Go look outside– the sky is falling today. I’m not sure how, as a community, we’ll get through this. I’m not sure how Mark Sanchez will carry on. Not sure if Chip Kelly is the right man for the job. Let’s just shut it down and watch the Sixers rebuild, because the 7-3, tied-for-first, still-in-position-to-earn-a-bye Eagles are done.
Let’s hit it.
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The roundup:
Which is mostly just the Quick Post-Game Thoughts and Bird Droppings I was too despondent to write last night.
Mark Sanchez
He wasn’t good, but he only got really bad as the game got into silly time. During the first quarter and a half, when the Packers were clipping the Eagles’ wings one large cut at a time, Sanchez was fine. He took three sacks thanks to completely unblocked pass rushers and a bad play call (and recognition) of Clay Matthews streaking off the end. And two passes that should’ve been caught were dropped. None of the early struggles could really be blamed on Sanchez. As the game carried on, though, he slowly morphed into Jets Mark Sanchez. He took a snap to the dick (a literal event summarizing how we all figuratively felt), missed a high snap from Jason Kelce (more on those in a second) that turned into a touchdown, missed WIDE OPEN Riley Cooper and Darren Sproles on potential touchdown passes, and was generally wild with mostly poor throws. The passes to Cooper and Sproles were particularly concerning– not because they would’ve led to a comeback, but because they were good play calls that had both players streaking toward the end zone and passes that would’ve been completed by someone like Aaron Rodgers. As an NFL quarterback, you can’t miss those throws. Nothing special was required– just a simple reading of the play (completed) and leading of the receiver (not completed). These… these two throws worry me:
Josh Huff needs to be benched
I’m tired of Josh Huff. He’s got a ton of talent, but this is three out of four games where he’s made egregious errors. There was the fumble in the red zone against the Cardinals, the dropped pass against the Texans, and this week, the failure to pop the punt returner when he didn’t call for a fair catch and yet another dropped pass. What’s worse is that this is the second time Huff has completely forgotten his status as a rookie and felt the need to excuse his mistakes after the game.
Talking to reporters about not realizing that Micah Hyde didn’t call for a fair catch on his punt return touchdown, Huff blamed THE COACHES for his mistake. From CSN Philly:
“I just did my job, did what the coaches told me to do. I just did what the coaches told me,” Huff said. “If I would have stuck to what I know, I would have made that play.
“If I would have stuck to what I know, just played my game of football, I would have made that play.
“That’s all I can tell you without going into, without trying to get in trouble.”
Perhaps the Eagles’ coaches told him to beware of interfering with the returner before the ball was caught, which every gunner has to be cautious of anyway. Had Huff kept going, he could have hit Hyde immediately after the catch was made, which isn’t an easy play. Or he could have run right by him, which gunners often do.
Slow your roll, rookie. Slow your roll… and then pop the returner!
Helmet-to-helmet
Not to blame this loss on anything but the Eagles’ inability to stop Aaron Rodgers from rowing the Packers’ boat gently up the Eagles defense’s loser stream, but it doesn’t help things when your quarterback takes obvious (uncalled!) helmet-to-helmet hits in the first quarter that lead to Packer touchdowns on the ensuing drives. The tone was set on those plays. The Eagles probably wouldn’t have won, but the failure to call thsoe penalties went a long way in helping the rout.
Eskin headphones
I count purple as his fourth color of Beats headphones on the season– white, pink for breast cancer awareness month, orange, and now purple. Does anyone want to tell him he looks like a toolbag?
McCoy and Sproles
It’s no longer a fluke or too-small-a-sample-size– Darren Sproles is a better runner right now. There aren’t many excuses left for McCoy. The line is mostly intact and Sproles seems to have little problem running behind it in his limited opportunities. I watched closely yesterday to see if the blocking failed McCoy. Sometimes it did, but most of the time he was given room to get going and put on his moves… moves that never showed up. Last year, all he needed was enough time to read the play, find a hole, and make a move to get there. This year, he’s missing that initial juke to hit the hole. He’s not as quick. It’s concerning. It was one thing early in the season with a banged up line and Sproles serving as the wild change of pace. But the line is now healthy and Sproles is consistently able to gain positive yards when he gets the ball. McCoy wasn’t awful yesterday (77 rushing yards on 23 attempts), but his average (3.7) is still a drastic decrease over last season’s (5.1).
