IN tribute to the success enjoyed by our division rivals, I figured in the spirit of the Christmas season, I’d be classy and tip my hat to them.
So I did it in the form of a song, that I wrote JUST for them. Enjoy.
2016
All posts tagged 2016
Cincinnati Bengals
Sunday 1:00 Paul Brown Stadium Cincinnati, OH
NEEDS TO STEP UP:
WR Nelson Agholor. Over the long run, poor WR play will only stunt the growth of QB Carson Wentz. So this game will be a direct indicator of whether or not Agholor has the resiliency to be relied upon in the future. With WR Jordan Matthews (if he plays), still at less than 100%, Agholor will not only be given the opportunity to step up, but he’ll be relied upon to do so. If he comes back playing the way he did before he was benched, it will almost certainly mean we are drafting a WR early in the next Draft. This game will either be the straw that break Agholor’s career, or the defibrillator that brings him back.
WE MUST CONTAIN:
DE Carlos Dunlap. If I were building a defense and I could pick any NFL players to be on it, the second DE I’d take would be Dunlap. (The first would of course be J.J. Watt.) While it doesn’t hurt to have DT Geno Atkins and LB Vontaze Burfict as teammates, Dunlap is still a complete DE who does everything well, plays under control and actually sees what’s happening around him. By no means will he be an easy assignment for RT Allen Barbre to draw.
EAGLES STORY LINE:
We’re in a rut. Plain and simple. No need to sugar-coat it, we’re in a rut. That’s not the worst place to be though. A rut by definition says that there is an upside ALL AROUND us. We have potential. We’ve seen it. There isn’t a lack of talent, merely a poor coordination of it. There isn’t a lack of ability, just a stretch of poor execution. The good news is, every issue we have is correctable if we apply ourselves to actually correcting what’s wrong.
The first thing that needs fixing is attitude. Speaking frankly, I get the feeling that there are some players on this team who are fine with how things are going right now. I also get the feeling that a lot of those players will be let go and allowed to not shine for another team next year.
Something special is being built here. It’s taking time and real growing pains. In the process of fixing what’s broken, we’re learning why things break, why they work, and how to improve them. In the midst of disappointment, we are only disappointed because we see the potential.
BOTTOM LINE:
Time to see if we can bounce back in 2016, or if we have to wait until September.
PREDICTION:
EAGLES 20 – Bengals 17
WE enter this week at 5-6, showing less and less competitive competence, in each of the last three successive weeks. However, if we have the capacity to max out at 10 wins in a season, we have to keep plugging away. Even if our division leader has already 11 wins, there still exists the chance for a wild card playoff spot. In fact, even we finish 9-7, we might still (with some help) make it in. Say we make the playoffs, and get hot (like the 9-7, 2011 giants)… Hey, you never know. So as long as there’s a real chance, we have to keep plugging.
Your team needs you, fellow Eagles fans. Don’t bail on them now.
We’re going somewhere that has not been kind to us this year. I don’t mean Paul Brown Stadium, (since we haven’t been there yet). What I mean is anywhere on the road. I mentioned the word “playoffs” and I was serious. If the Eagles win 4 of these last 5 games, or (clutch the pearls) run the table, the math says that only something truly bizarre could keep us out of the postseason.
Let’s be clear, the point of the postseason is to win games. If we go, then we’re going as a wild card team. Period. That means no home games. To go to the playoffs and not win a single game, would blow a high Draft position for nothing. If we’re going to make this push, THIS WEEK has to be the beginning of us getting our shit together.
So let’s talk about the Four Things we need to look for, Week 13 versus the Bengals:
1) Get off the bus running the ball. We’re a better team when we make a hardcore commitment to the run. On top of that, Cincinnati sucks (28th) at defending the run. RB Ryan Matthews is out, and RB Darren Sproles is undersized and nursing sore ribs. This means that RB Wendell Smallwood will see 18 or more carries if we’re serious about winning.
2) Start the Presses. The 5 to 8 yard cushions that our CB’s give up routinely, have reduced our pass rush to nothing. We have to start disrupting the timing on throws, to make QB’s have to make reads during the play and not just pre-snap.
