WELL, the Eagles came out flat and looked almost listless at times. Going into this last game I worried that the Eagles might be looking past Detroit, and already looking to the coming division match-up vs. Washington. To be honest, I was worried about that, because I myself was already doing that very thing. It would seem that it came back to bite us in the ass.
It would be nice if this loss could serve as a lesson, but these sorts of losses seldom teach anything, because they rarely come with a demotion. No Eagle player looked like a man with anything to prove out there, and how could they? On a team that uses a Little League “everybody plays” approach, does anyone actually have to prove anything? How do you demote anyone when everyone gets minutes regardless?
Like the Postal Service, the Eagles DID NOT deliver on Sunday.
Amid our player’s apparent lack of interest or motivation, the Eagles found a way to lose 23-24 to the Lions. Hard to believe that you can lose a game in which you do everything wrong, for the first half of it. Wait. That’s not what’s hard to believe. The part that’s hard to believe, is that we only lost by a single point. In all fairness we deserved to get blown out.
Our Defense only allowed Detroit 164 (net) passing yards and 80 yards on the ground for a total of 244 yards. That’s not a bad days work. On paper. Offensively we put up 230 (net) passing yards and 116 rushing for a total of 346 total yards. Not stellar, but definitely solid. Statistically this game seems like it should have been ours. Right?
But what about the stuff that the stats don’t reveal? That’s the reason for these “Four Things” articles. To have an idea of what needs addressing BEFORE the game, so that we’re forced to honestly answer questions AFTER the game.
So, of the Four Things we were looking for in this last game, what exactly did we see?
1) Use four man rushes and take away RB Theo Riddick. Riddick caught 6 passes for 2 touchdowns. That does NOT count as taking a man away. NOT DONE
2) Run the ball right at DE Kerry Hyder. While the ball was run with some frequency, most of the time it seemed we were running to our left instead of to our right which is where Hyder generally lined up. He only had one tackle on the day, but it seemed as if we were ceding an entire side of the field in the process of canceling him out. NOT DONE
3) Go big and throw jump balls. At no point did we even attempt to attack this obvious disadvantage. NOT DONE
4) Get RB Ryan Mathews 12 carries by half-time. Mathews had 11 total carries for the entire game. NOT DONE
This week we did 0 out 4 things we needed to do. Surprisingly, (here’s my shocked face) we fell behind early, and struggled in a game that we ultimately lost.
In any case, the Eagles will look to get back into the win column next week when we play our first division game of the year vs the Washington Foreskins Redskins.
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