Jason Kelce
The snap over Sanchez’s head should’ve been caught, but this is now three-straight games where Kelce has looked… off. There’s an inconsistency with his snaps that we haven’t seen before. Maybe it’s rust. Maybe Sanchez’s bobbles have made it more noticeable. Either way, it’s not good.
Shadows
Troy Aikman and Joe Buck were rocking stubble yesterday. Is there a reason for this? Aikman’s… actually a good looking dude.
Commodity news
The next time someone asks why we don’t do things like every other outlet, I’m just going to point to this screenshot:
Bradley Fletcher
@CrossingBroad Bradley Fletcher post game pic.twitter.com/dNrGp2ZDGq
— FrAntifa (@FrannyDiggz) November 17, 2014
Jason McIntyre at The Big Lead: “If this was a preview of the NFC Championship game … pencil the Packers into the Super Bowl.”
The Inquirer‘s Zach Berman point out that the Eagles are first in something:
The Eagles entered the Packers game with the second-highest turnover total in the NFL, and they took the lead in that category Sunday after they gave the ball away four times … the Eagles did not force any turnovers and now have a minus-9 turnover differential. They are the only team in the bottom 10 in turnover differential that has a winning record.
Looking forward, of the top eight teams in the NFC, the Eagles’ remaining opponents have the worst combined record.
They never really stood a chance:
Mike Sielski thinks Sanchez didn’t have to win the game to look alright, but he did neither of those things:
Sanchez didn’t have to lead a crazy, miraculous comeback to retain everyone’s confidence. He just had to keep things from getting out of hand, from opening himself and his teammates to ridicule, and he couldn’t.
What exactly did Aaron Rodgers do to the defense? “There was no column marked “stripped away defense’s illusions of competency,” but if there had been, Rodgers could have checked that off, too.”
Chip Kelly told Angelo Cataldi this morning about the sartorial requirements of the NFL: “You guard from being too high and you guard from being too low, and you move on,” Kelly said. “I don’t think anybody feels sorry for us around the league. ‘Poor Philadelphia, let’s take it easy on them,’ that’s going to happen. It’s a big boy league, gotta put your big boy pants on and get ready to play another game.”
LeSean McCoy, on the merits of comparing which team is better: “I don’t think they’re a better team than us. They were today and that’s all that matters. No reason to talk about it.” Alright.
Forbes had some thoughts on Kelly’s coaching talent vs. Sanchez’s quarterbacking talent. Namely, that both are important and Mark Sanchez is still Mark Sanchez:
If Kelly really is a magician with the Xs and Os to the extent that who executes his plays is of secondary importance, we have yet to see clear and convincing evidence to prove it. Winning two games with Mark Sanchez at quarterback was a neat feat, and no quarterback, not Peyton Manning, not Tom Brady, not Aaron Rogers, wins every game, so Mark Sanchez can’t be held to such an impossible standard. But when looking for examples of coaching brilliance in Sanchez’s play, it’s hard to find them. The fumbles and interceptions that marked his tenure in New York were there. The bad decisions with the football were there. The missing wide-open receivers, that was there too.
Perhaps two and a half weeks isn’t enough for even the genius of football geniuses to rewire four years of horrific quarterback play. Perhaps it’s a gradual process, the fruits of which will reveal themselves bit by bit over time. Or, perhaps there is no answer because the truth is, in the NFL, both coaching and talent matter.
And after one big loss, Jimmy Kempski gets the hell out of dodge. Kempski’s last Philly.com piece went up today, and he’s moving on to George Norcross’ news startup The Philly Voice.
The Pope did a big long speech about Pope-type stuff but finally confirmed that he’s coming to Philly next year.
This “Saints fan steals ball from Bengals fan” thing is all over the place — and that is exactly what happened, but no one is talking about the two most important things: Both fans seem to be having fun with it, and the dude was about an inch from dropping a big elbow on the Bengals fan when he grabbed that ball. Then, it’d be a different story.
