-winning pass. On and on.

The bottom line is that this is a team loss. When the Eagles are at their best, they play complementary football. The defense gets stops. The offense sustains drives. STs does their part. This limits points against and helps with points for. That formula worked in the first quarter and then quickly went away without Jalen Hurts to run the offense. Each part of the team made plays, just not enough winning plays.

Big picture, we didn’t learn a lot from this game. Any team that loses a good starting QB in the first quarter is going to have issues during the game. If Hurts doesn’t get hurt, the Eagles win.

Eagles Offense All22 thread vs. Washington. 1) This offense was killing Washington early. They had no answers for the run game. Look at the confusion in the secondary. Here’s OZ with AJB going the opposite way. Look at DeVonta/Mailata creating a huge hole. pic.twitter.com/i6J5VQ91ha

— Jonny Page (@JonnyPage9) December 23, 2024

As it is, they still should have won the game. They just didn’t make the critical plays down the stretch that they needed to.

If that game does bring up a concern for me it is that the other key players didn’t step up with Hurts out. Multiple players dropped passes. Multiple players missed blocks. Multiple players missed tackles. Multiple players blew coverages. There were dumb penalties by a lot of guys. When guys see the QB get hurt, they should say to themselves and each other that they need to play clean football and make sure the team wins. Maybe the long TD run by Saquon Barkley gave them a false sense of security and everyone relaxed. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t a good response from the team.

Hopefully they can learn a lesson from this loss. You can have a lot of talent. You can make plays. But if you make too many mistakes, you will lose. That can serve as a good reminder for the final two games and the playoffs. There can be value in a late season loss if it helps get you mentally right for the postseason.

This loss wasn’t all about the Eagles. We do have to give a lot of credit to Jayden Daniels. He solidified himself as the Rookie of the Year on Sunday. Heck, he might get some MVP votes. There were some plays where he made something happen and the Eagles just didn’t have an answer for him. It’s one thing for a QB to have a good run. It is another thing when he runs for 81 yards and makes key play after key play. Washington had 7 conversions on third down and 2 more on 4th down. They were able to sustain drives.

I still feel good about this team. I think the defense will bounce back from Sunday’s performance. I think the blocking and run game will be better. I expect DeVonta Smith to catch the next critical pass thrown his way. We’ll see how things go with Hurts concussion. Some guys are back the next week. Others miss a game. As long as there isn’t a lingering issue, the team will be fine.

That isn’t to say the Eagles are a lock for the Super Bowl. Any given Sunday and all that stuff. But this is still a very talented team. They didn’t win 10 straight games by accident.

It’s good that Dallas is playing well, having won 4 of their last 5 games. The Eagles need to be focused for this game to get back on track. If the Cowboys were struggling, it would be easier for the Eagles to be casual about this. Dallas isn’t suddenly a juggernaut. They are playing hard and doing enough to win. That should get the players attention and have them ready for Sunday.

*****

Some people are trying to turn Sunday into a referendum on Hurts. Let’s not overcomplicate this. Any team that loses their starting QB mid-game is going to have some problems. That isn’t a sign that Jalen Hurts is irreplaceable.

All QBs get over-analyzed. Hurts isn’t an elite QB. He’s good, he’s just not great. Too many people want to go to extremes with him. They think he is great or he’s significantly overrated.

Hurts is good. Look at the numbers. Look at the wins. He’s just not in the same category as Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow. That’s no insult to Hurts. There is nothing wrong with being good. He could win a Super Bowl this year. I think he’d care a lot more about that than people arguing about where he ranks.

I need to write a long piece on this, but the real key to me is that Hurts is the right fit for this team. If you put a different QB here, the results might not be as good. Some stats might be better, but I don’t know that they would win as much.

Enjoy Hurts while he’s here and let’s hope he gets to hoist the Lombardi.

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Eagles Blow It

What a crappy day. The Eagles jumped out to a 7-0 lead. Then they came up with a fumble on defense and started marching again. Jalen Hurts hit the ground hard after a run and left the game. Kenny Pickett came in and finshed that drive with a TD pass. The Eagles were up 14-0. They later added a TD on a 68-yard run by Saquon Barkley to go up 21-7.

The game wasn’t the same after that.

Washington adjusted their defense and severly limited the run game. Saquon Barkley ran for 109 yards in the first quarter and finished with 150 yards. Not ideal. The defense dared Kenny Pickett to beat them. He couldn’t. To be fair, he did make a good throw to DeVonta Smith late in the game that might have sealed the win, but Smith dropped it. Just flat out dropped it. Ugh.

Pickett led the Eagles to 12 points in the final three quarters. Not good enough. This loss isn’t on him, though. This was a sloppy performance by the whole team. The OL didn’t have their best showing. Saquon Barkley dropped a key pass. Smith had his drop. The defense had several chances for big stops and couldn’t get them. Quinyon Mitchell gave up his first TD. CJGJ got ejected. Jake Elliott came up short on a long FG. The kickoff coverage was a mess all game long. Sydney Brown was offside on the final KO of the game, giving WAS five free yards at a time when you just couldn’t do that.

Ugh.

The Eagles did not play winning football. This reminded me of the game in Dallas in 2022 when Gardner Minshew lost a shootout to Dak Prescott and the Cowboys. The Eagles made their share of big plays, but came up short. The same thing happened in Washington on Sunday. The Eagles made some huge plays. But they made some huge mistakes and just couldn’t put the Commanders away.

The Eagles had lead after lead after lead. Until they didn’t. They trailed 28-27 for a short period and then 36-33 at the end.

Give Jayden Daniels a ton of credit. He made some terrific throws. He had some clutch runs that just killed the Eagles defense. Daniels never panicked and was able to drive down for the winning TD with just seconds left. That dude is going to be a problem for a while.

As for the Eagles defense, they came into the game first in the league in points and yards allowed. They were dominating teams. Sunday was not a good day for the defense. They did have 5 takeaways, but gave up 368 yards and 36 points. They allowed 7 third down conversions and 2 fourth down conversions. They gave up 3 red zone TDs.

If the Eagles had Jalen Hurts for the whole game, there is no question in my mind that they win. I don’t have a lot of big picture concerns coming out of this game. The defense didn’t have an answer for Daniels mobility. He ran 9 times for 81 yards. There aren’t too many QBs who can do that.

Sirianni talked in his press conference about how sloppy the Eagles were. CJGJ got ejected for two taunting penalties. We can complain that those are weak calls, but he’s got to know after the first penalty that he’s got to shut up. Simple as that. Once the first flag is thrown, the officials have sent a message that your words can cost you. The Eagles gave up a long TD when they had too many men on the field and still left a WR wide open. That has to get cleaned up.

Grant Calcaterra failed to make a key block on 3rd & 1. Mekhi Becton missed an easy block on a run play that led to a TFL. This is basic football stuff. Clean that up and they’ll be alright.

The loss hurts the chase for the #1 seed. That could prove costly because the Eagles might have to face Green Bay or Washington in the first playoff game. Neither of those sounds like a team you want to deal with.

This loss can have value if the team learns from these mistakes and fixes them. You’re always nervous about riding a long winning streak into the postseason. Washington took care of that problem on Sunday. Now the Eagles close out the season with the Cowboys, who seem to be enjoy being the underdog in recent weeks, and the hapless Giants.

Let’s hope Hurts is ready for Sunday so the Eagles can get back on track. What we saw in Washington wasn’t good enough, from any part of the team. There were problems on offense, defense, special teams and coaching. Everyone had a hand in that loss.

Now everyone needs to have a hand in getting things fixed.

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