Barring a miraculous Philly comeback and simultaneous Cowboy collapse, the Eagles’ playoff hopes are pretty much shot.

The Birds will likely fall to 6-8 this coming weekend as the Rams return home to make up for a crappy and somewhat shocking loss in Chicago. That means the Texans and Redskins games will be utterly meaningless outside of a few things I think the Eagles can try to figure out as we head into next season:

1) Is Rasul Douglas a safety?

Rasul had a hell of a game yesterday. Nine tackles, one for a loss, and an interception at the goal line all played a role of keeping the Eagles in the game when the offense was really struggling.

Douglas is a ball hawk with good instincts. He’s a solid tackler. He’s not great in coverage, though he did make a nice play on the game’s final sequence when he got a hand on the pass intended for Amari Cooper, only for the ball to pop up in the air anyway.

Rasul looks like a safety. He’s got the size to do it and he comes from a college system that played five defensive backs in numerous zone and drop-eight schemes, so there should be some familiarity there. He himself said he’s played the position before, and at 6’2″ and 209 pounds, he’s built more like a strong safety and less like an NFL corner.

This I think was his best tackle in the Dallas game:

Yeah, they play soft on third and long, but that’s a nice job of filling the gap, skirting the lineman, and squaring up for the tackle. Dallas had blockers out there on that play.

I could see Douglas being the third safety next year behind Malcolm Jenkins and/or Rodney McLeod, depending on the latter’s health. I’m not sure if Rasul has the lateral quickness to play in single-high sets as a free man, but he seems to break well on the ball.

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Doug spoke today. He explained a couple of things in detail and then showed zero interest in taking another question from Jeff McLane.

Notes:

• not enough of a sense of urgency to start fast and get into a rhythm offensively
• the 3rd and 1 option play for Wentz: “It was a well-designed play. We anticipated in their short-yardage front for #90 to spike and come inside a lane. That’s what we expected, a power stunt. He actually, we were going to combo between him and Zach up to the linebacker and then we were going to basically option off of #38, and it was 3rd and 1 and Carson could have dove and got the first down. 90 didn’t spike, he actually stayed on lane outside. Just a great play by the Cowboys.”

Here’s the video clip of the play in question. I didn’t like the play call at the time just for the fact that Wentz is coming off of ACL surgery:

They were looking for Demarcus Lawrence to stunt there, which would have created a nice seal on the end for that combo block Doug mentioned. Lawrence didn’t do that, and so Jeff Heath was able to string that play wide and cut off the pitch.

More notes after the jump:

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Don’t let the God-awful officiating distract you from the real reasons why the Eagles lost this game:

1. the offense was appalling for the better part of three quarters
2. the play calling again disappointed
3. the kicker missed a crucial extra point
4. the defense eventually ran out of steam after a Herculean early effort

It’s not to say that the officiating was amazing, because it wasn’t. It was utter shit. But for whatever reason, we as Philadelphia sports fans generally default to the most rudimentary and emotional reactions, and last night the reaction was to blame the referees and casually ignore everything else this team did wrong.

Of course the Dallas Goedert “pass interference” and non-fumble on the opening play really hurt, but the Eagles also:

• went 1-9 on third down
• didn’t do enough with a +2 turnover margin
• got crushed in time of possession
• did not/could not run the ball
• fumbled in the Dallas half of the field

All of those things contributed more to the loss than two bad calls by the officials. These issues comprised multiple plays over multiple series over multiple quarters. The referees made two obvious screw ups on two plays. The former is a larger sample size than the latter.

The most reasonable take, therefore, is this:

The Eagles got screwed yesterday but did nothing to help themselves.

Story of the season, yeah? They did nothing to help themselves.

With that, the charade is over. This team was likely going to get hammered in Los Angeles next week anyway, especially with the Rams coming off a bad road loss. They might have had a chance at home against the Texans before likely going down to Washington to beat up on Mark Sanchez again.