The Flyers put together a welcome back video for Scott Hartnell on Friday night:
And the DEA searched and/or talked to the team doctors of the 49ers, Seahawks, and Buccaneers after their respective games yesterday, regarding a lawsuit that alleged team doctors “routinely gave [players] painkillers in an illegal manner to mask injuries and keep them on the field.” According to Outside the Lines, it all comes down to this:
Under the federal Controlled Substances Act, doctors cannot give players prescription drugs like Vicodin, Percocet and OxyContin outside of the facilities where they are registered with the DEA to prescribe those controlled substances, and trainers are not permitted under the federal drug laws to ever provide prescription medications to players.
But according to a federal law enforcement source with knowledge of Sunday’s inspections, the DEA has reason to believe those laws are frequently violated, particularly by visiting NFL teams.
I wonder if the “reason to believe those laws are frequently violated” is common sense.
Liberty Broadcast
All-new shows are up, and our interview with Sixers CEO Scott O’Neil is posting later today. LibertyBroadcast.co.
33 Responses
“Pick Up The Shield shipping later this week” will be changed to some excuse with the manufacturer, as the order is currently being canceled.
Sanchez sucks
Don’t know who is more delusional. Kyle Scott, Ed Rendell, Angelo Cataldi or LeSean McCoy.
That game yesterday was an embarrassing beat down. If you were looking for a measuring stick to determine where the Eagles stand with the elite teams of the NFL that game was it. And they answer is the Eagles don’t measure up to the elite teams in the NFL.
1-3 against teams with winning records.
The “Preview to the NFC Championship Game” and the Eagles got their doors blown off.
But their remaining 8 games are against 8 more bad teams, so I’m sure the Eagles will run up the scores and start throwing around stupid sayings that Kyle will turn into crappy tee shirts just before they make the playoffs and get their doors blown off again.
Sanchez dropped the shield and can’t find it.
In the Packers last four home games, they’ve won by a combined scored of 188-61. I wouldn’t read too much into the loss.
Here is what you read into it: the Green Bay Packers are light years ahead of the Eagles right now.
The other 3 teams were Chicago, Minnesota and Carolina. None of which are within a game of .500.
Rite on. Where do you think those dreg teams are going.? Wasn’t just a loss. They looked bad. Sure Rogers is a beast but they got embarrassed by him and those receivers. That’s the difference.
Right, every team has gotten beat up on this year. New England to the Chiefs, Packers to Seattle and New Orleans, Arizona to Denver. That’s the NFL, week to week over reactions to that weeks games. You are never as good as you think and you are never as bad as you think. In reality it’s just one game and the Eagles still are very much in control of their division/playoff chances. But that’s not fun to talk about after getting their butts kicked.
exactly! some of the best teams in the league have gotten their asses whooped too! it happens! yes, i was disappointed by yesterday’s shellacking. however, unlike most of the delaware valley, i do not have two feet atop the rail at the ben franklin. whether you lost by 1 point or 40 points, its still a loss. let’s move on to the titans.
Well, if Chip Kelly ever beat a playoff caliber team your argument would be valid. This is not the exception, it is the norm. Go up against a good team and he loses. Go up against a really good team and he gets embarrassed.
other than this: if the eagles have to go through GB to get to the super bowl, they are not going to the super bowl.
The new head coach of the 2015 Florida Gators will be Chip Kelly.
But he is a genius according to WiP.
Typical Eagles team. Built to beat up on the trash of the NFL but can’t hang with the big boys. After 20 years of this nonsense will the “smartest fan base” in football ever catch on to Jeffy’s scam? 20 million under the cap but refuses to field an NFL level secondary and Casey Mathews is still on the team. Laughable.
I’ve been saying the same thing ever since 2005. Lurie has never given a shit about winning a championship, his real concern is to fill the stands and promote the Eagles as a brand – which, he’s done a great job of. As long as the Eagles can give the fans hope each year, that’s a success in his eyes I think. Roseman should have been shown the door when Andy left as well…. I don’t like the fact there are still remnants of Reid in the organization that high up the food chain.
