The Eagles were up 10 with 9 minutes to go and 9 yards to put the game away with another TD. They lost. From that moment on the Eagles ran 11 plays for -9 yards while giving up 14 points and 177 yards to the Rams. As anyone who was watching knows, it was even worse than the numbers would lead you to believe. While I’m sure people will be out with pitchforks for Jalen Hurts all week, and he obviously wasn’t perfect, this one was on the coaches. It was an orgy of poor decisions and worse creativity.
Let’s get something out of the way right off, this team is clearly banged up. Dallas Goedert, DeVonta Smith, and Zack Baun were already out and Lane Johnson joined them shortly before kickoff. Saquon Barkley, Quinyon Mitchell, and Jonathan Greenard were all injured during the game. While we would normally be giving the staff credit for keeping this MASH unit in the game, that would ignore that even with that, coaching blew the game.
One of the annoying parts of the early season has been the unbelievable incompetence on screen passes. Not only do we keep running them despite not working, but it looks like the team doesn’t have either the personnel or the familiarity with their assignments to actually execute the play. It’s frustrating. It’s also the Eagles offense right now in a nutshell.
Repeatedly a pass play was called and Jalen Hurts was met instantly with pressure. Instead of scheming a hot route to give Hurts an easy outlet, no one was open. The counter was to roll Jalen out to get some time to let plays develop, except there was no one open there either. If there is a rollout, there is supposed to be someone going with him, some sort of second half of the play. Nope, nothing. Things like this were happening repeatedly. There was no rhyme or reason to what was going on.
On the final good drive of the game that resulted in turnover on downs at the 2, the Eagles were gashing the Rams on the ground. On 1st and goal, a run. 2nd and goal, another run. That’s fine. On 3rd and goal, they abandoned that and ran some sort of botched bootleg that looked like no one knew their own assignment. No gain. I get not going for a field goal there, but they needed to have some play that made sense. Instead of a run or play action to at least take advantage of what was set up, they ran a botched pass that had defenders in Jalen’s face immediately. Somehow, this was not the most egregious play call of the game.
That would be the 4th down Tush Push at midfield in the 3rd quarter. The Eagles haven’t been running the play because they do not have the personnel to pull it off anymore. Of course, that didn’t stop Sirianni from going for it and dialing up their old bread and butter for a pivotal moment in the game. If they wanted to run it, it would have been a great time for a fake. Nope. They just did it as is, despite clearly having no confidence in themselves to execute it effectively. Didn’t work. I would have rather they called a screen pass than attempt that in that spot. That’s the harshest criticism I can think of.
What the hell is going on?
Nick Sirianni is supposed to be the CEO coach to make sure everyone is prepared/accountable, take blame when things go wrong, and make the 50-50 decisions. Through 4 weeks, no one on this team is ready to go out on the field it seems, including the coaches. Part of having accountability is also about not forcing things that won’t work and putting your players in position to fail. Toss up calls are not just guessing, they are about making decisions that might not be optimal, but at least have a chance. Instead, we are seeing something like a kid calling plays in Madden and “going with his gut.” It’s confounding.
Sean Mannion was supposed to come in and change the offense to a more modern style. We are seeing a lot of guys moving around, but are we really seeing anything different? The motion seems to just be motion for motion’s sake, it isn’t affecting the offense at all. Instead, we have plays failing to develop and no one being schemed open. Plays are called with total disregard for the game situation and what the defense is showing. Time after time, Jalen drops back, sees immediate pressure, and no one is even close to open. He’s dead back there with no targets, not time, and no hope.
One of the big problems I had with Kevin Patullo was that he had never called plays before at any level. It seems like an incredibly difficult and nuanced job. That didn’t stop the Eagles from hiring Sean Mannion who ALSO has never called plays before at any level. WONDERFUL! I’m not saying he is as bad as Patullo (I’m at least not calling out the plays from my coach, yet), but it’s a similar inability to understand what is going on on the field.
The biggest story of this week was ZERO third down conversions. How can that be? How can there be nothing in the playbook to milk for a 1st down? How is this offense so stale that gaining 5 needed yards is impossible? How are we going to get through a season with no plan, no one open, and no one with any answers???1 There was a lot of reasons we lost this game, but it all starts at the top with this one.
Photo: All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (darkened with AI)
- I know the defense was terrible in the 4th quarter too, but I’m just angrier at the offense right now. Jalen Carter is basically pointless. ↩︎
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