This is a patchwork defense featuring some guys who weren’t even on the team four weeks ago, so that does that continue to hold up? And even if they did get into the playoffs at 9-7, then what? They maybe scrape by Minnesota or Seattle and then get smoked in New Orleans or LA?

This was supposed to be the “new norm.” The new norm is not 9-7 and a playoff win. The new norm was returning to the Super Bowl. It was taking your franchise quarterback and building a dynasty. The bar was raised this year and they failed to clear it. The injuries piled up. They didn’t make the big plays when necessary and they lost a lot of close games.

Shrug.

It happens to a lot of defending champions. 9-7 was never good enough in the first place, so now we move on and look forward to next season.

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Let’s continue the most boring Dallas week of all time.

Yesterday we had Eagles linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill calling the Cowboys chokers in a video clip shared by John Clark.

Today we’ve got Dak Prescott FIRING BACK:

Dak Prescott was asked about the Eagles LB saying Dallas has a history of choking and they'll make them choke again.

Dak: "Who?"

After being told again, Dak: "Coach Garrett has a great saying…winners worry about winning and losers worry about winners." https://t.co/FBZhwTRiL8

— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) December 6, 2018

Yeah? What does Jason Garrett know about winning? He hasn’t won jack shit in nine seasons coaching the Cowboys.

More from Dak:

“We’re focused on ourselves in this locker room about what we need to do to get better in each and every phase of this game to be ready for this week.

“We’re not worried about he say, she say.”

The sad thing is that the Eagles are probably going to lose to these clowns.

Again.

23 yards, 13 yards, and 11 yards.

The Eagles gashed the Redskins for 47 yards on three Corey Clement screen plays Monday night.

It ended up being 10.7% of the Birds’ yardage in the 28-13 win, and it was one of their best-executed batch of designs on the evening.

I touched on the screens a little earlier this week, but I wanted to go back and clip the third screen and cut a couple of still pictures out of the coaches film to show you just much space the Eagles created on these plays.

Doug Pederson called three Clement screens, and the first one took place at the 40-yard line during the second quarter:

Nice job by Carson Wentz to hold on to the ball there and toss it right through the blitzing linebacker. Jason Kelce gets downfield to do what he does, and the Eagles hit the Skins for a big gain.

One of the things I liked about all three screens was that the Birds did a really solid job of clearing out space via their receivers, after the jump:

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The Cowboys are 7-5 and have won four straight games.

They’re a pretty good team right now, and when you’re a pretty good team you have expectations. And when the Dallas Cowboys have expectations, they usually fall brutally short of meeting those expectations.

You know it, I know it, and they know it, but Wednesday afternoon Kamu Grugier-Hill went down a road you probably should not go down:

#Facts 👀 pic.twitter.com/s7GuVS7q8T

— John Clark (@JClarkNBCS) December 5, 2018

Well I hope they get the job done, but if you’re a 6-6 football team that just lost to said squad on your home field three weeks ago, maybe just save that one for after the game.

I cannot find the full quote from Kamu here. It looks like he was only speaking to John Clark, so if he divulged something more than a five-second snippet, only Johnny Airport has the audio.

Doug Pederson, the day after.

The head ball coach offered a couple of injury updates at his Tuesday afternoon press conference.

On Jason Peters:

“He got rolled up. He’s going to be okay. He’s going to be day-to-day, but yeah, he should be fine. Should be fine.”

On Tim Jernigan, who left the game with back spasms:

“Jernigan is doing okay. He’s doing fine. He’s still going to be in the mix. Would expect him to be available this week and we’ll see tomorrow when we get back on the field.”

Doug didn’t really divulge what he wanted to do with Darren Sproles moving forward, but said that he’ll “keep probably increasing more of his production as we go.” Sproles ran the ball four times for 22 yards and touchdown last night in addition to returning punts for the Eagles.

A few quotes and some video clips after the jump:

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