3) Treggs, Treggs and more Treggs. WR Bryce Treggs has been extremely effective in the limited number of downs he’s played so far. While he doesn’t have great stats, his biggest contribution is the clear-out routes he runs, which create space for others to get open. It would be smart not to waste him on Jet Sweeps. Instead line him up in the slot and have him run Safeties out of position, and maybe even free him up one-on-one.
4) More wrap artists and fewer hits. Eagles DB’s (right Nolan Carroll?) need to bring their arms to the tackle and not just expect a player to fall from a pop. Too often opposing players are bouncing off of, spinning off of, and running through these shoulder lunges. Even when a player is made to fall from one of these hits, they routinely are falling forward for an extra yard or two. Players in our Secondary are simply not man enough to lay guys out. If they aren’t going to cover their man, they should at least get him down after he makes the open, usually uncontested catch.
This game (like Detroit) should be a gimme. Whether we’ve learned anything since Week 5 will be on display here. The only question is: Are we willing to step up and commit to closing this team out?
NOW that the dust has settled (and the leak in my kitchen floor has been dealt with), we can look back at the game on Monday night. We can look at it for what it was, and with less of the anger and disappointment at FAILING SO HARD, in the moment.
Packers win 27 – 13. The win isn’t the headline. The headline here is the 13 points. I know in the last few days, sportswriters covering this have made the story about our QB, the WR we benched, Green Bay’s QB, our Secondary struggling. All of those angles are important, but the most relevant angle is 13 points. We scored only 13 points against a team on a 4 game slide, that came into the game giving up an average of 27 points per game.
This points to a recent, and systemic failure that hasn’t given us a large enough sample size to dissect reliably yet. Another week like this and there’ll be enough statistics to make for a story and not just a headline.
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) Don’t let Rodgers relax. I mentioned that the night should be spent pushing QB Aaron Rodgers to his left. On the rare occasions where we did, he generally didn’t look nearly as sharp. We however, let him start the game scrambling to his right and we hardly got any pressure on him in the pocket. NOT DONE
2) Take it easy. Completing passes against the Packers secondary wasn’t hard at all, as QB Carson Wentz completed 66% of his passes on the night. DONE
3) Score when you can. Head Coach Doug Pederson didn’t leave any points on the table, by gambling on 4th down, or settling for an ill-advised FG instead of getting a touchdown. We didn’t produce, but it wasn’t due to careless coaching. DONE
4) Throw to the flats. Funny thing, we did a fair job of this and even used the Slant route better than we have at any point this season. Where we failed was in not taking advantage of WHY we needed to do this. The idea was to open up the middle for the run game. Minus Wentz’s 4 runs, we only bothered to run it 14 times all night long. We set a beautiful table, then proceeded to stand on it, squat, and take a shit in the middle of it. NOT DONE
This weeks score is a weak 2 out of 4. We had ONE central mission (harass Rodgers) and we failed at it so abysmally. Let’s hope the Bengals game is more fun to watch.
EAGLES 13 – Packers 27
WELL that was as much fun as being jabbed in the eye with a pointy stick, wasn’t it? Apparently “wrapping up” is no longer a part of the process of tackling. Which would have been less of a problem if we could have gotten some heat on the Packers QB, or if our entire Secondary wasn’t trying to win the Izel Jenkins Award
All in all, it was a shitty night be an Eagles fan.
The regression of QB Carson Wentz (24/36 – 66.6% – 254 – 0 – 1) has become impossible to ignore or dismiss at this point. The lack of an established offensive identity has him just throwing balls to open players, instead of playing QB.
In the absence of a legitimate run game, you have to have a QB who can carry a team on his shoulders. Last night we ran for 81 yards on 18 carries (4.5ypc). If you take away Wentz’s 4 runs for 33 yards, the remainder of our ground game was weak (14 – 48 – 3.4 – 0)
Hey here’s a thought: Defense! Wouldn’t some of that have been nice? Where can we buy some pass rush? Because we’re apparently out of it.
Did you notice?
With about 11:30 to go in the 3rd quarter, the announcers started talking about the Eagles championship drought. They didn’t say we didn’t have a championship; these NFL employees said we were suffering from a championship drought.
EAGLEMANIACAL.com 