What do you want Lurie to do? Go on the field and make tackles? Want him to be more involved in player acquisition like Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones? Want him to name himself GM and head coach? Do you want him to run the Eagles draft selections each year?
So after the Eagles went to 4 straight NFC championships and 1 Super Bowl, you decided that Lurie doesn’t want to win a Super Bowl? What? He just wants to make it to the NFC championship each year? And then occasionally lose a Super Bowl?
And then the year he fires the best coach in Eagles history, he replaces him with the best coach available. The other coaches hired that offseason were Bruce Arians, Marc Trestman, Rob Chudzinski, Gus Bradley, and Mike McCoy. Bruce Arians and Mike McCoy are the only ones you can make an argument for. But I didn’t hear fans clamoring for those two names.
Lurie stays out football decisions and writes a blank check to cover the team each year. That is what you want from an owner. He spends each offseason trying to make the game-day experience as good as possible for fans. And then people get upset because he has spent the past two years making upgrades to a 10-year-old stadium. And he is doing this so that he can get a Super Bowl in Philadelphia. Yea, that sounds like a terrible owner.
Nah. You know what? You are right. It’s the solar panels, wind turbines and vegan chili at the stadium that are preventing the Eagles from winning a Super Bowl.
+1
I’d take “windmill Jeff” over Jones or Snyder any day of the week. I’d rather them sit on that 20 million and wait until a FA who is actually worth the money comes along than just spend it for the sake of spending it. Remember when we did that? How did it work out? All anyone could talk about during the off season was how they were too cheap to pick up Jarius Byrd and got the cheaper safety in Jenkins. Anyone complaining about that now? No, because they spent the money intelligently. There weren’t many quality FAs this past off season in spots they needed. Doesn’t anyone remember that this team is still technically rebuilding? Last year’s record was a shock and now everyone wants them to win the Super Bowl this year. We still have to recover from Andy’s horrible drafts right before he left and buying up all the free agents won’t fix that. They are getting better and its largely a young team, they won’t be ready to make a real SB run for another year or two.
In the meantime, they’re 7-3! We all thought they were going to lose to Green Bay and yesterday was the first time they played really poorly. They will recover and play better. I still think they beat Seattle when they come to town.
What do I want from Lurie? I want him not to sign a dog torturer yet let the face of the franchise go in a money squabble (Dawkins). I want him to spend the cap money he has been sitting on every year. I want him to stop calling his team the “gold standard” when they haven’t won dick. His “our shit doesn’t stink” attitude permeates the organization. Its why after every loss there is no shortage of Eagles players lined up to tell you how much better they were than the team who beat them. I want him to hire a real GM and not the fraud that is Roseman, preferably a GM that doesn’t piss away first round picks on a yearly basis. You claim Kelly was the best coach available, maybe. But as it stands now Kelly is 2-7 against teams with winning records which is a disgrace and not the hallmark of a champion. Lurie has been here 20 years and has won shit. To hear him talk you’d think he was sitting on 3 Lombardi trophies. He is a self satisfied jackass who was born on 3rd base but acts like he hit a triple.
You realize out of the 4 straight NFC championships they went to, they lost 3 of them. Two of them at home back to back, a feat that had never been accomplished in the NFL. If pissing away home field advantage in championship games is enough to satisfy you, more power to you.
So you want the Eagles to just give money to long time popular players despite the obvious that they are showing signs of aging?
Just like the Phillies have done the past 3 years?
You want them go out and sign the big name free agents each year?
Just like the year they signed Nnamdi Asomugha and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie? Or like the Redskins did in the 90’s and 2000’s?
Will it make you feel better if the Eagles all said they stunk after the game? Would it cheer you up if they went into the next game focusing on how much they suck?
Do you really think Howie Roseman can override NFL head coaches like Andy Reid and Chip Kelly? Do you really think either one of those control freaks is conceding to Howie?
Let’s look at the records of the other coaches hired in 2013:
Andy Reid 13-8
Bruce Arians 14-7
Doug Marrone 9-13
Mark Trestman 11-11
Gus Bradley 4-18 (This was the guy Eagles fans wanted. Everybody on the GUS BUS!)
Chip Kelly 15-7
Mike McCoy 14-8
Rob Chudzinski- 4-12 (Fired after 1 season)
Like I said, Arians is the only guy on the list I might take over Kelly.
And you are upset that Lurie is a rich guy? Yea, so is every other owner in the NFL. He is a businessman. His job is to make money.
Ok, they lost 3 NFC Championship, 2 of which were at home. How many times did the Eagles host an NFC Championship before Lurie was owner? How many times did they even play in the NFC Championship
Lurie bought the team in 1994, since then the Eagles have made it to the NFC Championship 5 times. The most of any team in that time period. Green Bay is 2nd with 4. Giants and 49er’s both have 3. A bunch of other teams have 2.
Tell me the owner that you want Lurie to be more like.
For some reason it wouldn’t let me reply to your last post Doc. I agree with you regarding the Phillies holding on to players too long, however if you remember that wasn’t the Eagles excuse for letting Dawkins go. It wasn’t that he couldn’t play anymore, it was that the Broncos offered more than they wanted to pay. That was a result of an insulting contract offer after the season ended. If you want a guy like Dawkins to stay, you never let him hear another team’s offer. Also, letting go of an old non -productive player is all well and good as long as you replace him with a productive player. The Eagles safeties are absolute trash and have been since Dawkins left, all the while this team is 20 million under the cap. Inexcusable.
What owners would I like Lurie to be like? Wellington Mara, the Rooney family, Robert Kraft, anyone who has won a Super Bowl in less than 20 years ….
To be fair, I have despised Lurie and the Eagles since the day he brought Vick onto this team. Can’t bring myself to go back to rooting for them after that. There’s nothing he could do to make me happy except sell the team, which of course is never going to happen.
Howard Eskin- “I count purple as his fourth color of Beats headphones on the season– white, pink for breast cancer awareness month, orange, and now purple. Does anyone want to tell him he looks like a toolbag?”
He wears a fur coat. Not just any fur coat, but one that looks to be designed for a woman. With blue jeans, running sneakers, and as you said purple beats headphones. He is obviously attempting to look like the biggest toolbag in the history of reporting. Ever.
BTW, doesn’t 4 turnovers guarantee you a loss pretty much? And then to play one of the most potent offenses in the NFL…… The Eagles are lucky to be tied for first place in the NFCE with their turnover record. Actually.
Not gonna comment on the game cuz it blew hard. The shadows Aikman and Buck were rocking is because its no shave November.
Helmet to helmet hits are only regulated to Rodgers, Brady, Luck and the Mannings. Doesn’t apply to Sanchez or Foles.
Truth.
Agreed but Rodgers only got dirty yesterday the couple times he ran. Other than that the Eagles were never close to his helmet. All day. Rodgers (and Clay Matthews) has had trouble staying on the field the last couple of seasons. Eagles can only hope some other team does what they couldn’t even come close to yesterday. Fletcher was bad but Rodgers was in total control.
CHIP KELLY IS AN OFFENSIVE GENIUS……YET HIS TEAM CANT SCORE FROM THE 3 YARD LINE. HAHAHAHHHAAHA
Kyle,
Crawl out of the cave, the beards on Aikman and Buck are for Movember. Look it up. It’s a thing.
Just also wanted to bring up another thing about this weekend that I don’t feel was significantly covered in Kyle’s weekend wrap up. TOP FIVE ELITE NHL GOALIE Steve Mason gave up four pretty lousy goals to the horrid Columbus Blue Jackets and then–once again–blamed his teammates afterwards. Class act all the way, Mase.
“Philadelphia…where goaltenders go to die.” you could look it up
I think Mason was dead on arrival. He was literally the worst goaltender in the NHL for the four seasons prior to Holmgren bringing him here.
I noticed the helmet-on-helmet hits as well, and was wondering why they weren’t called. But that’s just a sidenote to a game that I hope was just one of those losses the Eagles will have in any season.
Beyond that, I’ve come to the considered opinion that the Eagles’ reasoning for not using a kelly green uni because of the helmets is a huge pile of shit. Just man up and say that it’s because of the stupid cow Christina Lurie and her made up color holding it up.
Culture doesn’t win jack shit. Talent does. And the Eagles don’t have enough of it to contend.
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